Hard asphalt and heavy metals: Urban environmentalism in postwar America

Hard asphalt and heavy metals: Urban environmentalism in postwar America

civil rights, environmentalism, social movements, urban crisis

After World War Two, American cities began to break down. Their housing and industrial infrastructure fell into disrepair, and efforts to improve cities, including urban renewal and highway construction projects, only exacerbated the existing problems, destroying neighborhoods and increasing pollution. All of these problems exposed city residents to a unique set of environmental problems. By the 1960s many of them responded to this environmental breakdown with a series of dynamic local social movements. For almost a decade, residents of scores of cities, especially in the East and Midwest, forced local leaders to ameliorate the impact of a variety of local environmental problems. This dissertation provides case studies of three of these local movements. In St. Louis, the rapid decline of the city's housing stock exposed poor, predominantly African American city children to toxic levels of lead paint. A group of dedicated residents and social workers raised awareness about the issue, and pushed the city to enact and enforce a lead ordinance. In Baltimore, a coalition of African Americans and blue collar whites formed the Movement Against Destruction to fight the construction of the local highway system and articulate an environmental critique of the highway planning and construction process. In Chicago, the Citizen's Action Program (CAP) fought the local Democratic machine for five years over a variety of issues, including air pollution and highway construction. CAP's core constituency were ethnic, blue collar homeowners from the city's outlying neighborhoods who used pollution issues as an entry point into local political activism. Together, these studies are part of the hidden history of postwar environmental activism. Popular and academic research focuses on wilderness areas and national parks, and activism by a few national elites or middle class suburban groups. But by focusing on local issues and the malapportionment of environmental hazards and amenities, urban activism represents one of the major strains of the postwar environmental movement. It provided key connections to other social movements, particularly the African American Freedom Struggle, and was a precursor to the contemporary environmental justice movement.

Gioielli, Robert R.

University of Cincinnati

2008

Stradling, David. Advisor

en

Dissertation

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1212161222

http://lallier.msh-vdl.fr/theses/items/show/1084

http://lallier.msh-vdl.fr/theses/archive/files/3b7443d3953b4ab8a7dcfcbefcd64a83.jpg