UIC-led hub focuses on environmental justice and Black communities in Midwest 

The history of Black communities in the American Midwest is deeply entangled with environmental justice issues, from pollution in industrial cities to the disproportionate effects of climate change. A new regional initiative housed at UIC will unite academics, artists and activists to explore this relationship, producing educational resources, convening student learning experiences and creating zines and other artistic projects. 

The Black Midwest Justice Hub, created with a $500,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation, is led by Terrion Williamson, associate professor in the departments of Black studies and gender and women’s studies at UIC. The grant will support the creation of a digital platform to share class materials but also to continue building a community to elevate the experiences of Black people in and from the Midwest. 

“This grant becomes a way that we can do more of the work that brings us together,” Williamson said. “It’s a way for all of us to do our work around a theme that’s critically important, that helps us to really extend and expand what it means to think about environmental justice and its relationship to Black community.” 

The hub is a project of the Black Midwest Initiative, also based at UIC and founded by Williamson in 2017. That initiative established three pillars of academics, art and activism, which will carry through to the new justice hub.  

So far, the Black Midwest Initiative has produced an anthology titled “Black in the Middle;” supported the work of 15 emerging scholars, artists and organizers through its inaugural Summer Institute and Fellows’ cohort; and connected scholars, graduate students, artists, organizers and community members from across the region as part of its Black Midwest Symposium, held most recently in October 2024 in Dayton, Ohio. 

While the members of the Black Midwest Initiative study a variety of topics — such as Williamson’s research on the serial murders of Black women in Peoria and other Midwestern cities and towns — environmental topics emerged as a common thread.  

In many industrial towns, Black people work and live near factories, highways and other sources of pollution. Recent events such as water contamination in Flint, Michigan, and flooding along the Mississippi River emphasize how environment and climate crises severely harm underrepresented populations. 

“So many of us are doing work around environmental justice issues, even if they don’t necessarily always get thought about in that way,” Williamson said. “All of the communities we represent have been deeply, deeply affected by climate change and environmental degradation, as well as a range of other issues that affect the health and well-being of Black people, and we think that needs to be lifted up.” 

The Mellon Foundation grant will fund three years of activities around this theme, starting with this year’s edition of the Black Midwest Initiative Summer Institute, to be hosted at UIC. Fellows selected to attend will be charged with creating environmental justice projects that will be incorporated into the hub as resources for the Environmental Justice Collaboratory, a set of environmental justice courses that will be taught across multiple Midwestern colleges and universities, including UIC, during the 2026-27 school year.  

The hub will also help participants create and host resources for making zines — small self-printed publications or comics that can be used to raise awareness of environmental justice issues. The low production costs and creativity possible with zines will offer an alternative pathway for students to learn and engage with the topic, Williamson said. 

“Because there are a lot of artists and creatives and organizers in our group, the zine became a kind of learning and organizing tool that everyone in the organization felt they could contribute to,” Williamson said. “Now we can do this work around a theme that’s really important to us and build upon the idea that we initially had years ago to create something meaningful that can go beyond just the classroom or the university space.” 

Near the end of the grant term, a small group of undergraduate students from the collaboratory will be selected to attend the Black Midwest Initiative Summer Tour. The two-week tour will begin with training and workshops in Chicago before setting off for sites affected by environmental issues throughout the region where the students will interact with community organizing efforts. 

“It’s an opportunity for the students to take the classroom learning that they’ve done and really see in action the kinds of things they can do with what they’ve learned,” Williamson said. “It’s also another way of trying to bring younger students into environmental justice work and to provide them with an opportunity to have a hands-on engagement with it in a really substantive and meaningful way.” 

Williamson said UIC’s mission and broad research on environmental justice — including the Freshwater Lab, the Community Research on Climate and Urban Science project and the Center for Climate and Health Equity — make it the ideal home for the new hub. 

“Chicago is such a rich site of activism and social justice work generally, so we’re really well-situated to plug into a lot of different things with Chicago as the base and then outward to all the other places where we are working,” Williamson said. “I think there’s a lot to learn from folks in Chicago, from the work and organizing that has been done here.”