Hilton Kelley’s Fight for Gulf Justice
Goldman Prize Winner fights for hometown with Bravery and Poetry
In another edited transcript from our Rising Tide Ocean Podcast – this on aired in 2022 - we introduce you to a leader of Port Arthur Texas’s multi-year environmental justice struggle in the 21st century.
RT - Welcome to the 55th episode of Rising Tide, the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host, David Helvarg, and my co-host is Vicki Nichols-Goldstein of the Inland Ocean Coalition. And today we're speaking with Hilton Kelly, Executive Director and Founder of CETA, the Community Empowerment and Development Association of Port Arthur, Texas, one of the most polluted coastal towns in America. A former actor and Navy veteran, Hilton returned home to Port Arthur to organize for justice for his community and others in a part of the Gulf Coast known as Cancer Alley… So, Hilton, let's start in the past. You were born and raised in Port Arthur. Can you tell us something about the town's history and growing up there.
HK - First of all, thank you all for having me. I really appreciate being on the show and having a chance to share my story. Yes, I was born in Port Arthur, Texas in 1960, August the 18th. I was born in a government housing project called Carver Terrace. Carver Terrace was an apartment complex that was designed to help moderate to low-income people get on their feet. When I was born, my mother was 17 years old, she had just turned 17, and she was a very young mom and she stayed with her grandmother because she lost her parents at a very young age. Times were tough. I was born in the back bedroom by a midwife.
But growing up in Port Arthur, Texas, you know, we had a very, very well-rounded community where neighbor looked after neighbor. And we had a pretty good childhood growing up there. But of course, Jim Crow was alive and well in the 1960s. And on the other side of the railroad tracks there was a divide between black and white residents. And our divide was the historic railroad track in the south. I mean we had grocery stores on that side of town, we had movie theaters, we had a YMCA, we had the masons, social and civic groups that really took care of the kids. I was even in the Boy Scouts. I became an Eagle Scout. I learned to swim on the west side of Fort Arthur.
And so, we really didn't have to go on the other side of the tracks for anything really from a child's perspective. Periodically we would go downtown and that's when different ethnicities could mix and whatnot, but then there was a certain time frame where you had to be back in your community. That's how controlled it was and marginalized. But nonetheless, we had a pretty good time on the West side. I graduated from Lincoln High School in 1978. Lincoln High School was in the West side community as well. While I was in high school, I fell in love with theater, I fell in love with drama, and I finally got into the theater class. And my drama teacher encouraged me to, he said, Hilton, you really have a gift and I would encourage you, if you ever make it to California, you really want to pursue a career in acting.
I joined the Navy when I was 19 years old and I had three options. I had the option to be stationed in New Orleans or the Great Lakes up in Illinois or Alameda, Naval Air Station in Alameda, California. Bam! That was my ticket. So, when I got out of the service in 1984, I decided to start a business and it was called Kelly's Home Maintenance and Repair Service. I did basic electrical work and it did fairly well for me.
But in 1988 when a bunch of trailers rolled into this neighborhood where I was living. And I was just wondering what was going on. There were so many of them. And then these cars were pulling out. And then I seen a couple of actors including this guy named Leon who played in the Five Heartbeats. He was a star on this show called Midnight Caller. Now Midnight Caller was filmed in San Francisco on Army Street where Army and Mission intersect. I just went up to them and asked themhow can I get involved? And I'll never forget, I ran into a young lady named Cecily, Cecily Jordan and she said well, we don't need any more people right now but we have some ‘extras’ work if you'd like to do that. I was like I didn't even know what it was. I said sure I'll do it.
Michael T. Williamson, the gentleman who played Bubba in Forrest Gump, became a good friend of mine. I became his personal stand-in on the show Midnight Caller. And there were dozens of other shows. I worked on Mrs. Doubtfire with Robin Williams. Ted Danson, ‘Made in America’ I believe it was. I'm meeting all these stars and having a great time. The last show I worked on was ‘Nash Bridges’ with Don Johnson and Cheech Marin. And that particular set was set up at Fisherman's Wharf on the Clipper ship where they had this special unit SIU, Special Investigative Unit, and I served as a permanent stand-in and background artist on that. And met all kinds of guys. It was great. We filmed all over San Francisco. I decided that I wanted to take a sabbatical from the show and go home just to visit.
