United States

Department of

Agriculture

Forest Service

Pacific Northwest

Research Station

General Technical

Report

PNW-GTR-534

April 2002

Race, Class, Gender, and

American Environmentalism

Dorceta E. Taylor
Dorceta E. Taylor is an assistant professor of environmental sociology, University

of Michigan, School of Natural Resources and Environment and the Center for

Afroamerican and African Studies, 430 East University Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI

48109-1115.

The research for this paper was partially funded by the USDA Forest Service, Pacific

Northwest Research Station.

Author
Taylor, Dorceta E. 2002. Race, class, gender, and American environmentalism.

Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-534. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture,

Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 51 p.

This paper examines the environmental experiences of middle and working class

whites and people of color in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries. It

examines their activism and how their environmental experiences influenced the kinds

of discourses they developed. The paper posits that race, class, and gender had profound effects on people’s environmental experiences, and consequently their activism

and environmental discourses.

Historical data show that while some middle class whites fled the cities and their urban

ills to focus attention on outdoor explorations, wilderness and wildlife issues, some of

their social contemporaries stayed in the cities to develop urban parks and help improve urban environmental conditions. Though there were conflicts between white

middle and working class activists over the use of open space, the white working class

collaborated with white middle-class urban environmental activists to improve public

health and worker health and safety, whereas, people of color, driven off their land,

corralled onto reservations, enslaved, and used as low-wage laborers, developed activist agendas and environmental discourses that linked racism and oppression to worker

health and safety issues, limited access to resources, loss of or denial of land ownership, and infringement on human rights.

Keywords: Environmental discourses, environmental movement, activism, environmental justice, social justice, gender, class, race, racism, people of color, wilderness, wildlife, urban parks, civil rights, labor, outdoor recreation, African Americans, Native

Americans, Asians, Chicanos, Latinos, Whites.

Abstract
1 Introduction

4 Wilderness, Wildlife, and Recreation

4 The Premovement Era

7 The Early Environmental Movement

8 The Birth of the Modern Environmental Movement

10 Paradigmatic Shift—The New Environmental Paradigm

10 The Middle Class and the Reform Environmental Agenda

12 Urban Environmentalism

12 Workplace Hazards, Parks, and Class Conflicts

17 The Changing Focus of the Urban Environmental Agenda

17 The White Working Class and the Environment

17 Working Class Conditions and Unionization

18 Gender Relations and the Environment

18 Occupational Health and Safety

19 Toxics and Occupational Health

20 People of Color and the Environment

20 Native Americans

23 African Americans

28 Chicanos and Other Latinos

31 Asians Low-Wage Labor and Westward Expansion

34 Gender Relations Among People-of-Color Groups

35 People of Color and Environmental Justice

35 People of Color—Race, Class, and Environmental Attitudes

36 The Environmental Justice Movement

40 Conclusion

41 References

Contents
ACMHR Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights

AIM American Indian Movement

BIA Bureau of Indian Affairs

CCBA Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association

CCHW Citizen’s Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes

CEO Chief Executive Officer

CORE Congress on Racial Equality

CSO Community Service Organization

DDT Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane

ECP Exploitive Capitalist Paradigm

EJO Environmental justice organization

EJP Environmental justice paradigm

EO Executive Order

EPA Environmental Protection Agency

ICC Inter-Civic Council

IWW Industrial Workers of the World

JACL Japanese American Citizen’s League

LULAC League of United Latin American Citizens

LULUs Locally Unwanted Land Uses

MEHA Massachusetts Emergency Hygiene Association

MIA Montgomery Improvement Association

MOWM March on Washington Movement

NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

NCAI National Congress of American Indians

NEJAC National Environmental Justice Advisory Council

NEP New environmental paradigm

NIMBY Not in my backyard

NIYC National Indian Youth Council

NORC National Opinion Research Center

ORC Opinion Research Center

OSHA Occupational Safety and Health Administration

REP Romantic environmental paradigm

SCLC Southern Christian Leadership Conference

SNCC Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee

SON State of the Nation

TMI Three Mile Island

UCC United Church of Christ

UDL United Defense League

UFW United Farm Workers

List of Abbreviations
This page has been left blank intentionally.

Document continues on next page.
1

Most researchers studying the environmental movement base their analyses on historical accounts that advance a dominant perspective. According to this perspective, wilderness enthusiasts urged people to preserve wilderness and wildlife, respect nature,

and cease destroying the environment. At the beginning of the 20th century, the damming of the Hetch Hetchy Valley1

 to provide water for the city of San Francisco and

battles to pass wildlife protection bills sparked major controversies among environmental activists, developers, and other business interests. These controversies played

significant roles in defining the early environmental movement. The movement focused

on wilderness preservation, wildlife and habitat protection, and outdoor recreation issues. It adopted a reform environmental agenda strengthened significantly throughout

the 20th century. The publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” energized the

movement in the 1960s, and Earth Day 1970 brought unprecedented public attention

to environmental issues (for example, see Bramwell 1989, Fox 1985, Nash 1982).

The above perspective, however, describes only one of several pathways of environmental activism (see fig. 1). Furthermore, it does not account for how race, class,

gender, labor market experiences, and politics influence environmental attitudes and

activism. It assumes that social class has no bearing on environmental outcomes, experiences, and perceptions. Further, it implies that everyone had similar environmental

experiences and responses to environmental occurrences or that experiences and responses that are unaccounted for are not important. Clearly, this is not the case. Social

class matters (Mueller 1992: 19-20; Oliver and Marwell 1992: 251-272; Zald 1996: 267-

268). That is, race, class, and gender do affect how people express grievances and

frame issues and how they define which issues they consider important. These factors

also influence how people interpret the world. Later discussions will show that race,

class, and gender influence the development of environmental paradigms, the path

of environmental activism, the agenda, and the policy prescriptions chosen.

This paper expands the limited scenario described above. By examining how environmentalism is affected by race, social class, gender, politics, and labor market experiences, we can identify four major pathways of environmental activism: (1) The first

pathway is a wilderness, wildlife, and recreation approach (described above). This

pathway was chosen primarily by middle class, white males, although it attracted

middle class, white female participants as the 20th century progressed. This pathway

developed a strong reform agenda and is currently the dominant sector of the environmental movement. (2) A second pathway took on an urban environmental agenda

focused on parks, open spaces, public health, sanitation, worker rights, pollution abatement, and housing reform. This pathway also was chosen by white, middle class males

and females who remained in the cities. (3) A third pathway, a working class environmental agenda focused on worker rights, occupational health and safety, and access

to recreation, was pursued by the white working class and in cooperation with progressive, white, middle class, female activists. (4) A fourth pathway, taken by people of

color, addressed social justice concerns such as self-determination, sovereignty, human rights, social inequality, loss of land base, limited access to natural resources,

and disproportionate impacts of environmental hazards and linked them with traditional

working class environmental concerns such as worker rights and worker health and

safety to develop an environmental justice agenda (see fig. 1).

Introduction

1

 A controversy arose over a proposed dam on the

Toulumne River in the Hetch Hetchy Valley (which lies

adjacent to the Yosemite Valley).
2

Figure 1—Paths of environmental activism.

