Focusing on changing land use in a Memphis suburb, this article examines the displacement of dairy farms by housing tracts during the twentieth century as well as the pollution of a local waterway by chemical production wastes. It also investigates the ways in which race shaped evolving residential patterns, determined exposure to environmental hazards, and influenced the activism that developed in response to these problems. This part of the history locates the origins of environmentalism at the grass roots and suggests an early date for the rise of organizing and protest that would later be called “environmental justice activism.”