Ecology

Narrated by Danny Glover, Petty's Island: A Sacred Part of America’s Story reveals the legacy of an island with a unique place in the historic encounter between Africans, Europeans and Native Americans in the Philadelphia region. Situated in the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Camden, Petty’s Island was Lenni-Lenape land before colonial European slave traders utilized it as a depot for enslaved Africans in the 1600s. The 292 acre island is now a defunct oil terminal owned by the Citco Corporation.

South Camden may not normally evoke images of verdant foliage and bountiful vegetable gardens. With an assortment of industries, an incinerator, a sewage treatment plant, and toxic areas including two federal Superfund sites, the neighborhood is severely affected by pollution. Respiratory and other health ailments are widespread, and neighborhood groups have decried the environmental racism that has rendered their very air a dire health hazard.

Historic Cliveden Park sits in the Mt. Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia, a few blocks from the site of the Battle of Germantown during the Revolutionary War. And in the park sits an enormous oak tree estimated at over two hundred years old that neighbors call their "tree of life." Across generations, the park has been a place where residents of East Mt. Airy, through their care and upkeep of this green space, show their love for their community and each other.

Queen Village Community Garden is one of Philadelphia’s oldest community gardens. Located on Christian Street in South Philadelphia since 1976, the garden is a vital green space set aside for the enjoyment of the ethnically diverse neighborhood. Since the garden's beginning, diversity among the membership has been consciously encouraged, and the garden quickly became a bridge between whites and blacks in the community. "Our goal was to bring together all the parts of the neighborhood," says Libby J. Goldstein, one of the garden's founders.