(1820s-1850s) 

(1914-1959)

 (1850s-1913) Male dominatedMale dominated

Wilderness,

 Middle class wildlife,

recreation,branch

Male dominated (1880s-1920)

(1850s-1880s)

Middle class Urban

branch

Males and females

Male dominated Female dominated

 (1920-1959)

Working classMales and females

 (1880s-1920s) Males and females

(1930s-1959) (1960-1979)

(1980-97)

(1820s - 1860s) Males and females

People of color and the environment

(1960-1979) (1980-1997)

 Male dominated

(1960-1979)

(1830s - 1930s)

(1920s-1997)

 Male dominated 

(1980-1997)

European influence- Rousseau

RomanticismTranscendentalism- Emerson

Nature/wilderness loversNaturalist - AudubonEcologist - MarshWilderness - Thoreau, Muir

Early environmental movementPreservation - Muir factionConservation - Pinchot factionOutdoor recreation - GrinnellLand ethic - Leopold, Marshall

Reform environmentalismSilent Spring - CarsonEarth Day - Youth voiceMass mobilizationEnvironmental policyEnvironmental litigation

Reform 

environmentalism

Radical environmentalismMale dominated- Greens- Deep ecology- Social ecology- Bioregionalism- Ecofeminism

. Female vision

Urban LandscapearchitecturePublic parks, formal gardens- Olmsted, Vaux

Progressive era reformers--urbanPublic health, housingworkplace safety, worker rightsrecreation, park, playground movement

Urban and rural environmentalism

Environmental quality, quality of life

Urban parks, open space

Working class Environmentalism- Worker rights- Worker safety- Public health- Housing- Access to parks

Workplace hazardsPollutionHealthWorker ri

UnionsChurchesEthnicorganizations

ghts

Occupational safety & health movementRecreational accessPollution

UnionsSocial justice groups

Working class 

grassroots 

environmentalism

Environmental 

justice activism

Societalcontext- Resource exploitation- Appropriation of land & labor- Human  exploitation- Capitalism

Working classunrestProtestsDemonstrations

Native-AmericansLatinosAfrican-AmericansAsian-Americans

Dispossesed of landTerritory annexed SlaveryIndentured servitude

Manage reservation resourcesFarmworkersJim Crow, sharecroppingRailroads, farmworkers, Mining, factoriesExclusion

Sovreignty struggles, TreatiesWorker safety/rightsHuman and civil rightsExclusionInternmentRepatriation

Unions, religious institutions,

Social justice organizations 

American Indian movementChicano movementFarmworker movement- Coop movement, pesticidesCivil rights movementHuman rights movementWorker health & safetyPollution, recreation access

Environmental 

justice

movement

Cultural nationalismPoetry - BryantLiteratureLandscape art - Homer, Moran, Cole, Bierstadt Landscape architect - Downing
3

In addition to the four pathways of environmental activism discussed above, there

have been four waves of mobilization around environmental issues, namely, the

premovement era (1820s to 1913), the post-Hetch Hetchy era (1914 to 1959), the postCarson era (1960 to 1979), and the post-Love Canal/Three Mile Island (TMI) era (1980

to the present) (Taylor 1998) (see table 1). These four major periods of mobilization are

addressed in detail within the discussion of the four major environmental pathways.

The premovement era was characterized by a preponderance of outdoor recreationists,

scientific and technical professionals, and individual enthusiasts who advocated environmental protection and wise use of resources. The turn-of-the century wildlife protection, forest conservation, and wilderness preservation battles led to the formation of

the environmental movement. Another round of controversies involved dam building

in wilderness areas during the 1950s, which also resulted in increased mobilization

around environmental issues. The publication of “Silent Spring” in 1962, however, mobilized large numbers of people hitherto uninvolved in environmental activities,

and the modern environmental movement was born. A second major event of the

post-Carson era, Earth Day 1970, also enhanced environmental mobilization. The

fourth phase (the post-TMI/Love Canal era) began around the time of the Three Mile

Island (Pennsylvania) nuclear accident and the Love Canal (Buffalo, New York) disaster. These two events refocused the Nation’s attention on environmental issues, turned

the spotlight on toxic contamination in local communities, and resulted in the formation

of many grassroots environmental organizations.

As table 1 shows, each wave of mobilization is also associated with major paradigmatic2

 developments and shifts. The exploitive capitalist paradigm (ECP) characterized

the dominant way of perceiving the environment during the premovement era. During

Table 1—Phases of environmental activism and corresponding paradigmatic

developments

Phases of environmental mobilization

Early

Pre- environmental Modern environmental

movement movement movement

Phases of Pre- Post-Hetch Post-Carson era Post-TMIa

mobilization movement era Hetchy era (1960-79) Love Canal era

(1820-1913) (1914-59) (1980-present)

Paradigms Exploitive ECP and the New NEP and the

capitalist romantic environmental environmental

paradigm environmental paradigm (NEP) justice paradigm

paradigm

a

 TMI refers to the Three Mile Island Nuclear facility.

2

 A paradigm refers to a body of ideas, major assumptions, concepts, propositions, values, and goals of a

substantive area that influence the way people view the

world, conduct scientific inquiry, and accept theoretical

formulations. These paradigms are the basis of “normal”

or day-to-day science. “Normal science,” however,

produces anomalies that cannot be resolved within the

existing paradigm. When this occurs, there is a disjuncture, which creates an opening for a new paradigm

to emerge to replace the old paradigm (Kuhn 1962).
4

the early movement (post-Hetch Hetchy era), the romantic environmental paradigm

(REP) emerged to play a significant role in environmental thought; this lasted till the

post-Carson era. During the 1960s, the new environmental paradigm (NEP) eclipsed

the use of the REP. Though the NEP is still the dominant paradigm, in recent years, the

environmental justice paradigm (EJP) has emerged to challenge it (see Taylor, n.d., for

more detailed discussions of paradigms3).

White middle class males and the outdoors—Outdoor- and wilderness-oriented,

elite White middle class males influenced by cultural nationalism4 or romanticism5

and transcendentalism6 began espousing proenvironmental ideas while publicizing

the natural wonders of the country. Writers and poets like William Cullen Bryant and

landscape artists like Thomas Cole, Winslow Homer, Thomas Moran, and Albert

Bierstadt were among the leading cultural nationalists. Speaking through their poetry

and art, they raised middle class consciousness about the beauty and intrinsic value

of unique American landscapes and wilderness. Other outdoor enthusiasts like John

James Audubon (bird illustrator) and George Catlin (explorer) began speaking out

about the destruction of nature and the development of national parks in the early

1800s. Henry David Thoreau also advocated setting aside land for parks in the 1850s,

and Frederick Law Olmsted laid out a management plan for the Yosemite Reserve in

Wilderness, Wildlife,

and Recreation

The Premovement Era

3 Taylor, D.E. [N.d.]. Environment and social inequality:

two centuries of mainstream and environmental justice

activism. Manuscript in preparation. On file with: D.E.

Taylor, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Michigan, 430 East University

Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1115.

4

 This refers to the mindset in which landscape artists,

writers, poets and other intellectual elites began viewing

wilderness and other features of the American landscape

as revered national, cultural resources that compared

favorably with European cultural treasures and of which

Americans should be proud (see Nash 1982).

5

 Romanticism connotes an enthusiasm for the strange,

remote, solitary, and mysterious. In relation to nature,

romantics prefer wild, untamed places such as the

American wilderness where they can express their

freedom. They disdained tamed and manicured

landscapes (Lovejoy 1955; Nash 1982: 47).

