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Ann Creasy lived in the Lambert’s Point/Park Place area while a student at Old Dominion University from 2011 to 2015. She describes sweeping her front porch to remove coal dust and prevent tracking it into her home. In this testimony, Creasy, who works for the Sierra Club on local environmental justice issues, also discusses spending time at the Whitehurst Beach near the coal piers as a student and seeing coal on the park benches and in the sand.
Carl Poole was born in Germany in 1975 where his mother was stationed with the U.S. Army, and spent most of his childhood in Virginia before returning again as an adult. Poole’s great-aunt, aunt, and cousins grew up in Lambert’s Point in Norfolk, and he recalls seeing coal dust on the exterior of their houses as a child. Poole began working for the New Virginia Majority in 2022 on environmental justice advocacy.
Track 1: In this June 2023 testimony, Poole reflects on his year working at the Wastewater Treatment Plant, 15 yards away from the Norfolk Southern Coal Yard in Lambert’s Point, and the impact the dust had on him on a daily basis. This testimony includes descriptions of his cousins’ experiences with bronchitis. He also mentions how residents of Lambert’s Point were displaced through eminent domain when the city of Norfolk built a water reservoir, and how the community has been neglected in city services, including street cleaning. Poole describes gentrification caused by Old Dominion University, and reflects upon how residents in the area have not felt heard on issues of environmental hazards or housing justice.
Track 2: This oral history traces Poole’s family history, including his grandmother’s experience raising seven children in Norfolk’s public housing, many of whom went on to attend college and start businesses in the area. Poole discusses the white-led campaigns resisting integration in Norfolk public schools in the 1950s and 60s, as well as the impact busing had on the Black community. Poole reflects on his middle school years in a majority-white community in Indiana, and his experience returning to Hampton Roads to join the Army in 1994. The interview includes discussions of the Obama presidency, the Trump election, his organizing work in 2020, and his goals for Black civic involvement in Norfolk.
Diane Davis-Wagner was born Diane Davis in 1947 and grew up in Mount Herman, a Black working class neighborhood in central Portsmouth, Virginia. In this September 2023 interview, she discusses the psychological impacts of being barred from the all-white swimming pool and golf course as a child. She also discusses the experience of living near what she and her friends referred to as “the Holy Bridge,” the demarcation between the white neighborhood of Churchland and Mount Herman. As a young person, Davis-Wagner participated in civil rights activism with her mother, Helen Davis, supporting lunch counter sit-ins in Portsmouth. She witnessed Dr. Martin Luther King speak in Suffolk, Virginia. She attended I.C. Norcom High School, Virginia Union University, and Norfolk State, where she was one of the first graduates of the PhD program in social work. Later, Davis-Wagner became the second female president of the Central Civic Forum, which worked to elect Black local politicians and led the desegregation movement of the Bide-A-Wee golf course in 1987. She reflects on how her granddaughter enjoys the golf course today as an avid golfer. The interview includes Davis-Wagner’s observations on segregation’s continued legacy throughout the city and the uneven tax burdens levied on the city of Portsmouth today. Davis-Wagner also discusses how Norfolk State University has changed, and the impacts of the 2020 pandemic on her students.
Helen Davis was born in Pennsylvania in 1927 and grew up in Portsmouth, Virginia. Her mother worked as a teacher and her father worked in coal mines in Pennsylvania and then later as a rigger at the Portsmouth Shipyard. In this September 2023 interview, Davis speaks about her experiences attending the all-Black Brighton School and living in a segregated city between the 1940 - 1960s. The interview touches on racial discrimination within the housing system, including her husband’s experiences being denied a home loan while he was serving in the Navy and working for the shipyard. Throughout her life, Davis worked as an advocate of racial justice issues, serving as a secretary for a Black civic league, leading voter registration campaigns and demonstrations, and supporting young activists’ work integrating the Portsmouth lunch counters and high schools. The interview also contains descriptions of the presence of the KKK in Chesapeake, Virginia, her memories of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, and her work on the school board in Portsmouth.
Javon Bennett was born in 1990 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and lives in Hampton, Virginia. Beginning in 2020, he started working as an organizer for New Virginia Majority on food insecurity, environmental racism, and housing discrimination issues. His work allows him to observe how the coal piers in Norfolk and Newport News impact the daily lives of residents.
Track 1: In this June 2023 testimony to the EPA, Bennett discusses how coal dust settles on windows, children’s clothing, garden beds, and cars in Lambert’s Point and the East End of Newport News. He discusses his own experience struggling to breathe during a hot summer day canvassing in Lambert’s Point, as well as the long term health impacts, including chronic asthma and bronchitis, and financial expenses that burden those he has met through his environmental justice work. He urges the EPA to visit these communities to witness these hazards first-hand.
Track 2: In this oral history, Bennett reflects on his experience growing up in the 1990s in Philadelphia and how his experience navigating trash pollution and discrimination within his classroom led him to his organizing work today. After moving to Newport News when his mother started a job at the shipyard, Bennett worked on environmental justice issues and for mutual aid organizations with Tidewater Tenants Rights. This interview includes his reflections on urban violence, houselessness, food insecurity, and the persistent costs of coal dust for residents living near coal piers in the Hampton Roads region.
