To Live and Breathe: Women and Environmental Justice in Washington, D.C.

By Rachel F. Seidman, PhD Curator at Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum

Can you breathe the air in your home and not get sick? Go to work and not be poisoned? Let your kids play outside and know they’re safe? Many people cannot, and their lives can be cut short by environmental injustice. Women have long been the ones leading the fight to protect people from environmental harm and make sure that all have access to environmental benefits like clean air, water, and green space—this is what we call the environmental justice movement. On May 19, 2023, the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum opened a new exhibition, To Live and Breathe: Women and Environmental Justice in Washington, D.C. Come visit the exhibition and celebrate the remarkable women in our community who have worked tirelessly to make sure all of us can lead safe and healthy lives and who protect the planet at the same time. Come learn their stories and be inspired to think about your own local environment and how you might help move the needle toward justice.

The exhibition highlights local stories about women who seek to make sure everyone can be safe and healthy no matter where they live, work, play or pray, and puts them into national and historical context. How do current campaigns to protect communities from pollution-induced asthma echo Black women’s environmental perspective on tuberculosis at the turn of the 20th century? How do current-day fights to provide safe places for recreation harken back to the history of segregated playgrounds? How are young Black women who are carving a space for themselves in farming and aquaculture building on long traditions of economic activism?

When you visit this exhibit, you’ll not only learn about inspiring women activists of today and yesterday, but you’ll be able to share your own ideas, whether through adding your neighborhood’s environmental issues to a map of D.C. or creating a square to add to a quilt about the community’s vision of environmental justice.

This exhibit itself is part of a long history; the Anacostia Community Museum has been documenting environmental injustices since its founding, when, in 1967, the museum developed an exhibition called The Rat: Man’s Affliction. The exhibition was designed to help answer local children’s questions about the pests, and help people understand what it would take to reduce the rodents’ numbers in the area.

Over the last two decades, the museum has refocused attention on the Anacostia River and the people who live near it. From the 2012 exhibition Reclaiming the Edge: urban waterways & civic engagement, to programs such as Women’s Environmental Leadership Summit and Growing Community (ACM’s Community Gardening Program), ACM continues to challenge the narrative that D.C. communities are separate from their environments.