The Myth of Silent Spring

Rethinking the Origins of American Environmentalism

Bibliographic Data

ID4155065
AuthorsAmy M Hay (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Brownsville, Texas, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume105
Issue4
Pages984-985
Publication date2019-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jahist/jaz022
OpenAlexW2917984365
LanguageEN
Citations received5

It may seem easy to dismiss Chad Montrie's The Myth of Silent Spring as an internecine fight among environmental historians. Montrie provides substantial evidence of the ways the genesis of the American environmental movement has been reduced to the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962). Crediting Carson and Silent Spring as the origins of the movement "substitutes a simple yet appealing mythology for a more complicated account of what actually happened" (p. 9). This narrow focus has distorted the who, when, and why, and Montrie offers several "non-exhaustive" examples to correct this skewed origin narrative. Arranged chronologically and topically, the first three chapters examine case studies that expand our understanding of the American environmental movement chronologically, geographically, and demographically. Chapter 1 begins with a discussion of Lowell factory girls and their appreciation for nature. It then examines conflicts over water rights between farmers and new industrialists in early nineteenth-century New England. Farmers' successes in challenging industrial waterworks became less common as legislatures and courts increasingly supported manufacturers. The chapter works well as an examination of the elites and the ways working-class environmentalism disappeared from accounts of the period. Chapter 2, with an examination of the sanitation efforts of the Progressive Era, addresses how Silent Spring mythology privileges suburban, well-to-do Americans versus urban dwellers. The emphasis on the natural environment versus the built environment obscures the significant environmental activism embodied in urban health campaigns, especially among women. The chapter ends in the 1950s and 1960s looking at the participation of working-class men in environmental recreational activities. Chapter 3 examines the efforts of Cleveland mayor Carl Stokes (1968–1971) to clean up urban spaces. Lead-abatement campaigns led by African American communities contribute to the revised narrative Montrie offers. Other neglected environmental conflicts include fights for beach access and efforts against holding corporations responsible for pollution. These latter conflicts involve the Love Canal chemical disaster and the creation of PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl) toxic waste sites in heavily African American parts of North Carolina, and activists' fights to address hazardous chemicals. The conclusion continues to examine the environmental activities of unions and their members working in Appalachia strip-mining and in oil and chemical industries. Montrie notes important victories in the establishment of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (1971) and the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety (1970

Art · Environmental ethics · Environmental movement · Environmentalism · Literature · Mythology · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sanitation · Sociology · American Environmental and Regional History · Classics · Engineering · History · Law

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