University of Cincinnati

UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Date:___________________ I, _________________________________________________________, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of: in: It is entitled: This work and its defense approved by: Chair: _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ Hard Asphalt and Heavy Metals: Urban Environmentalism in Postwar America A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History of the College of Arts and Sciences 2008 By Robert R. Gioielli M.A., University of Cincinnati, 2004 B.A., University of South Carolina, 1999 Committee Chair: Professor David Stradling Abstract Hard Asphalt and Heavy Metals: Urban Environmentalism in Postwar America By Robert R. Gioielli 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 iii city’s out 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. iv Acknowledgements Ideally, advanced graduate study is a journey of personal intellectual growth done in the company of a supportive community of scholars. This was my experience at the University of Cincinnati. David Stradling was the model of a graduate advisor. In additional to providing cogent critiques and ideas for numerous drafts, he encouraged my relatively unorthodox views on environmental activism, and helped focus my often expansive prose. Nikki Taylor came relatively late to my graduate career, but helped me see urban and environmental history from a new perspective. Andrew Hurley, from the University of Missouri St. Louis, provided key advice at every stage of the project, and has challenged me to think critically but also broadly. Other faculty members from the Department of History have served as an exemplary model of not only intellectual engagement but also committed professionalism, both in and outside of the classroom. Thanks especially to John Alexander, Wendy Kline, Tracy Teslow, Chris Phillips, Wayne Durrill, Barbara Ramusack, Martin Francis, Maura O’Connor and Isaac Campos. Fellow graduate students, especially Dan Glenn, Aaron Cowan, Steve Rockenbach, Bill Bergman, Krista Sigler and David Merkowitz, helped create a stimulating, challenging and appropriately ridiculous environment that helped me grow personally as well as intellectually. Assistance from numerous librarians and archivists was vital to the success of this project. Thomas Hollowak at the University of Baltimore, the staff at the Washington University Archives, Zelli Fischetti and Doris Wesley at the Western Historical Manuscript Collection – St. Louis and Mary Diaz at the Department of Special v Collections at the University of Illinois Chicago were of particular assistance. The Charles Phelps Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati provided generous funding in the form of research and travel grants and a dissertation fellowship. Other funding was provided by the Department of History, the Indian Hill High School Alumni Association, and the University of Cincinnati Graduate Student Governance Association. Friends and family members also provided tremendous amounts of support and companionship. My parents, Bill and Louise Gioielli, and my sister Katie and brother Casey provided encouragement at every stage of my graduate career. Kass Kovalcheck, Judson and Heather Drennan, Lolita Huckaby, Jennifer Stanley, Adam Snyder, Jon Sojkowski, and Brooks Williams provided much needed laughs and distractions from the grind of academia all throughout the research and writing process. Emily and Eric Carlisle and Nirav Kapadia provided couches, cold beer and warm hospitality during numerous trips to Baltimore. Bill and Marci McCombs are the best in-laws a husband could ask for, and the other members of the McCombs clan, including Ben, Karen and Meri, have been equally supportive. Final thanks goes to my wife Emily. For the six years, she has kept me honest, pulled me out of funks, intrepidly explained my topic to people who asked “What is Rob’s dissertation about?” when neither she, nor I, really knew the answer to the question, and constantly provided both advice and laughs. I could not have done completed this project, nor can I imagine my future, without her. vi Table of Contents Abstract iii Acknowledgements v Introduction 1 Chapter One The Break Down of the City 25 Chapter Two Black Survival in Our Polluted Cities: 60 St. Louis and the Fight Against Lead Poisoning Chapter Three The Knee in the Groin Approach: 101 Chicago and the Citizen’s Action Program Chapter Four We Must Destroy You to Save You: 149 Baltimore’s Freeway Revolt Epilogue Justice and Environmentalism in the 1970s 195 Bibliography 205 vii Introduction “Environmentalist circles are very white. I feel like a chocolate chip in most meetings. Many of them are dealing with wilderness and polar bears and we are trying to cope with our neighborhoods and communities.” 1 Majora Carter Social worker Carolyn Burrow’s patients at a St. Louis community health center were exhibiting an increased amount of anxiety and stress in the early 1970s. The decrepit state of “environmental conditions” including “poor plumbing, falling plaster, lack of adequate play areas, overcrowded housing, and high-rise apartments and projects” was causing this mental strain, Burrows wrote in a local magazine. She diagnosed these “environmental illnesses” as being caused by “environmental racism.”2 Many scholars credit the 1987 report Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States, one of the founding documents of the environmental justice movement, with coining the phrase “environmental racism.”3 But Burrow and a number of social workers and activists were using the term in 1970s St. Louis to describe a variety of problems – particularly substandard housing and childhood lead poisoning – that afflicted the city’s African American population. Environmental justice advocates have always argued that their movement has a heritage in the earlier period of the African American Freedom Struggle, and this quote reveals a direct link. It is possible to say that environmental justice originated in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when urban residents and activists across the 1 Melissa Harris-Lacewell, “How the Bronx Turned Green,” TheRoot.com, 22 April 2008. Carter, the founder of Sustainable South Bronx, was interviewed by Harris-Lacewell for an article about African Americans in the environmental movement. 2 Carolyn Burrow, “Environmental Racism,” Proud, 1, No. 10, December 1970. 3 United Church of Christ, Commission for Racial Justice. Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socio-Economic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites (New York: Public Data Access, 1987). 1 United States began to organize around a variety of problems, including highway construction and urban renewal, air pollution, and substandard housing and childhood lead poisoning. This dissertation documents that early environmental organizing by urban, working class and African American communities, but does not simply seek to show the origins of the environmental justice movement. This organizing was part of a long tradition of environmental activism by city residents, and an important part of the early environmental movement.

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