6 Transcendentalism refers to a set of beliefs regarding the relation between humans, nature, and God.

American transcendentalists believe in the existence

of a reality or truths beyond the physical.Transcendentalists argue that there is parallel between the higher

realm of spiritual truths and the lower one of material

objects. Natural objects are important because they

reflect universal spiritual truths. People’s place in the

universe is divided between object and essence.Their

physical existence roots them in the material portion

while their soul gives them the ability to transcend their

physical conditions. For transcendentalists, the wilderness is the place where spiritual truths are most

pronounced (Emerson 1883; Nash 1982: 84-86;

Paul 1952; Thoreau 1893).
5

1865 (this area was later renamed Yosemite National Park). In the mid 1800s, Ralph

Waldo Emerson, a Harvard University professor influenced by the French scholar Jean

Jacques Rousseau, introduced romanticism and transcendentalism to the American

elite. Lecturing to students (like Thoreau) and the New England middle classes in lyceums, atheneums, and community halls across the region, he influenced many to revere

the wilderness and value and care for the environment (Nash 1982: 1-160; Ranney and

others 1990: 488-516; see footnote 3). John Muir, also influenced by romanticism and

transcendentalism, publicized the wilderness and outlined the boundaries of what

would become Yosemite National Park. Other activists such as the ecologist and

statesperson George Perkins Marsh (1857, 1965) and conservationists such as

George Bird Grinnell (1911a, 1911b, 1912) and Gifford Pinchot (1906, 1908, 1947)

also had profound effects on environmental politics. These activists sought to overturn the ECP—the dominant social paradigm of the time7

 (Dunlap and Van Liere

1978: 10-19; Kuhn 1962; Milbrath 1984: 7-15; Pirages 1982: 6) by articulating a REP.

The activists opposed the ECP by writing and speaking about the destruction and

domination of nature and urged humans to live harmoniously with nature and to consider other species. They argued that nature had intrinsic worth. In addition, they called

for government protection of wildlands to preserve them for future generations. The

romantics and transcendentalists recognized that the destruction of resources could

have devastating long-term consequences, and therefore urged people to care for the

land for future generations. They also advocated the return to a simpler lifestyle. They

outlined the boundaries of some of the earliest national parks and campaigned tirelessly for the establishment of a system of national parks (Muir 1890, 1901). Conservationists focused on wildlife protection by passing bills, setting hunting limits, and by

designating, saving, and patrolling sanctuaries. Though conservationists agreed with

the preservationists that the level of destruction of resources was problematic and that

government control of resources was essential, they disagreed with the preservationists as to the extent to which environmental protection meant excluding commercial

development of resources.8

 They also championed the “wise use” of resources for

current generations; they disagreed about depriving current generations of resources

to benefit future generations. Despite the fact that environmental activists had disagreements among themselves, the general message of curbing wanton destruction of the

environment and its resources influenced the public and shifted societal attitudes toward greater environmental awareness and concern. Thus, by the 1880s, environmental groups like The Appalachian Mountain Club and the Boone and Crockett Club were

formed, and the transition from the premovement era (dominated by individual enthusiasts like Thoreau, Muir, Roosevelt, and Grinnell, and scientific-technical professionals

like Marsh and Pinchot) to mass movement began to take shape (Fox 1985, Nash

1982).

The shift to the REP was crucial in getting people to listen to and support the emerging

environmental message. The REP became widely accepted throughout the environmental movement and still forms the nucleus of American environmental ideology.

7

 A dominant social paradigm is a world view that shapes

the values, metaphysical beliefs, institutions, and habits

that provide the social filters through which members of

a society view and interpret the external world.

8

 Note there were people like Theodore Roosevelt

and George Bird Grinnell who were influenced by

romanticism who took a utilitarian approach toward

resource management.
6

The early environmentalists were mainly financially secure men; many were businessmen or had strong ties to industry. They were free to embark on outdoor expeditions

at will. They sought out the wilderness as an antidote to the ills of the urban environment. They did not include issues relating to the workplace or to the poor in their

agenda. They were basically middle class activists procuring and preserving environmental amenities for middle class benefits and consumption. In some cases, businessmen sought to protect environmental resources because it enhanced their entrepreneurial efforts. Industries such as tourism and arms manufacturing benefitted from

having beautiful environments for travelers to resort to and game for sportsmen and

sportswomen to hunt.

White middle class females and the outdoors—Though environmental historians

like Nash (1982) pay little attention to the environmental experiences and preservation

and conservation efforts of middle class White women,9

 some of these women were

involved in wilderness, wildlife, and recreation issues for much of the 19th and 20th centuries. Like their male counterparts, the women were influenced by romanticism, transcendentalism, nativism,10 frontierism, and pioneer life. They were fascinated by and

explored the wilderness and supported preservation and conservation causes. Some

of these women—wealthy and the first generation of college-educated females in the

country—used their wilderness exploits and outdoor experiences to defy stereotypes

of white womanhood. From the 1840s onward, women like Hannah Taylor Keep and

Esther Jones,11 Harriet Kirtland and Anna Park,12 and Helen Brodt13 began climbing

mountain peaks from Maine to Alaska and exploring wilderness areas in the East and

West.14 These well-publicized trips presented a new image of women; one in which

they were seen as vigorous, healthy, and willing and able to undertake strenuous activities. The writings of these women also helped to generate sympathy for environmental

causes. Furthermore, because the wives and children of early entrepreneurs and explorers sometimes accompanied the men on adventures, women played key roles in

the hotel, food service, transportation, camps, outdoor guide, and supplies businesses

that supported wilderness exploration. Like male landscape artists, some women (like

Abby Williams Hill15) were commissioned to paint the national parks. They too emerged

as publicizers of the wilderness (Kaufman 1996: 3-26; Waterman and Waterman 1989).

9

 Environmental historians also tend to ignore the

experiences of working class White men and women and

people of color.

10 The belief in the superiority of native-born, whites—

particularly those of Northern and Western European

descent.

11 Keep and Jones ascended Mount Katahdin in Maine in

1849.

12 Kirkland and Park went to Yosemite in 1857—more

than a decade before John Muir saw the Valley.

13 Brodt climbed Mount Lassen in 1864.

14 Many of the women made their ascents or wilderness

trips before the more famous male wilderness explorers

like Thoreau and Muir.

15 Hill was commissioned by the Great Northern and

Northern Pacific Railways to paint the Cascades and

Yellowstone.
7

White male outdoor enthusiasts—The most prominent environmental activists (writers, landscape artists, policymakers, founders of environmental organizations, environmental spokespersons, etc.) in the premovement post-Hetch Hetchy eras were men.

As more men explored the wilderness, hunted, fished, and climbed mountains, the

degradation of forests and declining wildlife stocks heightened their interest in wilderness preservation, wildlife conservation, habitat restoration, and pollution control. Thus,

these activists continued to develop agendas and discourses around the following

areas of interest: (a) game and bird protection, (b) forest, timber, and water conservation, (c) wilderness preservation, and (d) range management. Many environmental

organizations were formed from 1900 to 1914 when activists were involved in highprofile environmental controversies. These organizations supported the work of activists and helped to consolidate the emerging environmental agenda. Over time, conservation and preservation groups began collaborating with each other to protect wildlife

and forests. Although women were members of these organizations, and a few rose to

positions of prominence, membership, leadership, and the agenda of the organizations

were dominated by men.

