Black PR Wire Power Profiler on Margie Richard

Margie Richard, a retired schoolteacher from a historically African-American neighborhood in Louisiana, is the first African American to receive the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. Her work in her hometown neighborhood of Old Diamond in Norco, LA, against Shell Chemicals for the more than 2 million pounds of toxic chemicals dumped into her community's air supply each year, led to the formation of a grassroots campaign to fight back. Richard founded the Concerned Citizens of Norco to seek justice against Shell Chemicals for serious ailments affecting many of the 1,500 residents in her community.

For more than 13 years, Richard joined forces with environmentalists and researchers to lead a community campaign against Shell Chemicals. They released reports, took the battle to the courts, organized press conferences and sponsored educational workshops to empower residents with knowledge about the hazards associated with poisonous chemicals. Political leaders like Representative Maxine Waters eventually joined the fight against Shell and helped drive an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) investigation into Shell falsifying its emissions reports. In the end, Shell agreed to reduce its emissions by 30 percent, finance a $5 million community development fund and pay for the full relocation of residents living in close proximity to the Shell plants. Since then, Shell has purchased 200 of the 225 lots in the Old Diamond neighborhood at a minimum price of $80,000 per lot. This was the first time in the Deep South that an environmental battle led to the full relocation costs of affected residents by an industrial plant.

Margie Richard's battle against Shell Chemicals was acclaimed as a landmark environmental justice victory, and she has been hailed as the Rosa Parks of the Environmental Justice Movement. For her work, Richard received the $125,000 Goldman Environmental Prize for grassroots activism.