Soon after it opened in 1967, the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum (ACM) developed a mouse problem.
Staffers noticed that young visitors were terrified of the tiny rodents in the museum’s hands-on exhibition, even depositing them in the snake’s cage. Parts of DC were experiencing a rat infestation and after some coaxing, “the children told the staff what they were facing at home,” says research coordinator Katrina Lashley, CAS/MA ’12. “They were traumatized.”
Instead of exterminating the problem, the museum leaned into it, launching The Rat: Man’s Invited Affliction in 1969. The exhibition, which explored the historical, scientific, and ecological significance of the vermin, “was controversial and groundbreaking,” Lashley says. “But the museum knew it had to explore the issues impacting our community. We couldn’t ignore it.”
The Rat changed the trajectory of the museum. It solidified ACM’s commitment to environmental justice and underscored its mission: to reflect the everyday lives and struggles of Washingtonians living east of the Anacostia River and to engage them in building healthier, more equitable communities.
“Many of those in the environmental justice movement define the environment as a place where we live, work, play, pray, and learn. It is everything, it is everywhere,” Lashley says. “Once you expand the definition, it allows for a different understanding of what an environmentalist is and how environmentalism is practiced.”
The museum’s changemaking work continues more than a half-century later with the launch on Earth Day of the Center for Environmental Justice.
Lashley built the framework for the center based on her work since 2012 with Urban Waterways, ACM’s foundational research and educational initiative that sought to understand DC’s ever-evolving relationship with the Anacostia River, which she says serves as both a physical and psychological barrier. The center features a humanities-led focus that places traditional scientific research and data in the context of daily life. It will host symposiums and other programming, fellowships, and an Environmental Justice Academy aimed at young women and nonbinary people of color living in communities near the Anacostia watershed.
The academy builds on the tradition of women of color in Wards 7 and 8 who championed environmental causes—long before they or it were termed as such.
“Women have always been the caretakers, the stewards of their communities. They are the ones who realized, ‘OK, something’s up because all of our kids have asthma,’ and gathered around the kitchen table to address the issue,” Lashley says.
And that activism has taken many forms. “Sometimes they’re at the front, giving the speech—but they could also be setting up chairs, writing speeches, or sitting across the table from the corporate lawyers. They could be embedded in a Big Green, leading a cleanup, or serving as a faith leader. When you’re fighting for the health of an entire planet, there is room for everyone.”
The museum celebrates the matriarchs of the movement in a new exhibition, To Live and Breathe: Women and Environmental Justice in Washington, DC, which runs through January 7. It features art, photographs, and the personal belongings of ordinary women who’ve taken on extraordinary fights for clean air, water, and land.
“By learning why women have become the leaders in the environmental justice movement, which pathways they have taken to get there, and how their efforts benefit not just their local communities but the earth, we hope our visitors will come away feeling truly inspired,” says Rachel Seidman, exhibition curator.
Lashley says she’s proud of the museum’s continued commitment to “respecting the history of the everyday.”
“If museums are strictly quiet, white marble kinds of institutions that don’t engage the community, they’re missing out on the legacies and histories of the very people they should be serving.”