Celebrating Black History: Vernice Miller-Travis

The following year, Miller-Travis co-founded WE ACT for Environmental Justice, New York City’s first environmental justice organization. In 1991, Miller-Travis and WE ACT participated in the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, where she served on the  drafting committee that wrote the 17 Principles of Environmental Justice, which continues to guide the movement today. 

“I’m most proud of the reams of data, analysis, reports, studies, monographs, documentary films, podcasts, and books we’ve produced or inspired over forty-five years on environmental justice topics,” Miller-Travis said. “I’m especially proud that all the aforementioned things that have been produced and published served to validate the lived experience of communities that were uniformly dismissed when we first started this work.”

Over nearly 40 years, WE ACT’s efforts have built environmental equity for New Yorkers by getting every public school tested for lead, forcing the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority to invest in pollution control retrofits for the entire bus fleet, passing state legislation to ban BPA chemicals in children’s products, and so much more. 

But that change takes time. Miller-Travis said, “What keeps me up at night is how long it takes to get policy, law, regulation, and enforcement actions to catch up to the environmental and public health threats that too many communities face every day.” 

So she keeps working. Today, Miller-Travis serves as Executive Vice President for Environmental and Social Justice at Metropolitan Group a social change agency, and on the Board of Directors of WE ACT, Clean Water Action, Landloss Prevention Project, NRDC Action Fund, advisory board of the Patuxent Riverkeeper, and a Trustee of the Chesapeake Bay Trust Foundation. 

“I want the next generation to understand that the progress that’s been made in the field of environmental justice (e.g. land use planning, public health, climate science, law/regulation, cumulative impact analysis, sustainable design and climate mitigation, public policy) is the result of decades of hard work,” she said. “Every advance is grounded in community knowledge and expertise. It’s much harder and deeper than Google and Social Media posts. It’s incredibly rewarding work, but it requires a commitment at the heart, soul and spirit level. It’s joyful work, but it is not for the faint of heart!”

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Miller-Travis has spent over four decades making sure that the communities most impacted by environmental harm are not just heard, but leading change and transformation. Learn more about the early movement by reading A Movement is Born: Environmental Justice and the UCC.