Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to Use

Commercial use requires permission from donor. Contact Richard Ward, rqward@mindspring.com.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Richard Ward Video Footage of Warren County PCB Landfill Protests #70134, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Richard Ward in March 2022 (Acc. 20220711.1).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: Jessica Venlet, August 2022

Encoded by: Dawne Howard Lucas, August 2022

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Civil disobedience--North Carolina.
• Environmental justice--North Carolina.
• Environmental justice--Southern States.
• Environmental racism.
• Polychlorinated biphenyls--Environmental aspects.
• Protest movements--North Carolina--History--20th century.
• Public health--North Carolina.
• Ward, Richard.
• Warren County (N.C)--Environmental conditions.
• Waste disposal in the ground--Environmental aspects--North Carolina.

In the summer of 1978, more than 31,000 gallons of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB)-laced transformer oil was illegally dumped along the roadsides of more than 200 miles of North Carolina’s highways. After a four-year battle about what to do with this toxic waste, the state government began transporting more than 60,000 tons of the PCB-contaminated soil to a new landfill that it had sited in a predominantly Black community in Warren County, N.C. On the first day (15 September 1982) that the dump trucks rolled in to dispose of the toxic soil, several hundred community members staged a protest to try to block them. The protest sparked a protracted civil disobedience movement lasting more than six weeks and resulting in more than 600 arrests. The protest has been seen as a watershed moment and a convergence between the civil rights movement and environmentalism, known by many as the "birth of the environmental justice movement."

Contains video footage documenting protests against dumping contaminated soil in Warren County, N.C. on 15 September 1982. Recorded by Richard Ward, the video includes approximately 35 minutes of footage of the protest march, arrests, and the first group of trucks coming through the demonstration and dumping the contaminated soil. It is the only known video of the protest to surface, to date. The footage has been copied from the original 3/4-inch U-Matic tape.