Elon Musk’s AI Empire Accused of Polluting Black Communities

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

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Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

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Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

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April 22, 2026

Willy Blackmore, Word in Black

In a lawsuit filed last week, the NAACP says Elon Musk’s xAI is running unpermitted gas turbines to run a massive data center near Memphis. Credit: Washington Post/Getty Images

The NAACP sued Musk’s company, xAI, last week, alleging it is operating dozens of unpermitted, gas-powered turbines to supply electricity to Colossus 2 — a new, supersized artificial intelligence data center near Memphis, a majority-Black city. The suit contends the turbines will spew hundreds of tons of pollution into the air over a residential area, worsening smog and exposing people to cancer-causing chemicals.

Abre’ Conner, NAACP’s director of environmental and climate justice, said in a statement that Musk’s company is “following a shameful, familiar pattern: asking Black and frontline communities to bear the toxic brunt of ‘innovation.’” Two influential nonprofits — the Southern Environmental Law Center and Earth Justice — are assisting the civil rights organization in the lawsuit.

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