Documenting the PCB protests; a 40th anniversary perspective

Sep. 15—AFTON — Forty years ago to the day, the Henderson Daily Dispatch published the first of numerous stories chronicling impassioned protesters' opposition to the state's disposal of toxic PCB-laced soil at a Warren County landfill.

The first headline read, "76 arrested as dumping of PCB starts" with Betsi Simmons and William A. Dennis sharing a byline for the front-page story of the Sept. 15, 1982 afternoon edition. Dispatch photographer Ricky Stilley's shot from that morning of Ken Ferruccio, president of Warren County Citizens Concerned about PCBs, being arrested by a N.C. Highway Patrolman served as the accompanying lede photo.

Bill Dennis was the Dispatch's managing editor then and better known around Henderson as "Little Bill." His father, "Big Bill" Dennis, was the executive editor.

The scope of the protests stretched far beyond a hyperlocal happening as well-known civil rights leaders like Ben Chavis of Oxford and Golden Frinks — both of whom had worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. — descended on Warren County to offer aid to activists like Floyd McKissick Sr., Soul City's architect, in the resistance.

Print and broadcast journalists, too, arrived in large numbers, including photographer Jenny Labalme, a Duke University student by way of New York City.

Here was a rural, predominately Black area of Warren County with little to no political clout essentially being singled out, or "picked on," as "Little Bill" Dennis remembers viewing the situation.

"That's made to order for a newspaper," Dennis said. "Sticking up for the little guys."

The PCB protests have since been credited for birthing the environmental justice movement, a concept photojournalists on the front lines like Stilley and Labalme couldn't have foreseen. Four decades later, their photos are still being collected and analyzed. Their work has been republished around the country, by outfits large and small, perhaps no finer illustration of the adage that classifies journalism as the first rough draft of history.

Getting the job done

The Dispatch and other outlets had reported earlier in the month that Sept. 15 was the target date for removal of soil containing chemical PCBs — polychlorinated biphenyls — that had been discarded in 1978 and sprayed along 240-plus miles of roadway shoulders spanning 14 counties. Forty thousand cubic yards of the contaminated soil was to be dumped in the Warren County landfill over the course of several weeks.

" 'Yeah, you're gonna need to go over and take pictures,' " Stilley recalls Dennis saying. " 'It's gonna be a big deal.' You know, go over there and start covering these protests. Because these people did not want that landfill in their county."

Stilley, a Greensboro native, had been out of Randolph Community College's photography program for a year and change, and would continue to revisit the Afton community to cover the protests through the remainder of the month.

For Stilley, who was around the age of 23, the scenes with scores of state troopers in full riot gear along with men, women and children of varying ethnicities being literally carried out of the roadway as they were arrested was nothing less than "surreal." He had never seen so many law enforcement members gathered in one place or likely as many protest signs, like the "Dump Hunt in the dump" ones, a message for then-Gov. Jim Hunt.

Stilley ventured to Afton armed with at least a pair of Olympus cameras, both fitted with different-sized lenses, a must for a photojournalist covering news on the fly, with little time to be spared for swapping out lenses.

With limited film to spare, he had no choice but be selective in shooting. In those pre-digital days, a photographer couldn't have been assured they got the frame they were aiming for, with the proper focus and exposure, until the film was developed later in a dark room, then printed.

"You didn't raise the camera and just shoot everything you saw," Stilley said, "which made you more selective and hopefully, it made you more creative."

Dennis hasn't viewed Stilley's PCB shots in years, but still quickly recalls mentally the images of protesters being carried off, one by one, feet off the ground, by the troopers.

Though the engagement is widely remembered as non-violent, it conjured past images of the sort of civil disobedience that had been well-documented around the South in the 1960s during the civil rights movement.

