The Spirit of Black Lake

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

Dados Bibliográficos

ID5836752
AutoresJosiah Rector (autor correspondente)
Ano2018
Volume1
Fascículo1
Páginas45-66
Data de publicação2018-03-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoModern American History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2397-1851 • E-ISSN: 2515-0456
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/mah.2017.18
OpenAlexW2792582349
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas9
Referências 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