From 1914 to 1959, men (many of whom had significant business ties) sought to consolidate the environmental agenda by establishing and reinforcing contacts with government, influential policy groups, and industry. They espoused a brand of environmentalism that sought to make small incremental changes or reforms in the existing

system by working with both government and industry. This laid the groundwork for

reform environmentalism (McCloskey 1992: 77-82). The environmental movement

grew rapidly in the first three decades of the 20th century. Data I compiled from the

“Conservation Directory” (National Wildlife Federation 1993, 1994) and “Gale Environmental Sourcebook” (Hill and Piccirelli 1992) show that of 1,053 organizations, 44 were

founded between 1845 and 1899. Seventy-eight organizations, however, were formed

between 1900 and 1929. Despite the early enthusiasm for and rapid growth of the

movement in the first three decades of the 20th century, by the 1930s, the newly formed

movement began to stagnate—the growth of the movement slowed, the political activities and issues no longer capturing the imagination of the public. This period of apathy

continued through the 1940s; 30 organizations were formed during the 1930s and 39

were formed during the 1940s (see also Fox 1985, Gottlieb 1993, Nash 1982, Paehlke

1989, Taylor 1992). During the 1950s, however, a proposal to build a dam that would

threaten Dinosaur National Monument sparked new waves of environmental protests

(Fox 1985). Seventy-seven new organizations were formed during the1950s.

White middle class female outdoor enthusiasts—Mountaineering clubs like the

Appalachian Mountain Club and the Sierra Club made it easier for women to explore

the outdoors. As more women ventured into the outdoors, however, they began connecting their environmental experiences to feminist politics. For example, they defied

dress norms by wearing pants (at first under their dresses, then without a covering

skirt). In addition, they tied their environmentalism to the Suffragist politics. Consequently, Susan B. Anthony took a trip to the Yosemite Reserve in 1871 as the crowning

event of the California Suffrage Campaign. The environmentalists in this branch of the

movement made little effort to incorporate social justice concerns into their environmental agendas, although the women were more inclined to do so than the men. For instance, female outdoor enthusiasts expressed sympathy for the plight of Indians and

began campaigns to help them in the 19th century. Furthermore, the women were instrumental in founding or preserving national parks, monuments, and historic sites such

as Mesa Verde-Grand Canyon, Indiana Dunes, Kings Canyon, and Olympic National

Park. Women and organizations like the General Federation of Women’s Clubs were

The Early Environmental

Movement
8

also active in efforts to save Hetch Hetchy and Jackson Hole (in Wyoming). Like the

men, women outdoor enthusiasts wrote and published stories, poems, and newspaper

articles. Women also were photographed in the wild—the images were often used in

park publicity to portray the parks as family friendly and less dangerous (Kaufman

1996: 3-55).

Women were active in conservation issues too. For instance, after the original Audubon

Society (founded by George Bird Grinnell in 1886) lapsed to inactivity from 1888 to

1896, Harriet Hemenway16 (nee Lawrence), a wealthy woman from an influential family,

formed the Massachusetts Audubon Society. Hemenway and the upper class female

members of the Audubon elected a male president, the prominent ornithologist, William

Brewster, to run the organization, but she funded it for years from her own fortune.

From 1929 to 1933 when the Audubon was racked with scandal over money the organization obtained from gun manufacturers, Rosalie Edge emerged as a major environmental reformer as she pressured the Audubon to stop taking contributions from rifle

manufacturers (Fox 1985, Graham 1990).

“Silent Spring”—During the 1960s and 1970s, there was unprecedented mobilization

around environmental issues. The mobilization was spurred, in part, by Carson who

linked her concern for wildlife and nature with questions about the effects of pesticides

on humans and wildlife. She used the injustice frame to question the immorality and

danger of widespread spraying of pesticides and argued that people have a right to a

safe environment. She argued that if people are harmed by the deliberate acts of others, the victims have a right to compensation (Carson 1962). Carson’s environmental

discourse focused on home, community, nature, and the wilds. She linked urban and

rural concerns thereby publicizing an issue (pesticide poisoning) that affected everyone

in the country. She also framed in the issues so that they were relevant to ordinary

Americans.

Carson’s work led to an immense public outcry over pollution and contamination by

chemicals that launched the birth of the modern environmental movement. Reform

environmental organizations benefitted from the mobilization. Membership skyrocketed

in leading organizations like the Sierra Club, the National Audubon Society, and the

Wilderness Society in the 1960s. An analysis of the membership of eight major environmental organizations17 found that membership went from about 123,000 in 1960 to

about three-quarters of a million members in 1969 (Fox 1985: 315).18 The mass mobilization drive resulted in cleaner air, rivers, and lakes for many Americans. Toward the

end of the decade, many young and radical environmentalists—students, former civil

rights activists,19 and antinuclear activists—joined the movement (Zinger and others

The Birth of the Modern

Environmental

Movement

16 Hemenway’s family earned their money from cotton

mills in Lawrence and Lowell, Massachusetts, and her

husband was the treasurer of Harvard college and

trustee of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

17 The National Audubon Society, Sierra Club, Izaak

Walton League, Wilderness Society, National Wildlife

Federation, National Parks and Conservation

Association, Natural Resources Defense Council, and

Environmental Defense Fund.

18 Dunlap and Mertig (1992:13) estimate that the five

major environmental organizations had a combined

membership of 764,000 in 1969.

19 White students left the civil rights movement when the

movement shifted toward black nationalism.
9

1972: 381-383). Some of these youthful environmentalists joined the leading environmental organizations, whereas others formed their own organizations. This brought

new energy, ideas, and constituencies into the reform environmental movement. Consequently, the concerns of the movement broadened to include more issues relating to

the urban environment, community, home, and humans. More attention was paid to

environmental hazards, and industry was scrutinized more heavily.

Earth Day—The second surge of mobilization in the post-Carson era came in 1970,

before and after Earth Day. Between 1970 and 1979, membership in the eight major

environmental organizations mentioned above went from 892,100 to more than 1.5

million. More environmental groups were formed in the post-Carson era than at any

other period in history; 469 or 45 percent of the 1,053 environmental groups studied

were formed between 1960 and 1979. The mobilization of the 1960s and 1970s, however, was largely a White middle class mobilization. Surveys of the membership of

leading environmental groups and of environmental activists nationwide in the late

1960s and early 1970s support this claim. A 1969 national survey of 907 Sierra Club

members indicated that the organization had a middle class membership. Seventy-four

percent of the members had at least a college degree; 39 percent had advanced degrees. Ninety-five percent of the male respondents were professionals—physicians,

lawyers, professors, engineers, and teachers—and 5 percent occupied clerical and

sales positions, were owners of small business, or were unskilled laborers. Fifty-eight

percent of the respondents said their family income was over $12,000 per year; 30 percent reported family incomes of over $18,000 per year (Devall 1970: 123-126). In comparison, only 11 percent of the general population had 4 or more years of college in

1970 and the national median income was $6,670 for men and $2,237 for women

(U.S. Bureau of the Census 2000a: 2; 2000b: 1).

A 1971 study of the Puget Sound chapter of the Sierra Club found a similar profile.