Keela Boose is an English Professor at Norfolk State University and a self-described “child of historically Black colleges and universities.” Born in Monroe, Louisiana, in 1958, Booses’s parents taught Education and Psychology at Grambling State University, Alabama State College, and later, Norfolk State. In this 2023 interview, Boose discusses the mentors who inspired her love of reading. She recalls the social and political contexts of Civil Rights-era Montgomery, Alabama, and her memories growing up in what was then a racially-mixed neighborhood of Campostella Heights in the Southside of Norfolk. Boose pursued college and graduate work at Alcorn State University in Mississippi and at Northern Illinois University. The interview was conducted in her home along the Elizabeth River, which her parents bought in 1966 and she later inherited. In the interview, she describes how sea level rise and the practices of developers buying rights to the water has impacted the shoreline of her neighborhood.
Kim Sudderth is a community leader and advocate for racial justice with the Norfolk branch of the NAACP, and the first Black woman to serve as Vice Chair of the Norfolk Planning Commission, beginning in 2022. She was the Repair Lab’s inaugural Practitioner-in-Residence in 2021. Born in 1971, Sudderth grew up in Norfolk and spent some of her adult years in Virginia Beach before returning home to Norfolk.
Track 1: In this oral history, Sudderth discusses her childhood years growing up on the naval base near Ocean View in Norfolk, and her memories of her mother’s softball league. In her later adult years, Sudderth began advocating for environmental justice cases with Mothers Out Front. Sudderth shares her perspectives on power and change-making, and discusses the connected and widespread issues of housing and the environment, as well as the lessons she has learned through organizing.
Track 2: In this interview Sudderth discusses her experience with a representative of the city in conversation about the proposed downtown Norfolk seawall and the absence of structural mitigations for flooding for the predominantly Black Southside neighborhood, where she resides. Sudderth also addresses Norfolks’ Vision2100 document, a neighborhood planning guide created in response to forecasted sea-level rise and the resulting changes in the city’s geography.
Lathaniel Kirts was born in 1988 and grew up in the Norview community of Norfolk, Virginia. In this oral history interview, he describes his experiences as an honor roll student in Norfolk public schools while he and his family were navigating homelessness. Kirts was granted a scholarship to Morehouse College in Atlanta, where he studied political science and worked in public service. While serving as a Deputy Clerk in courtrooms in Richmond and in Norfolk, he witnessed the school-to-prison pipeline. This interview includes Kirts’s reflections on his work for Communities and Schools, an organization dedicated to providing social services and mentorship for students in K-12 settings, around housing and food insecurity, and his decision to attend seminary school at Virginia Union, where he graduated in 2015. Kirts is an active community advocate for protecting residents living next to CSX rail yards against coal dust pollution. He served as the Repair Lab Practitioner-in-Residence (2023-2024). This oral history was conducted at Pay First Church, the church that Kirts and his wife lead in Newport News.
Lawrence Turner was born and raised in the southeast community of Newport News. In this interview, Turner describes how his life has been shaped by mentorship he has received within his community, and also the impact environmental racism in Newport News has had on his life. Turner recalls that for at least once a year between 2002 and 2018, sea level rising would impact residents' daily lives, including water lines coming up the third stair of his home during high tides when he lived in the Salters Creek area of Newport News. Turner’s interview contains descriptions of his mentors, teachers, and athletic coaches throughout his secondary education and college experience. Turner graduated from the Call Me MISTER (Men Instructing Students Toward Effective Role Models) program at Longwood University, in Farmville, Virginia. His work as a high school counselor at schools in Newport News and Mansassas empowered students both in athletics and in post-high school work and education. Within his numerous community advocacy roles, Turner has helped develop a Toxic Tour, highlighting sites in the southeast community of Newport News contributing to air pollution. This oral history also includes Turner’s reflections on Newport News interstate traffic, gun violence, and how it impacted his family and mental health.
Monét Johnson is a Norfolk resident and advocate working with New Virginia Majority, a nonprofit focused on economic and racial justice. She works as the Lead Organizer for Housing and Environment. Johnson was born in 1996 in Brockton, Massachusetts, and spent her summers as a child in Virginia before moving to Norfolk.
Track 1: In this oral history, Johnson discusses her experience growing up in a majority-Cape Verdean community in Massachusetts, her memories visiting her family in Virginia, and her organizing work during her college years at Framingham State University. Johnson describes her work at New Virginia Majority starting in 2020 fighting housing discrimination and combating environmental injustices, including rising sea levels and coal dust pollution in Norfolk.
Track 2: Johnson discusses the legal battle with the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority in 2021, where she was a plaintiff on behalf of residents of St Paul’s public housing. In 2020, New Virginia Majority sued the city for housing discrimination violating the federal Fair Housing Act on behalf of Black residents. The lawsuit alleged that the NRHA perpetuated systemic racism and segregation through redevelopment of St Paul’s and the resulting displacement of hundreds of Black residents. Johnson’s party, made up of the New Virginia Majority and several other civil right organizations, won the lawsuit on behalf of tenants. The interview also discusses Johnson’s experiences advocating with public housing residents for better flooding and facility management and safer accommodations for children and elders. Kim Sudderth is also present in this interview.
