July/August 2006

Obituary

Damu Smith

Damu Amir Imara Smith, 54, died on May 5, 2006, following a year-long battle with colon cancer. Renowned as a founder of the environmental justice movement and a leader in numerous other activist causes, his death was termed “a monumental loss” by John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace.

Born as LeRoy Wesley Smith in 1952 in St. Louis, Missouri, he changed his name during college at St. John’s University in Minnesota. In Swahili, Damu means blood, Smith said: “The blood that I am willing to shed for the liberation of my people.” Amir, he said, means leadership: “The leadership I must provide in the service of my people,” and Imara means strength: “The strength and stamina I have to maintain in the struggle.”

His activism over three decades included fighting against apartheid as executive director of the Washington Office on Africa and co-founder of Artists for a Free South Africa; exposing gun violence and police brutality through the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, the National Wilmington 10 Defense Committee, and the National Black Independent Political Party; and supporting peace and a nuclear freeze at the American Friends Service Committee and at Black Voices for Peace, a group he founded to mobilize the black community to protest U.S. military aggression in Iraq and elsewhere.

Smith inspired and coordinated environmental justice work for Greenpeace and at the Southern Organizing Committee for Economic and Social Justice, taking people on “toxic tours” of cancerous communities around the U.S. South. He helped grassroots organizations confront Shell Oil about its dumping practices and force a PVC plant out of Norco, Louisiana. And in 1999, in a move that changed the face of the environmental movement, Smith coordinated a conference that led to the formation of the National Black Environmental Justice Network (NBEJN), of which he became executive director.

Smith led a delegation of activists to Palestine in 2005, and while participating in a Palm Sunday peace march, he fainted and had a seizure. In a cruel twist of fate, the man who had drawn the world’s attention to “Cancer Alley” in the Mississippi/Louisiana corridor had been stricken with cancer.

Damu Smith leaves a 13-year-old daughter, Asha. For information on the Asha Moore Smith Trust Fund, visit  http://damusmith.org/.

©2006 Fellowship of Reconciliation