Ninety-seven percent of the respondents had at least a bachelor’s degree, and 71

percent had a master’s or doctorate. Eighty-three percent of the members occupied

professional jobs, and 9 percent were students. Only 3 percent were clerical workers,

and another 3 percent were unemployed. In this study, 66 percent of the club members

were male, half of them between 30 and 44 years old. Forty-two percent of the respondents claimed to be political independents, 33 percent were Democrats, and 24 percent

were Republicans (Faich and Gale 1971: 270-287).

The above profile was not unique to the Sierra Club. A 1972 study of 1,500 environmental volunteers nationwide showed that 98 percent of the volunteers were white, and

59 percent held a college or graduate degree. Forty-three percent held professional,

scientific-technical, academic, or managerial jobs. Half of the respondents had family

incomes of more than $15,000 per year, 26 percent had incomes of between $10,000

and $15,000 per year, and the remainder earned less than $10,000 per year (Zinger

and others 1972). In general, studies find that environmentalists are highly educated,

older, urban residents who are political independents. In addition, education and, to a

lesser extent, income is associated with naturalistic values and environmental concerns
10

(Buttel and Flinn 1974: 57-69, 1978: 433-450; Cotgrove and Duff 1980: 333-351; Devall

1970: 123-126; Dillman and Christensen 1972: 237-256; Faich and Gale 1971: 270-

287; Harry 1971: 301-309; Harry and others 1969: 246-254; Hendee and others 1969:

212-215; Lowe and others 1980: 423-445; Martinson and Wilkening 1975; Tognacci

and others 1972: 73-86; Wright 1975).20

A major ideological shift also occurred during the post-Carson era. During the 1960s

and 1970s, the romantic environmental paradigm gave way to a broader vision of environmentalism—the new environmental paradigm (NEP).21 Building on the basic ideological framework of the REP, the NEP expanded on the environmental dialogue and

articulated a bold new vision that critiqued the development of large, complex, and

energy-intensive issues such as nuclear power, population control, pollution prevention,

risk reduction, energy, recycling, and environmental cleanups.

During this era, the environmental movement enjoyed strong public support. Opinion

polls show what could be described as a “Carson” and an “Earth Day” effect. There

was a steady increase in concern about pollution through the latter part of the 1960s

and a sharp increase in concern throughout the 1970s. For instance, in 1965, 17 percent of the respondents in a Gallup survey said they wanted the government to devote

most of its attention to reducing air and water pollution. By 1970, however, 53 percent

of the respondents wanted the government to devote most of its time to these issues

(Gallup 1972: 1939). State of the Nation (SON) polls conducted between 1972 and

1976 also showed that 46 to 60 percent of the respondents indicated they were “very

concerned” about reducing water and air pollution (SON 1972-76). The General Social

Survey conducted every year from 1973 to 1978 found that between 50 and 61 percent

of the respondents thought too little money was being spent on the environment (National Opinion Research Center—NORC 1973-80). In an Opinion Research Corporation’s (ORC) sample 58 percent of those polled thought a slower rate of economic

growth is needed to protect the environment (ORC 1978). Polls also showed that most

respondents were not willing to relax environmental standards to achieve economic

growth, did not think that pollution control requirements had gone too far, and did not

think we had made enough progress on cleaning up the environment to start limiting

the cost of pollution control (ORC 1977). A distinction should be made between concern and support for the environment and environmental activism. Not all people who

are concerned about the environment or generally support environmental causes become environmental activists (Taylor 1989; 2000).

Organizational characteristics—Throughout the 1980s, White, middle class, reform

environmentalism continued to dominate the environmental landscape. Environmental

organizations grew increasingly big, bureaucratic, hierarchical, and distant from local

concerns and politics. Many focused on national and international issues, lobbied Congress and business, and continued to cultivate close ties with industry (through funding,

negotiations, and board representation). Grassroots organizing had long given way to

direct-mail recruiting, and direct-action political strategies rarely were used. From the

Paradigmatic Shift—The

New Environmental

Paradigm

The Middle Class and the

Reform Environmental

Agenda

20 A 1969 National Wildlife Federation study found an

inverse relation between age and environmental concern

and that urban dwellers were less likely to be concerned

about environment than other respondents (see Buttel

and Flinn, 1974: 57-58).

21 Term coined by Dunlap and Van Liere in their 1978

article, “The New Environmental Paradigm.” See also

Cotgrove and Duff (1980: 333-351) for a discussion of

the dominant social paradigm.
11

1970s onward, environmental groups used the courts and the environmental agencies

to pursue environmental claims through legal and policy channels (Taylor 1992). Consequently, they developed extensive oversight and monitoring capacities. They also

developed strong research arms designed to produce information independent of government or industry. Slightly fewer organizations were formed during the 1980s than in

the previous decade. If the first 4 years of the 1990s are indicative, however, there

could be significant decline in the number of organizations being formed in the 1990s.

Between 1980 and 1994, 292 organizations were formed, 277 of which originated in the

1980s.

Leadership and male dominance—Men dominate the top leadership positions in

reform environmental organizations. A 1992 nationwide study conducted by the Conservation Leadership Foundation found that of the 248 chief executive officers (CEOs)

and top leaders surveyed, 79 percent were men. Their mean age was 45 years, and

50 percent had a bachelor’s degree and 49 percent master’s or doctorate (Snow 1992:

48-49). My analysis of 1,053 organizations found that 80 percent of the top leaders

(president, CEO, chair) were men as were 64 percent of the general leaders (secretaries, accountants, program managers, etc.). The Conservation Leadership Foundation’s

national study of environmental volunteers also found that men dominated the volunteer sector of the reform environmental movement. Sixty-one percent of the volunteers

were men. Ninety-three percent were over 35 years old, 79 percent had at least a

bachelor’s degree, and 53 percent had a graduate degree. Seventy-one percent were

in managerial or professional jobs, whereas 3 percent described themselves as skilled

laborers (Snow 1992: 111-112). The membership profile of the reform sector in the

1990s is similar to that of the environmental organizations of the late 1960s and early

1970s.

Defining the agenda—Early in 1981, the CEOs of 10 major environmental organizations (the Group of Ten) met to discuss and outline an environmental agenda for the

future. The presidency of Ronald Reagan represented a threat to the environmental

gains of the preceding two decades, so the deliberations of the Group of Ten had an

air of urgency as they entered into their discussions (Rosenbaum 1991, Vig and Kraft

1994). Publication of “An Environmental Agenda for the Future” (Cahn 1985) (hereinafter Agenda) was the outcome of that meeting. The group identified 11 agenda items for

future consideration: nuclear power and waste issues, human population control, energy strategies, water resources, toxics and pollution control, wild living resources,

private lands and agriculture, protected land systems, public lands, urban environment,

and international responsibilities.

