They Halted A Pipeline; Now Can They Get Clean Drinking Water?
In 2019, energy companies announced a plan to route a major crude oil pipeline through Boxtown and other mostly Black communities in southwest Memphis. The location had been chosen, a company representative stated then, because it was the “point of least resistance.”
But residents came together, proving the company wrong. In 2021, a powerful grassroots movement shut down the pipeline, which would have been built through a historic neighborhood founded by emancipated people and atop the world-famous Memphis Sand Aquifer.
Now, two years later, the same activists are working to get reliable, safe drinking water for their communities.