In 1982 residents of the predominantly African-American Warren County, North Carolina, began to protest the construction of a hazardous waste landfill near Warrenton in which the state planned to bury 400,000 cubic yards of soil contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The contamination occurred when a disposal contractor dripped approximately 12,850 gallons of PCB-tainted fluids along 210 miles of roads in fourteen counties in North Carolina in 1978. Soon after the spill was discovered, the state acquired a 142.3-acre tract of land on which it proposed building a 19.3-acre landfill to bury the wastes. Opponents of the Warren County site filed two lawsuits in 1979 in their attempts to halt plans for the landfill.

At the time, the Warren County site, chosen from ninety sites considered, had a higher percentage of African-American residents of any county in the state. It was 64 percent black and the unincorporated Shocco Township, site...