The 10 CEOs included John Adams, Natural Resources Defense Council; Louise

Dunlap, Environmental Policy Institute; Jay Hair, National Wildlife Federation; Frederic

Krupp, Environmental Defense Fund; Jack Lorenz, Izaak Walton League; J. Michael

McCloskey, Sierra Club; Russell Peterson, National Audubon Society; Paul Pritchard,

National Parks and Conservation Association; William Turnage, Wilderness Society;

and Karl Wendelowski, Friends of the Earth. In the Agenda this group and their staff

wrote:

While our informal group reflects the diversity of today’s environmental movement, our agenda is by no means an attempt to speak for the movement as a

whole. Rather, through informal collaboration, it presents a consensus among

a representative cross-section of conservation leaders...the common objective is to protect and enhance the quality of life worldwide (Cahn 1985: 2;

emphasis added).
12

Contrary to the beliefs of the Group of Ten, the people defining the agenda for the

future were not reflective of the diversity of the contemporary environmental movement

or the conservation leadership nationwide. This is evidenced by the fact that at about

the same time the Agenda was being developed, many submovements were either

being formed or strengthened in the White, middle class movement. In addition, White

working class organizations were being organized; so were many people-of-color environmental justice groups. By the mid-1980s, the greens, deep ecologists, social ecologists, bioregionalists, and ecofeminists emerged as submovements within the environmental movement. Each critiqued the reform environmental agenda and offered radical

alternatives to it. Though these submovements embraced aspects of the new environmental paradigm, there were significant ideological differences between each submovement and reform environmentalism. Some of the common critiques levied at the

reform environmentalists by the submovements were that the reform environmental

movement (1) had developed too many strong ties to industry and was not critical

enough of them, (2) was inclined to compromise with industry, (3) was alienated from

the grassroots, (4) was too bureaucratic, and (5) had too limited an agenda.

As table 2 shows, in 1992, wildlife, wilderness, and waterway protection dominated

agendas of reform organizations both in terms of importance of the issues to the organizations and the percentage of the organizational resources spent on the issues.

Whereas 46 percent of the budgets of the organizations were spent on fish, wildlife,

land preservation, and wilderness, and 16 percent on water conservation, only 8 percent of the budgets were being spent on toxic waste management and 4 percent on

land use planning. This pattern of environmental perception, problem definition, and

spending was in place in reform environmental organizations at a time when communities throughout the country were struggling with environmental health issues, occupational safety, contamination by toxics, urban sprawl, pollution, and solid waste disposal

issues. There seemed to be a disconnect between the priorities of the reform environmental organizations and many local communities.

The urban environment and the condition of the working class—What were the

conditions of the working class throughout the period middle class White males were

exploring the wilderness and building the foundations of the early reform environmental

movement? During the 19th century, the White working class worked in deplorable conditions. They worked long hours for low wages. The lengthy workday and intensive

labor practices combined to give the United States one of the highest industrial accident rates in the world. From 1880 to 1900, 35,000 workers died and another 536,000

were injured annually. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, alone, 526 workers died on the job

in 1 year (1906 to 1907). Between 1905 and 1920, at least 2,000 fatal work-related

accidents occurred in the coal mines. In the now defunct town of Cherry, Illinois, more

than 180 people died in a coal mine explosion in 1909. The railroads were no safer. In

1901, 1 in every 399 railroad men was killed and 1 in every 26 was injured. Among

operating trainmen, 1 in every 137 was killed and 1 in every 11 was injured. In 1907,

industrial accidents accounted for 1 in every 10 deaths among men: 23 percent of the

deaths among miners, 72 percent among powder makers, and 49 percent of the deaths

among electric linemen. Women workers also experienced injury and death. In 1911,

146 women and girls died in the Triangle Factory fire in New York City (Dubofsky 1996:

24-25; Kazis and Grossman 1982: 166-170; McGarity and Shapiro 1993: 3-4).

Urban

Environmentalism

Workplace Hazards,

Parks, and Class

Conflicts
13

In addition, housing conditions were abominable. Workers lived in crowded, unsafe,

unsanitary, over-priced housing. Unemployed and homeless people lived in parks and

on undeveloped lots. For example, when construction began on site for Central Park

(New York), over 300 dwellings—including the Black community of Seneca Village—

located within the boundaries of the park, were demolished by Olmsted’s work crew

(Board of Commissioners of the Department of Public Parks 1859: 59-68; Rosenszweig

and Blackmar 1992). Evictions were also common. In 1903 alone, 60,463 or 14 percent

of the families in Manhattan were evicted. Twenty percent of the population of Boston

and New York City were said to be living in distress, and 1 in 10 New Yorkers were

buried in paupers graves in Potters Field (Dubofsky 1996: 27). The little free time workers had was spent in local pubs or in the streets. Because of overcrowding, private

personal and family activities (such as courtship, drinking, and socializing) often spilled

onto the streets. This rankled the middle class who set out to Americanize and acculturate immigrants and curb what they saw as morally bankrupt, uncivilized behavior.

Not surprisingly, interactions between both groups grew increasingly tense (Beveridge

and Schuyler 1983; Dickason 1983; Peiss 1986; Rosenzweig 1983, 1987). Some of

these tensions were fought around the issues of access to and utilization of urban

open space.

Table 2—Percentage of organizations considering each issue important, and the

average percentage of organizational resources being spent on each issue

Organizational

Organizational focus Issue important resources

– – – – – – – Percent – – – – – – –

Fish and wildlife management and protection 92 19

Protection of waterways 91 7

Public lands management 90 12

Environmental education 90 —

Water quality 87 6

Air quality 87 3

Wilderness 86 4

Land use planning 84 4

Toxic waste management 79 8

Preservation of private land 76 11

Agriculture 72 4

Energy conservation and facility regulation 71 2

Mining law and regulation 62 1

Marine conservation 45 3

Population control 35 —

Nuclear power or weapons 34 1

Zoological or botanical gardens 23 1

Sustainable development — 3

Source: Compiled from Snow (1992: 55, 110).
14

Middle class White males and park building—Not all middle class White males interested in the environment and open space issues concentrated their efforts on wilderness and wildlife. Some, like Andrew Jackson Downing, explored recreational interests

in the city. Downing sought to bring rural scenery to squalid cities like New York by

building elaborate, European-inspired landscapes in urban centers. Downing, who designed the Mall in Washington and the White House grounds, inspired a generation of

great American urban park builders to bring a touch of the wilderness to the city. Two of

his proteges, Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, went on to design Central Park

and several other major urban parks and grounds across the country. While the wilderness/wildlife-oriented activists separated their environmental concerns, recreation and

activism, from those of the White working class and minorities, the urban park builders

worked alongside the poor (who were hired as laborers to build the parks) and came

face to face with working class concerns. Despite frequent contact with the poor, the

park builders were often insensitive to working class concerns. For instance, Olmsted,

fired his Central Park work crew who went on strike for better wages and working conditions, and dismissed those absent from work because of illness or injuries sustained

on the job. Notwithstanding, the park-building elites built parks where the middle and

working class interacted—even if on a limited basis (Beveridge and Schuyler 1983;

Gottlieb 1993; Olmsted 1860a; Roper 1973; Rosenzweig 1983, 1987). These activities,

and the extent to which it was believed that one could find solace in urban green space,

distinguished the urban park builders from their wilderness-oriented counterparts.

Although the urban park builders constructed parks with the intent of their being used

predominantly by middle class Whites, they also believed that the parks served important social and political functions (including social control, acculturating and civilizing

the masses, improving public health, making laborers work harder and more efficiently,

and providing patronage jobs). The parks attracted thousands of working class people

who built and recreated in them (Beveridge and Schuyler 1983, Board of Commissioners or Department of Public Parks 1859: 59-68; Peiss 1986, Rosenzweig 1983, 1987).

For instance, Olmsted supervised a crew of 4,000 laborers working on Central Park.

