"“Big Government, Big Minority, and Big Oil:” The NAACP and the Energy Crisis in 1970s Black America "

In January 1978, the NAACP emerged as one of the most prominent critics of President Jimmy Carter’s National Energy Plan, in which he called for the nation to reduce its dependency on oil through a renewed focus on conservation in all segments of the nation’s economy. They condemned the White House’s “undue emphasis on conservation” and ecological protection. The chairman of the association’s new energy committee, James Stewart, a former assistant to the vice president of the Oklahoma Gas Company, claimed the NAACP was not pro-big oil or anti-environment but rather “was pro-jobs and opportunities for black people for whom it's time to get a piece of the pie.” He explained, “And the only way we're going to get it is if we stimulate industrial growth and exploration and by bringing more energy into the United States.”
This paper will examine this moment of conflict between the NAACP and the Democratic president to think through how black organizations framed and responded to the 1970s energy crisis. While many scholars have examined the political and economic dynamics of the energy crisis, black Americans are largely absent from narratives. The paper will use this moment as a window through which to explore how the black organizations framed the energy crisis as a racial and economic justice issue with implications for black employment and black freedom to engage equitably in the consumers’ republic. It will ultimately aim to understand how the NAACP’s prioritization of economic growth helped them foster new funding relationships with oil and national gas companies while, at times, placing them at odds with the Carter administration and the burgeoning environmental justice movement.