And so this was like February 2000. I decided that I wanted to go back to Port Arthur just to visit and relax for a while and see my relatives and friends. So I came back here to Port Arthur. It was the season for Mardi Gras and I was having a great time, seeing a lot of relatives and friends and whatnot. And after the Mardi Gras was over, I kind o took a look around downtown Port Arthur. I noticed that the buildings, a lot of the buildings were dilapidated, falling apart. I noticed that a lot of businesses that were there when I was growing up had shut down. Many of our prominent citizens of the community had moved to the other side of the track, which is a good thing. I mean, everyone should be able to move and go wherever they want, but now that they have the fair housing laws in practice, now African-Americans were able to move wherever they want, so it kind of depleted our community of many of our business people, actually. So, I'm not saying that segregation was a good thing, but when it came to keeping a whole vital community together, it really sort of busted it up. So anyway, I noticed that the buildings were gone, businesses were gone. And when I got back to Oakland, California I kept thinking about my hometown and how someone needed to do something to refurbish the businesses that were there. And I also noticed while I was home that the air still had this foul odor, like sulfur and various types of chemicals that I grew up with. You know, nothing had really changed when it came to the atmosphere and the environment. So now I just started writing down some ideas of what I saw needed to be done in the city of Port Arthur to help refurbish it and bring it back to its former glory. It was three months later that I moved back on a mission.
We started a little community center. My brother ended up coming back about a year after I came back.. And so we opened up a karate school and I got a building that was donated to me. I mean, it was just amazing how people rallied around me. I was 39 years old when I came back. And actually, the way people really found out about what I came home to do was there was a huge Juneteenth celebration out on a park called Booker T Elementary School Park. And I was invited to come up on stage. They said, well, Mr. Kelly, we understand you do poetry. And I said, yeah. And they said, well, why don't you do something for us? And so I did a poetry piece and it's called My True History. And if you guys would like to hear it, I can share it with you.
RT - Please.
HK - OK, so I did a poem called ‘My True History’ to help inspire.
Whatever happened to my true history?
We were more than slaves running to be free. We were kings and queens on the other side of the sea. The first coin was cemented in the African land. The first sail was set by black man's hands. Stripped from our land and sold into poverty, We did what we could to hold on to our dignity. We worked the land, cleaned and built for free, chained and shackled. Some could not sleep, but for those that could, Harriet Tubman set them free. We learned the language and lost our own, but to our heritage and culture, we still hold on. You see, Louis H. Latimer, now he was alright. Without this man, Thomas Edison had a fight. He helped put the carbon filament into the light. Even though he was not born free, this man had vision that helped us to see. Many ideas and inventions have been stolen from thee, but if we still had them now, how far along would we be? Some well-to-do say everyone is equal now. Some well-to-do say everyone is free. Some well-to-do haven't taken the time to look at things statistically and economically. You see, Juneteenth started in the Texas land because we were the last to know that slavery was over and we didn't have to pick cotton for freedom. But they held on to the knowledge just a little bit longer while they figured out the economics of this godforsaken Yankee blunder. So, the chains came off our wrists and necks. We didn't even get a thank you or a back paycheck. Whatever happened to my true history?
RT - Wow. And I can see where the community would rally behind you after hearing that.
HK - That's exactly what happened. Before I knew it was like kids out there, elderly folks out there having a great time and everybody just stopped and started gathering around the front of the stage and they just started clapping. And next thing you know, when I got off the stage, this gentleman by the name of Jack Chapman, he's a pastor, he said, Hilton, he said, man, I love that poem and what you're talking about doing is what we need more young people to do…there's some folks that's having a meeting right now. If you got a minute, I would love for you to meet them. I was like, look, I'm on a mission. I'm ready to meet any and everybody that I need to meet to help get this going.
And that's when I got started, maybe about a year later, with really putting some bite into my environmental justice fight. Once they introduced me to the bucket. I learned how to take these gas samples because the bucket was basically a five-gallon bucket and it had a seal on it to where you tighten it down. And you have two valves on top. One is an intake valve and one is an outflow valve … you could close that valve and now you have captured the ambient air that was around you. And we would send this air to a lab and we found that the ambient air that we were surrounded by that particular day was filled with benzene, sulfur dioxide, 1,3-butadiene, ethylene oxide, all type of toxins that we had asked the lab to look for. And we used an independent lab outside the state of Texas. And we found that we were really being impacted or bombarded with toxic chemicals. And that just infuriated me.
And so I wanted to do something, I really got the fire lit under me once we had the evidence that this was happening. So, we held a press conference. Initially we didn't have a lot of media attention, but slowly we got their attention and now they want to know anytime we take an air sample, what is in the air. I identified the fact that this was a real threat and we identified that the chemicals we were being subjected to were known carcinogens and respiratory deterrents. Man, I really wanted to make a difference then because I knew kids that were suffering from asthma. I knew people that had died from cancer. Many people in the city of Port Arthur just thought it was a way of life. But no, we were being poisoned.
And the Environmental Protection Agency was doing very little to help protect us. The state regulatory agency, which is TCEQ, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, was doing very little to stop it. And so, the EPA back then, in 2000, was sitting on their hands. And then after Bush it was President Barack Obama, then after that it was Trump. So, man it was insane for how long these industries were just being allowed to dump into the air knowing they were breaking the law.