By 1860, about 10,000 visitors entered the park on foot, and 2,000 carriages drove

through the gates on Sunday afternoons. Up to 100,000 people visited on holidays and

special occasions (Olmsted 1860a. 1861; 768-775). Urban parks provided free or

cheap leisure for the working class and soon became the focal point of environmental

and political activism. They were the sites of labor unrest, riots and political rallies

(Beveridge and Schuyler 1983: 15; Olmsted 1860b; Peiss 1986; Piven and Cloward

1979: 43-44). In addition, the working class, pointing to the environmental inequalities

they endured (overcrowding; ill health and diseases; and lack of sanitation, clean water,

public open space), organized and lobbied for neighborhood parks. The working class

also influenced the design of these urban parks by lobbying for open space designed

for more active recreation such as ball fields (Rosenzweig 1983, 1987).

Middle class White females and the white working class: environmental health

and safety—During the 1800s and early 1900s, some middle class White females

found themselves in a peculiar position. On the one hand, they attended elite colleges

and lectures at the lyceums and atheneums and read extensively about romanticism,

transcendentalism, ecology, botany, and natural history; but on the other, they were
15

not expected to act on their impulses to explore the wilderness the way Thoreau, Muir,

and other men did (Muir 1924).22 A rift developed between the sexes whereby males

were socialized around conquest (hunting and mountaineering, for instance) and romanticism, whereas women were socialized in home and community building. Adventurous undertakings such as living in the wilds, mountaineering, hunting, fishing, etc.

were praised and encouraged among men but still frowned on when undertaken by

women. Consequently, some women lived these experiences vicariously through their

husbands, brothers, and friends. Some of the most revered male environmentalists of

the period—Thoreau, Olmsted, and Muir—had female friends who played important

roles in directing, mentoring, or shaping their intellectual growth and political activism.23

Not surprisingly, many of these women focused on local environmental issues, becoming amateur natural historians, gardeners, and collectors of plants, animals, feathers.

Nonetheless, some middle class White women broke this mold. Such women combined

their interest in ecology, the environment, health, moral upliftment, cultural enlightenment, and civic improvement with political activism and a desire to help the poor. Starting in the 1850s, Ellen (Swallow) Richards, Vassar College graduate and the first

female to attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology, worked and wrote during the

time of Thoreau, Marsh, and Emerson. She was the first American to apply the concept

of oekologie (ecology) to her work. Using her background in sanitary chemistry and

nutrition, Richards focused on the home environment—sanitation, waste, home economics, and food chemistry. Richards also was concerned with air and water pollution

and wrote extensively about the causes of pollution. Richard’s work helped inspire

several middle class White women’s movements—the consumer nutrition movement,

environment education (municipal housekeeping) movement, sanitary reform movement, and the home economics movement (Clarke 1973, Gottlieb 1993: 216-217).

Other women combined the ideologies underlying the urban park building and the sanitary movements and applied the concepts to their undertakings with the working class.

As crowding reached unbearable levels in the cities in the mid to late 1800s, the streets

became the social and recreational space of the working class. Children roamed the

streets and were often jailed for playing or loitering in them (Rosenzweig 1983, 1987).

During the Progressive Era (1880 to 1920s), upper middle class women—the wives

and daughters of wealthy industrialists—sought to remedy the situation by building

small neighborhood playgrounds and “sand gardens.” One prominent group involved in

this effort was the Massachusetts Emergency and Hygiene Association (MEHA). Explicating the basic ideology of the male urban park builders, the female park builders and

recreation planners believed that recreation would improve the health and moral and

cultural outlook of the children. They believed that recreation should be provided in a

structured environment that also offered opportunities to teach morals, religion, culture,

and basic hygiene. Middle class women saw their efforts to acculturate working class

22 See for example the life-long correspondence between

Jeanne Carr and John Muir and between Emily Pelton

and Muir; many of these appear in Muir (1924), “The Life

and Letters of John Muir.”

23 Lydian Emerson, wife of Ralph Waldo Emerson

influenced Thoreau; Elizabeth Wooster Baldwin

influenced the intellectual development of Olmsted; and

Jeanne Carr, wife of Ezra Slocum Carr, Muir’s former

professor, was a significant influence on Muir’s

intellectual development, politics, and activism.
16

children as the most effective means of improving the lives of the working class. They

occupied a niche ignored by the male park builders who focused on grandiose urban

parks or park systems designed with a bias toward passive recreation. Playgrounds

and small neighborhood parks, designed for children and active recreation, were sorely

needed. Although the male park builders touted the health benefits of parks, they did

nothing more than build the parks; they did not work to improve sanitation or health

conditions among the poor. They assumed that people would soak up the culture and

morals and glean the health benefits of simply using the parks. Their female counterparts, however, took steps to ensure that these benefits would accrue to the working

class. The women actively sought to improve sanitation and health and to teach the

morals and culture they wanted the working class to imbibe. Starting with the first sand

garden in a church yard in Boston’s North End in 1885, sand gardens and playgrounds

were soon built in cities throughout the country. Unlike the grand parks designed by the

male park builders, the spartan sand gardens and playgrounds were designed—and

in the early days—paid for and staffed by middle class women. The women involved

in these ventures greatly influenced designing and setting standards for playground

equipment and on the playground and recreation movements that swept the country

from the late 1800s to the 1930s (Dickason 1983: 83-98; Kelly 1996: 154-160;

Rosenzweig 1983).

Another group of middle class White women, working in the more progressive settlement houses, expanded their activist agenda beyond playgrounds, morals, acculturation, and hygiene. One of the most significant groups of female activists was found at

Hull House located in one of Chicago’s toughest slums. There, Jane Addams, Alice

Hamilton, Florence Kelley, and their colleagues linked their interest in recreation to

environmental issues in the home, community, and workplace. Activists in the settlement houses, rejected the notion (common in charity circles at the time) that poverty

was caused by immorality and human failing. Believing that urban poverty was related

to environmental inequalities, they undertook housing, sanitation, health, and occupational reforms (Boyer 1978).

The female activists worked with laborers as the working class was undergoing major

social and political transformations. During the 1870s and 1880s, a period of rapid

industrial expansion, skilled workers formed craft unions and were able to use their

skills to exact benefits from employers. This was particularly true of workers in the iron,

steel, and farm machinery industries who were able to determine the pace of work, the

organization of the job, and the rate of pay. Semiskilled and unskilled workers benefitted from the strike actions and wage demands of the skilled, unionized workers. Semiskilled workers often joined the strikes of the skilled workers. However, three economic

depressions—1873-78, 1883-85, and 1893-97—had devastating effects on workers. As

workers pressed their demands for increased wages, many strikes and violent confrontations erupted throughout the country. From 1881 to 1890, 9,668 strikes and lockouts

occurred; about 39 percent of the strikes were not initiated by a union. By the end of

the century, protests by means of strikes had become the primary defense of workers

against employers (Dubofsky 1996: 25, 38-40).

In collaboration with the working class, settlement houses established health clinics,

advocated worker rights (shorter work week, increased pay, reduction of workplace

hazards, product substitution to reduce workers’ illnesses, unionization, and improved

working conditions for women and children); helped to improve sanitation (garbage

removal) and establish higher quality, affordable housing; and undertook worker health

and safety studies. In short, they helped to lay the foundation for modern social work
17

and helped to establish the field of industrial medicine (Gottlieb 1993: 47-80, 218-227).

Most significantly, the collaboration of settlement house activists and the working class

gave birth to a working class environmental agenda, aspects of which are still present

in the contemporary working class and environmental justice agenda of today. The

agenda built around social, economic, and environmental justice contained the following elements: environmental health, community health, worker health and safety,

worker rights, safe and affordable housing, reduction of community and workplace

environmental hazards, pollution, and access to open (recreation) space. The main

concern of the settlement houses was the restructuring of the urban environment.

