‘Battle of Carver Terrace’
Local environmental disaster focus of A&M lecture series
A local author, historian and environmental activist told the story of a black Texarkana neighborhood’s struggle to escape an environmental nightmare in, under and around their homes.
Dr. James Presley spoke on “Superfund Drama in Texarkana: The Battle of Carver Terrace,” at Texas A&M University-Texarkana Tuesday as part of the school’s Program for Learning and Community Engagement series. This year’s theme is “Race and Ethnicity,” and Presley commended the PLACE committee for addressing racial issues.
“I think that is one of the most important issues since the founding of the republic, because it’s centuries old and traces back from the time of slavery, which existed at the time of the founding, and is not entirely clarified today,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s still a burning and toxic reality that seems to have improved when it does, with baby steps, instead of leaps and bounds.”
Presley is a member of Friends United for a Safe Environment, a Texarkana-based nonprofit that was instrumental in having Carver Terrace, a black
neighborhood, declared an EPA Superfund site. Built in 1964, the neighborhood offered something many black professionals in the city didn’t have—home ownership.
“At the time, there was segregation in housing,” Presley said. “It was a dream come true. Carver Terrace represented hope and promise at an affordable price.”
That dream became a nightmare as residents’ animals kept dying, gardens and lawns wouldn’t grow, and the people kept getting rashes, rare cancers and other illnesses. Many women also experienced multiple miscarriages.
What those hopeful black homeowners didn’t know was their dreams were built on the site of a former creosote plant. Owners National Creosote Company sold it to Koppers Company in 1961, who then sold 34 acres to Carver Terrace, Inc., which built the homes.
Presley described the matriarch of one Carver Terrace family who became nationally known for her environmental work.. In 1968, Patsy Ruth Oliver, a single mother with five children, put at $10 deposit down on a home in the new neighborhood.
Less than 20 years later, after experiencing the effects of the poisons in the soil, Oliver finally learned exactly why her children’s puppies were dying and her vegetables wouldn’t flourish.
In 1985, she attended a meeting at the Mt. Zion First Missionary Baptist Church next to Carver Terrace. That meeting changed the course of history.
“There she learned, as she put it, ‘The land we are living on, and the homes that we have purchased are on a toxic site which had become a Superfund,’” Presley said.
FUSE met regularly with neighborhood residents including the outspoken Oliver, who coined the term “Toxicana.” For many years, they fought the Environmental Protection Agency and brought awareness to the issue, finally gaining the attention of national environmental groups and Congressman Jim Chapman. He was on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and earmarked a bill for Carver Terrace residents to be bought out of their neighborhood.
Signed into law in 1991, the bill required the EPA, which initially denied the seriousness of the issue, to work with Superfund to relocate the families. The buyout began in 1992.
Presley said action would have not taken so long if Carver Terrace residents had been white.
“Racism has deep roots,” he said. “It flourished and it’s shaped Carver Terrace. Even so, few, if any suspected the tragic secrets held in the soil.”
Sadly, in December 1993, the same day demolition began on the homes in the neighborhood, Patsy Ruth Oliver died. She was 58.
At the time of her death, she was serving on the boards of several environmental groups, and had been featured in a commercial for Greenpeace, which ran on VH-1 in the 1990s.
Presley played the video for those gathered in the lecture hall, Oliver’s passion to protect her family coming through the screen.
Oliver’s daughter, Bess-Gamble Williams, who grew up in Carver Terrace and has also become an activist, said seeing her mother on the screen moved her to tears.
“She was so strong,” Williams said. “And honey, she got it done.”
The next PLACE event will be held at noon, Oct. 18, in Eagle Lounge, with Dr. Kim Murry speaking on “Cultural Appreciation or Cultural Appropriation? A Conversation about Halloween Costumes.”
Events will continue throughout the academic year. For a full schedule, go to tamut.edu/ Academics/Resources/PLACE/ Events.html