Robert D. Bullard
| Robert D. Bullard | |
|---|---|
October 2012
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| Born |
December 21, 1946 Elba, Alabama |
| Residence | Houston, Texas |
| Fields | Sociology |
| Institutions |
Texas Southern University Clark Atlanta University University of California, Riverside |
| Alma mater | Iowa State University |
| Thesis | Voluntary Participation: Implications for Social Change and Conflict in a Community Decision Organization (1976) |
| Doctoral advisor | Robert O. Richards |
| Known for | "father of environmental justice" |
| Influences |
Martin Luther King, Jr. W. E. B. Du Bois |
| Notable awards | Conservation Achievement Award; "Environmental Leader of the Century"; Building Economic Alternatives Award |
| Spouse | Linda McKeever Bullard |
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Website www |
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Robert Doyle Bullard (born December 21, 1946 in Elba, Alabama) is former Dean of the Barbara Jordan - Mickey Leland School Of Public Affairs (October 2011 - August 2016) and currently Distinguised Professor at Texas Southern University. Previously Ware Professor of Sociology and Director of the Environmental Justice Res ource Center at Clark Atlanta University, Bullard is known as the 'father of environmental justice'. He has been a leading campaigner against environmental racism, as well as the foremost scholar of the problem, and of the Environmental Justice Movement which sprung up in the United States in the 1980s.
Born in Elba, Alabama, Robert Bullard is the son of Nehemiah and Myrtle Brundidge Bullard; he was "the fourth of five children." He graduated from Elba's Mulberry Heights High School, as class salutorian, in 1964.
Continuing his education, Bullard received a bachelor's degree in Government at Alabama A&M University, in Huntsville, in 1968. Upon graduating from college, he served two years in the United States Marine Corps, at an "air control station in North Carolina".
His M.A. in Sociology was earned at Atlanta University, in 1972. Bullard obtained his Ph.D. in Sociology at Iowa State University, in 1976, under the supervision of urban sociologist Robert ("Bob") O. Richards.
In 1979 Bullard's wife, attorney Linda McKeever Bullard, represented Margaret Bean and other Houston residents in their struggle against a plan that would locate a municipal landfill next to their homes. The lawsuit, Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management, Inc., was the first of its kind in the United States that charged environmental discrimination in waste facility siting under the civil rights laws. Houston's middle-class, suburban Northwood Manor neighborhood was an unlikely location for a garbage dump except that it was over 82 percent black. Bullard, having received his doctoral degree only a couple of years before, was drawn into the case as an expert witness. In this role Bullard conducted a study which documented the location of municipal waste disposal facilities in Houston. Entitled 'Solid Waste Sites and the Black Houston Community', the study was the first comprehensive account of ecoracism in the United States. Bullard and his researchers found that African American neighbourhoods in Houston were often chosen for toxic waste sites. All five city-owned garbage dumps, six of the eight city-owned garbage incinerators, and three of the four privately owned landfills were sited in black neighbourhoods, although blacks made up only 25 percent of the city's population. This discovery prompted Bullard to begin a long academic and activist campaign against environmental racism. "Without a doubt", Bullard has said of his experience, "it was a form of apartheid where whites were making decisions and black people and brown people and people of color, including Native Americans on reservations, had no seat at the table."
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