Chapter 1
Texas Southern University (TSU) was founded in 1927 as Houston Colored Junior College during a time when higher education in Texas was deeply segregated and access for Black students was severely limited. The institution was created to provide Black Texans with meaningful educational opportunities that were largely denied to them at white institutions. Over the following decades, the school steadily expanded its programs and enrollment, transitioned into a four-year college, and eventually gained state support in 1947, at which time it was known as Texas State University for Negroes. In 1951, reflecting its broader mission, growing academic offerings, and evolving identity, the institution was officially renamed Texas Southern University. TSU’s history reflects the determination of Black Houstonians to build and sustain educational institutions and opportunities for their communities despite entrenched segregation and racial inequality. The university became more than a place of higher learning; it developed into a vital center for Black leadership, organized activism, and community engagement. This legacy offers important context for understanding TSU’s subsequent and continuing role in movements for civil rights, social change, and environmental justice.
Texas Southern University became an important center for environmental justice research through the work of Dr. Robert D. Bullard, who began his academic career at TSU in the 1970s and 1980s. While at the university, Bullard studied Houston and began researching how race and class influenced where environmental hazards were located. His research challenged the idea that pollution was simply an unfortunate consequence of development and instead showed how environmental decisions could disproportionately burden Black and low-income communities.
Bullard's work helped connect environmental issues to the broader struggles for civil rights and racial justice. His research and writing, including Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality, helped establish environmental justice as a field that examines the connections between race, place, health, and political power.
Texas Southern University’s environmental justice work demonstrates that research can be a tool for community power. The Robert D. Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice combines research, education, policy, and civic engagement to address the environmental and climate impacts facing communities of color. Its programs work directly with frontline communities and train students and grassroots leaders to advocate for environmental and climate justice.
The work at TSU also shows the importance of connecting environmental justice with racial, economic, health, and political justice. Rather than simply asking how pollution affects a community, environmental justice asks who has decision-making power, who benefits from development, and who is left carrying the burden. This approach continues TSU’s HBCU tradition of using education and community partnerships to challenge inequality and build collective power.