The Spirit of Black Lake

Full Employment, Civil Rights, and the Forgotten Early History of Environmental Justice

Datos Bibliográficos

ID5836752
AutoresJosiah Rector (autor de correspondencia)
Año2018
Volumen1
Número1
Páginas45-66
Fecha de publicación2018-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaModern American History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2397-1851 • E-ISSN: 2515-0456
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/mah.2017.18
OpenAlexW2792582349
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas9
Referencias citadas31

During the 1970s, activists first popularized the concept of "environmental justice" in the context of growing environmental degradation, racialized urban poverty, and working-class fears of plant closure. To address these problems, leaders in the United Auto Workers and other unions formed coalitions with civil rights and environmental groups, and advocated federal policies that would reduce both pollution and unemployment. This article argues that the defeat of these efforts, and the political marginalization of full employment and other social-democratic goals in the 1980s, resulted in a narrower conception of environmental justice among many scholars and activists. Revisiting this forgotten history calls into question common claims about environmentalism in recent scholarship on the 1970s, and suggests the need to revise conventional narratives of the emergence of the environmental justice movement

Civil society · Environmental justice · Environmental movement · Environmentalism · American Environmental and Regional History · Environmental Justice and Health Disparities