Grover Glenn Hankins grew up in Houston. His parents were children of sharecroppers and just wanted to live a good life. They made sure their children received a good education. During his formative years, one of Hankin’s heroes was Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, foreshadowing his own career path.

As an adult, Hankins moved to Illinois and had accomplished the goals his parents had set for him – “get a good job and take care of your family”: Hankins was living comfortably with his wife and three children in an East Moline, Illinois suburb, about to be promoted to plant manager at work and enjoyed having his own TV show. Then destiny tapped him on the shoulder.

Decisions that would shape the rest of his life started to take form while Hankins was working on a community project to get an open-housing ordinance passed in Rock Island, Illinois. “A white attorney who was working on the case didn’t like how I handled myself and suggested I go to law school,” Hankins remembers. He decided to explore the idea of going to law school and was encouraged by the associate dean at Iowa State University to enroll. Hankins told him he would have to get all his bills paid off first.

He promptly took on a part-time job at Sears in addition to his full-time job, and he then went back to Iowa State. The associate dean suggested he enroll in the Council on Legal Education Opportunities (CLEO) program – an intense six-week program of law courses. All students who successfully complete the program are awarded scholarships to cover all college expenses.

“I finished among top-ranked students,” Hankins says. “I got a letter from Harvard and was accepted at every law school.” However, he wanted to attend a school within driving distance of his home in East Moline.

At the same time Hankins was applying to colleges, he was working with a group to create dialogue between white and black churches. He met the Reverend Willy of the United Christian Church. They went fishing together, and Willy encouraged Hankins to go to law school. The minister worked at John Deere Plow Works and arranged to fly with Hankins to the University of Illinois in Champlain to visit the school. The university offered more than Iowa State and Hankins enrolled there. He received his degree from the University of Illinois College of Law in 1972.

Hankins 20 year career includes serving in the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights and Criminal divisions, having a private practice, and working for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as general council.

In 1982 as a partner in North, Bryant and Hankins of Kansas City, Missouri, Hankins litigated one of the first environmental justice cases that involved a company trying to put a landfill on a Native and African American historic site on the banks of the Missouri River.

His academic career includes being honored under his childhood hero’s name as the Distinguished Visiting Professor at Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University (TSU). During his tenure at TSU, Hankins chose to focus on environmental law, and started the first and now nationally acclaimed Environmental Justice Clinic. The clinic has represented community and grassroots public interest groups. Challenges have included DDT incinerators, petrochemical tanks, refineries, smelters, landfills and large-scale hog pens. Hankins says in this work, there is a pattern in which environmental problems have become civil rights issues. Often, isolated communities feel they have been taken advantage of by agencies and industry due to their color, income and/or rural location.

Hankins lectures nationally on civil rights and environmental justice issues, and has published many articles. He currently is the managing partner of Hankins Law Firm in Houston.

The most critical issue facing the Houston area today is the exposure to toxins in the air and ground water for people living near refineries, according to Hankins. “The chemical industrial complex has impacted air, ground water, even drinking water, and people are pervasively affected,” Hankins says. “Laws in the State of Texas are such that they protect industry. People have a hard time getting compensated,” he adds.

Hankins says Texas is not an environmentally friendly state, and all citizens are paying for what these industries are doing. “People are going to have to rally around environmental and health issues and look past the issues of race, color and class,” he says.

“What I see is that the majority of people think companies are being put out of business by people who litigate, but this is not the case,” Hankins declares. “These companies are making money hand over fist and on the backs of poor people who aren’t being paid much at all.”

On the positive side for Houston, Hankins says, “Mayor White is the most environmentally aware mayor I’ve seen. I wish I could help him.”

In his lifetime, Hankins hopes to see the United States wake up and understand that it is creating a very serious problem when it comes to greenhouse gases and sign the Kyoto Protocol Agreement. “I’m concerned about what is going to happen to my grandchildren and children,” he says. “We don’t have that vision, and we need to get it.”

Hankins lives with his wife Lorna in Bay Oaks in Clearlake. He has three step children and four children from a previous marriage, and seven grandchildren.