"Environmental justice" can be understood as a conceptual construction or interpretive "frame" fashioned simultaneously from the bottom up (local grass-roots groups discovering a pattern to their grievances) and from the top down (national organizations conveying the term to local groups). A social constructionist perspective is particularly useful for understanding the emergence of an environmental justice frame and its mobilizing power in the environmental movement. Carver Terrance, an African-American community that consists mostly of homeowners, recently organized to win a Federal buyout and relocation after being declared a Superfund site in 1984. Using case study evidence, this paper argues that the residents' ability to mobilize for social change was linked to their adoption of an "environmental justice" frame. The intent of the conceptual discussion of environmental justice and the case study is to clarify the meaning of a term used with increasing frequency and some ambiguity in both popular and academic discourses. This paper documents the process by which the environmental justice frame is constructed in an interplay between the local community and national levels of the antitoxics movement. 71 references