Climates of Inequality Exhibit
Climate Refugees in the City of Creeks
Levine Museum of the New South, May – September 2023
The Problem
Charlotte is a diverse, welcoming city. Yet it is known for its map of “crescent and wedge” race and income inequalities, ranking last in economic mobility out of 50 largest US cities. Climate change spurs increasing flooding and gentrification, worsening freedom of movement for people of color, immigrants, and youth.
The Roots
Charlotte’s environmental injustices flow via water. Creeks were foundational to the city’s development. They enabled European settlement, gold mining, coal-powered industry, and polluting textile mills. Charlotte’s creeks are sites of environmental racism, flooding, and displacement–but also resilience. These posters displayed in the exhibit explore the problem through multiple eras and multiple narrators.
Climate Refugee Stories in Charlotte, NC
Climate Refugee Stories Playlist on Spotify
The Solution
Charlotte is a central hub in the environmental justice movement with teachers, students, and schools in the lead. Naming past harms as part of our city’s story is a first step towards repair. Community-led solutions, like climate curriculum in our schools, creek restoration, green spaces, and fair employment and housing, will ensure just futures for residents old and new.
Students Fight Back
Just Futures
Insights from the Project
University Partners
As history students at UNC Charlotte, working on this project made us confront our various forms of privilege. We can now put words to experiences of environmental injustice that we didn’t know had a name, or a history. Working with the Charlotte Teachers Institute, we found that our city’s teachers, students, and schools are on the front lines of climate change and its intersecting crises. The act of choosing which stories to share wields power. The stories presented here are incomplete, yet interconnected. They honor the work that has come before us and are a springboard for discussion, study, and action.
—University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Community Partners
Charlotte Teachers Institute is an innovative partnership among Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, UNC Charlotte, and Johnson C. Smith University that supports community-and teacher-led professional development. CTI’s collaboration with this project began with a 2021 faculty-teacher seminar led by Tina Shull at UNC Charlotte. We discovered our own and our students’ stories of migration and environmental change. Here, we offer the concept of climate “refugee-ness” as a way to connect experiences across communities and across time.
—Charlotte Teachers Institute
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