In the 1950s, Faye Bush helped organize the Newtown Florist Club, a group of African American housewives in a neighborhood of Gainesville who collected money to provide funeral wreaths for bereaved families in their community. As time passed, an increasing number of collections were required and members of the club, bearing roses, found themselves attending more and more funerals. An unusually high number of people in their neighborhood seemed to be dying, and from distinctly similar illnesses. Faye, and other members of the club, began to suspect that these deaths were related to the proximity of various factories in the town.

Today, Faye Bush is executive director of the Newtown Florist Club, an organization that has evolved from a social service club to become one of the leading environmental justice advocacy groups in the country. Faye, who suffers from lupus herself, frequently does battle with the corporations whose factories pollute the air that she and other Newtown residents are forced to breathe – inspiring other environmental activists to similar actions in their own towns. She believes that her illness, as well as the other respiratory disorders that are regularly diagnosed in the community, can be traced to the dust particles and other material in the air that are emitted from the industrial facilities that surround their homes – one of them even adjacent to a children’s playground. "The residents were here first," Faye has said. "It wasn’t that we chose to live next to these facilities."

This predominately African American, low income section of Gainesville is burdened with a dog food processing mill, a large scrap metal facility, and factories that produce chicken feed, hairspray, and chemically treated wood. "Park your car for a few hours," one journalist notes, "[and] you may return to find pale yellow grain dust covering it like a shroud." The north side of town, however, with its brick mansions set in leafy residential neighborhoods, is curiously free of any polluting industrial presence, and Faye believes that part of her difficulty in getting the attention of government agencies lies in the fact that this part of Gainesville is easily dismissed. Newtown is the "lower level of the town, not as important," a member of the club's youth group observed, acknowledging an invidious perception. "But anyplace people live is important."

Including young people in this environmental movement has long been important to Faye Bush, and for the last seven years the Newtown Florist Club has also sponsored a Summer Leadership Program that teaches young girls about conflict resolution, etiquette, environmental justice, and community service. But perhaps the most important lesson she can teach them is the difference that one person – regardless of whatever social, economic, or cultural background they come from – can make on an entire community. From merely collecting money for funeral wreaths, Faye has refocused the mission of the Newtown Florist Club to determining the reason why so many of her neighbors are getting sick and taking action to stop it. By pressuring government agencies, speaking to media outlets, and inviting other environmental groups to Newtown, Faye Bush has refused to back down and let her community be victimized.

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