Denny Larson came to me and said, Hilton, we need somebody to go to Capitol Hill and speak before the U.S. Senate. I accepted the challenge and Denny Larson and Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) and whatnot, they flew me to Washington, D.C. on Capitol Hill. They had everything set up. I was picked up at the airport, brought to the hotel. Spoke before the U.S. Senate. And next thing I know I'm on the front page of the Houston Chronicle, the New York Times, Washington Post, everybody wants to call and talk about the experience and the evidence about Port Arthur. I was like, wow, this is insane.
But while sitting there before the U.S. Senate, I mean, I was just, I just couldn't believe it. And I brought my daughter with me. She was in the room, in the Senate room when I got to, when I was sitting at the front table to speak before there or testify as to what was happening in the city of Port Arthur and other cities like Port Arthur around this country.
We were fighting to stop, I think it was 40,000 tons of PCBs Polychlorinated biphenyl, nasty stuff from being shipped to Port Arthur from Mexico to be incinerated at the French-owned company called Veolia chemical incineration facility Veolia wanted to incinerate it here. Veolia is like one of the largest worldwide wide chemical incineration facilities around. And these guys boast that they do it better than anyone else. And then they just happened to locate here to add insult to injury as if we weren't getting enough pollution from the refineries and the chemical plants. Now we have a chemical incineration facility, Veolia petitioning for waste from all over the world to burn here in the city of Port Arthur. And I found that an insult to say the least. I mean, it's like you don't give a damn about the people of West Port Arthur, or Port Arthur period for that matter. So, we decided to fight Veolia, and it was a long fight, but ultimately, we stopped the shipment of PCBs from being brought to the city of Port Arthur. And a lot of the politicians were standing up against me. But anyway, we prevailed and we stopped the PCBs from being shipped here and that was one of our first victories.
RT - And you were also supposed to be the terminal for the XL pipeline, the pipeline that all the water protectors were fighting far to your north.
HK - Yeah, well the Keystone XL pipeline battle was another one. I've gone all the way to, I think it was Wyoming, where I stood in the snow protesting against the pipeline a bad deal, the idea it would be transporting all the way from Alberta, Canada into Port Arthur, Texas was a bad deal. Because this bitumen, this really thick, gooey, oily, tar material with the oil in it, it has to be processed and it's a dirty, dirty process because it has so much sediment in it and dirt and debris so it takes a lot of energy and water to help rinse this stuff and then it's just dumped into waterways. But the pipeline was going to go under aquifers, over aquifers, and as we know sometimes the earth shifts and pipes break, things happen. Not to mention it was also interfering with the migration of caribou across Canada. It was just a bad deal all the way around, but yet industry was going to do it. They were adamant about it.
And so, we fought tooth and nail to get the Keystone XL pipeline stopped. And this was like, what, maybe a four-year fight? Easy. under the Biden administration, it just got killed. So, it's not dead yet, though. But yeah, we were happy that we were able to stop it. It was a victory for us. It helped to save some of our forests. It helped to save some of our waterways, as we know, water is going to be the next big commodity that we're going to be warring over if we don't watch it.
RT - There's been flooding in Port Arthur and Lake Charles all along the coast. And we’ve talked about transitioning the Gulf. I mean, do you see any hope of getting off oil and gas and any jobs coming in for clean energy into Port Arthur?
HK - Well, you know, there's always hope. There's always hope. You can never lose hope. It takes a team to do this work, and I'm just that front guy, that guy that's on the front line. But when we talk about offshore drilling, the BP oil spill took place a few years ago, what it did to the waters in Florida, what it did to the Gulf. This has been happening for years. I remember back in 1968, ‘69, my mother took us to a beach here in the Port Arthur area called McFadden Beach and I remember one day I'm running having fun in the sand and all of a sudden I stepped into this soft patch of sand and my foot just sunk all the way down to all the way up to my knee and when I pulled my leg out of the sand, this gooey mess was all on my leg. My mother, it took her about four or five days to get all this tar off of my leg. Come to find out that all along that beach, it was littered with these huge tar balls. And it was a spill that had taken place, and yet nobody did anything about it. I mean, the beaches are still littered with tar that's been there for years.
And yet the BP oil spill, it really desecrated the lives of fishermen, oystermen, that make a living on those waterways. Their lives will never be the same again. And so, when I think about these kinds of things, this is why I fight. It's not just for the citizens that live on the (refinery) fence line, but it's also for the wildlife. It's also for people's way of life when it comes to living from the ocean. You know, the fish were contaminated. Oyster beds were destroyed. And so how do you pay our community back for that?
The indigenous people were impacted heavily. But yet, you know, our fight basically is about cleaner energy, safe energy, and a safe product. When you have industries that just bellow out toxic chemicals and toxic material and dump it into the water you're killing the life, the culture, the lifestyle of thousands of folks. And something has to change, and I'm very passionate about being a part of that change.