"Well, it was just sort of attracting so much attention and they started resisting arrest," Dennis said. "That doesn't happen every day and some pretty prominent people were getting arrested. So it was pretty obvious that this was not a run of the mill story. And [the Associated Press] was asking for help with it. And I think maybe sometimes the News and Observer would call and ask for pictures and things like that, but they probably covered it to a large degree themselves. So it was probably one of the bigger stories we had during my newspaper career."

Who held exactly which role in the Dispatch office at 304 S. Chestnut St. at the time is somewhat blurry now, though the consensus is John Rose was serving as city editor then. Former Dispatch publisher James Edwards remembers not being involved as an editor at that point of his career, which started with him reporting on Granville County and later Vance.

At a small paper, Dennis said, everybody pitches in.

Betsi Simmons, in the early stages of what would become a long career in journalism, was the go-to reporter on the protests while Terri Hedrick also logged PCB bylines.

"We were lucky to have pretty good staffing in numbers and quality as well at that time particularly," Dennis said. "Some really good people in the newsroom, so it wasn't too much trouble to get the job done, thank goodness."

'Mesmerized'

Jenny Labalme represents what some involved with the protests might consider an "outsider," although the Manhattan native and self-described "non-stereotypical New Yorker" entrenched herself in the community as the period went on.

As a young white woman from a prestigious university, with a northern accent, Labalme sought to earn the community's trust, paying visits to Warren County as often as she could, when she didn't have a senior semester class to attend.

Labalme's initial trip to Afton originated when she agreed to help a friend photograph for the VOICES student publication.

Labalme had been taking a documentary photography class and arrived to Warren County with a single Pentax camera in hand and a generic telephoto lens.

"I think for me it was a little intimidating," Labalme said, "because I just had one tiny camera and all the journalists from bigger papers, and I wasn't working for a newspaper, had multiple cameras and way longer lenses, and had more experience."

Labalme never had a car on campus at Duke and hadn't experienced a place like Warren County before her first day covering the protests on Sept. 19.

She was "mesmerized" by what transpired.

"Something really just struck me in my soul," Labalme said, "and I said I have to come back up here again and photograph this protest in the community."

So even after her documentary class finished, Labalme kept coming back, for months after the protests ended, producing around 600 photos.

Her focus was the immediate community that was being impacted and in turn, many of her photos were of women, children and the ordinary folks who came out to protest. For the most part, she was warmly welcomed and still keeps in touch with locals like Dollie Burwell, who protested as a young mother and grew to play an integral role over the years in keeping alive the story of what happened in Warren County.

Labalme went on to spend almost two decades as a photojournalist and journalist for The N.C. Independent (now INDY Week), the Mexico Journal in Mexico City, The Anniston Star in Alabama, and The Indianapolis Star.

"When I look back at my journalism career," Labalme said, "I've always been more interested in covering small, rural communities than I have big cities. I've interviewed politicians and I've covered state government, but I really like talking to the person on the street — the ordinary person and allowing their voice to be heard."

Impact

Tons of stories came and went for Labalme, Dennis and Stilley as journalists, but the PCB protests seem to have unique staying power.

Labalme wonders if some of the photography from that time — not just hers but across the board — helped cement the protests' place in history.

The written word could and maybe should be thought of as essential in retellings of history, but documentary through visual imagery, at its finest, can create more indelible impressions.

UNC Chapel Hill's Wilson Library will host an official opening event Thursday, Sept. 15 at 1 p.m. for its "We Birthed the Movement: The Warren County PCB Landfill Protests, 1978-1982" collection that features a gallery of 63 photos from the protests and other corresponding documents and printed materials.

On Saturday morning, Coley Springs Missionary Baptist Church will host a 40th anniversary commemoration ceremony and march to the landfill site. Some will relive the history of the PCB protests while younger generations will use the work of journalists and documentarians as frames of reference.

Before Labalme departed North Carolina for a new journalism job, she published a 28-page booklet called "A Road to Walk," which functioned as a photo essay of her PCB protest experience. She wanted to leave some kind of historical record.

"I felt that what everyone did in Warren County," Labalme said, "needed to be remembered."