Rooted: My South, My Old Country
1,075 views · Published 21 February 2018 · 1:01 · Indexed 20 October 2026
Channel: NRDC · 2018 · Nonprofits & Activism
#blackhistorymonth reflections from Mary Heglar, senior policy editor at NRDC: Like my grandfather and his father, I was born in Alabama. I grew up between Birmingham and rural Mississippi. While I can trace my family’s roots deep into Southern soil, I know it’s haunted. During the slave trade and the ensuing antebellum and Jim Crow eras, black bodies and the Southern earth simultaneously became inanimate objects from which one could extract endlessly, and mercilessly. This brutal system fueled the antebellum economy, which bankrolled the industrial revolution, which launched today’s climate crisis. Black folks and the Southern landscape forged an unbreakable bond through shared trauma. To heal these festering wounds, we must affirm that black lives do, in fact, matter and that crimes against the earth are crimes against humanity. If we believe that, we have to say it. And if we say it, we have to fight for it. And for each other. Art by Perrin Ireland.
More from this channel
-
0:36
Hey Detroit
-
2:23
Admiral McGinn on "Who Killed the Electric Car?"
-
3:04
NRDC at Bonnaroo -- Solve Global Warming!
-
4:09
NRDC Artists & Visionaries: Laurie David
-
3:33
Global Warmth -- Six Characters
-
2:30
Bobby Kennedy en la Patagonia
-
0:41
NRDC PSAs from America's Next Producer: Global Warming
-
0:42
NRDC PSAs from America's Next Producer: Ocean Pollution