About the Mickey Leland Center

The Mickey Leland Center at Texas Southern University (TSU)

The Mickey Leland Center at Texas Southern University (TSU) serves as a university-community hub, dedicated to environmental justice, health equity, and sustainability through education, research, and community engagement. Focused on at-risk communities, the center combines academic expertise with grassroots knowledge to drive innovative and responsive solutions.

Through interdisciplinary research in public health, urban planning, law, and environmental science, the center tackles systemic inequities while providing technical support to impacted communities, connecting them with legal, scientific, and policy resources.

The Center’s four pillars are:

1. Education and Training

2. Research and Policy Analysis

3. Community Engagement and Technical Support

4. Information Clearinghouse

As an HBCU-based center, the Mickey Leland Center has a strong legacy of service to people of color and low-income communities. Though not an organizing body, the Center supports community-based organizations (CBOs) with research and resources when invited.

Environmental justice has evolved into a national movement, bridging race, class, and geography. Legal and civil rights groups now collaborate on environmental cases, and universities offer dedicated EJ programs. Yet, disparities persist—over half of those living near hazardous waste sites are people of color.

The center helped lead the 2007 Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty study, reaffirming race as a primary predictor of hazardous waste siting. Environmental justice remains as urgent today as it was decades ago.

Climate change now compounds environmental injustice, disproportionately affecting vulnerable communities through pollution, extreme weather, and health crises. The Center remains committed to amplifying marginalized voices and fostering solutions rooted in equity and justice locally, nationally, and globally.