Essence Festival 2024: Celebrating Black Women in Environmental Justice

Young, Gifted & Green (formerly Black Millennials 4 Flint) is a national grassroots, environmental justice and civil rights organization with the purpose of bringing like-minded organizations together to collectively take action and advocate against the crisis of lead exposure and environmental injustice in disadvantaged communities. Young, Gifted & Green is the first African American and Latinx founded environmental justice and civil rights organization in US history founded by HBCU graduates. Their roots began as a programming initiative within Thursday Network—Greater Washington Urban League with their first project supporting Flint, Michigan during the Flint Water Crisis. As a collective group of Black millennials from across the country, they grew into an official movement on February 10, 2016 and realized quickly that the Flint Water Crisis was a wake up call for every single city in the U.S. regarding lead exposure not just in water, but soil, air, and consumer products. We are moved by Dr. Martin Luther King's sentiment that "a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."