Over time, middle class White women still maintained their interest in natural history,

garden clubs, and local ecology, but they shifted the focus to other aspects of their

activism. By the turn of the century, groups such as MEHA, placed less emphasis on

playground construction and supervision as these tasks were turned over to cities and

other government entities with the capital and human resources to fund and operate

them more effectively. Furthermore, with few European immigrants entering the country, improved living and working conditions, and with many immigrant groups forming

their own ethnic organizations and social networks, there was less need for the acculturation, morality, and hygiene lessons from the upper class. As the Progressive Era

(the progressive political activism that swept the country from the 1880s to the 1920s)

drew to a close, some of the concerns (like worker rights) addressed by activists of

the era were being tackled by labor unions. As these changes occurred, middle class

White urban environmentalists gradually began working on more general environmental

issues.

From the 1920s onward, urban park building continued, with city and state governments being responsible for building, maintaining, and supervising parks and for

setting the standards for the equipment to be used in them. Similarly with housing,

government took over constructing public and low-income housing. The concern for

health and sanitation evolved into concerns over environmental quality and qualityof-life issues. Again, city and state governments have taken over the role of providing

basic services; citizen’s groups adopted the role of monitoring the government’s performance and lobbying for improved or expanded services. These issues transcended the

urban domain and also became a part of the suburban and rural environmental agenda.

Concerns of the working class were expressed in the urban agenda developed during

the Progressive Era. Worker rights, housing, sanitation, health, and pollution topped

the agenda. Whereas conservation and preservation battles motivated middle class

Whites to join reform environmental organizations, Taylorism (scientific management

or Fordism) impelled the working class to unionize. Between 1880 and 1920, employers introduced Taylorism to the factories. Consequently, assembly lines moved faster,

workers lost control over their work, the owners got richer, and the workers saw little

material benefits for their increased output. Union rolls swelled: from 1897 to 1904,

union membership rose from 447,000 to over 2 million. From 1909 to 1918, about

3 million workers joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The United Mine

Workers, for instance, grew from 14,000 in 1897 to 300,000 in 1917. In addition,

400,000 garment workers unionized between 1909 and 1913 (Dubofsky 1996: 94-95,

102-103, 118-119). As workers pinned their hopes to the unions during the 1900s,

however, some issues such as hazard reduction in the workplace and community,

were downplayed at the expense of creating and maintaining jobs (especially during

The Changing Focus of

the Urban Environmental

Agenda

The White Working

Class and the

Environment

Working Class

Conditions and

Unionization
18

the Great Depression) and wage increases and benefits (in the post World War II era).

Nevertheless, from 1914 to 1959, with or without the support of the union, workers

expressed their discontent about poor working conditions by taking actions such as

organized and wildcat strikes and protests and by demanding safety equipment to use

on the job (Hurley 1995).

There was considerable overlap in the interests of working class men and women.

Because both groups worked under dangerous conditions and lived in polluted communities, family and community health and safety concerns were salient. Whereas White

middle class women pondered how best to express their environmental interest in an

arena of segregated male and female experiences, working class men and women did

not have much choice about how they related to the environment. Rural and working

class women spent long hours on the farms, living on the frontier, or toiling in the cities.

They did not have the financial security or free time to ponder or undertake extensive

travel or expeditions. Like men, working class women toiled in jobs that exposed them

to toxins and other hazardous conditions. As the pace of industrialization intensified,

between 1870 and 1920, the number of female factory workers increased from 34,000

to more than 2.2 million. In 1920, more than 8.6 million women worked outside the

home (Dubofsky 1996: 114). At home, urban women could not escape the environmental hazards that pervaded the community. Consequently, their interests and experiences were closely linked to those of the men. Their concerns and activism, therefore,

dovetailed more easily. Because women had the responsibility for raising the family,

concern about housing and sanitation were paramount.

Although the environmental activities of the sixties and seventies heightened awareness of environmental issues among the working class, and although some joined

outdoor recreation organizations such as the Izaak Walton League, by and large, the

working class did not flock to reformist environmental organizations. Instead, they

intensified their efforts to strengthen the traditional working class agenda. Applying

pressure to and working through their unions and newly formed working class environmental organizations, they sought to improve working conditions, bring the issues of

worker health and safety into the national consciousness, push for safety equipment,

etc. Using the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) guidelines,

workers reported environmental violations and filed complaints, thereby forcing companies to comply with the regulations. In addition, they used collective bargaining strategies to ascertain general environmental improvements and to establish safety committees at the workplace. They negotiated the “right to refuse hazardous work” clauses,

and insisted on hazard pay and safety equipment as part of their union contracts

(Hurley 1995, Robinson 1991).

The working class was also concerned about the health of residents and the environment near the factory. During this period, working class environmental groups were

formed to reduce pollution in the community; the focus was on air and water pollution,

factory emissions, and sanitation hazards (illegal dumping and garbage removal).

Although the broadened emphasis of the reform environmental movement included

reduction of pollution, collaboration between middle and working class activists was

still limited and strained. Because the middle and upper classes no longer lived near

the sights, sounds, and smell of the factories, middle class environmental groups did

not lend much support to working class environmental struggles. The middle class

focused on preventing the degradation of their communities and improving the environmental amenities nearby.

Gender Relations and

the Environment

Occupational Health and

Safety
19

The working class, having more free time and income at their disposal, intensified their

interests in outdoor recreation pursuits such as hunting, fishing, and visiting parks.

Working class groups pushed for access to fishing and hunting grounds, improved

quality of recreation sites, and more parks. Conflicts arose between the working and

middle classes when the middle class tried to restrict the use of recreational areas in

their communities to prevent overcrowding or use by the working class and people of

color. In addition, as middle class communities passed zoning ordinances to restrict

development, the middle class perceived these actions as efforts to preserve the environment, whereas the working class and the unions viewed them as saving the environment at the expense of working people’s jobs and livelihoods (Hurley 1995).

During the 1970s, however, two major environmental disasters in lower middle class

and working class communities precipitated an unprecedented level of activism and

mobilization in these communities. The nuclear accident that occurred at TMI and toxic

contamination of Love Canal came as a wake-up call to communities nationwide.

Although they did not receive the media attention of TMI and Love Canal, many other

communities had similar problems. Before Love Canal, what people perceived as local,

isolated cases of toxic contamination emerged as a national problem of immense proportions. This resulted in the formation of working class, grassroots environmental

groups nationwide. Although some of these groups organized to clean up the toxic

contamination in their communities (reactive mode), like the middle class environmentalists before them, many of these groups became more proactive. They organized to

halt the development of noxious or nuisance facilities or other locally unwanted land

uses (LULUs).

Although the reform environmental agenda continued to dominate environmental politics, it was the emergence of many persistent, radical grassroots organizations that

profoundly changed the nature of the environmental movement during the 1980s.

Although scholars who studied political participation in the environmental movement

did not predict the increased and sustained mobilization of working class activists, the

growth of the grassroots sector surprised many (Buttel and Flinn 1974; Devall 1970:

123-126; Faich and Gale 1971: 270-287; Harry and others 1969: 246-254; Hendee and

others 1968; Lowe and others 1980: 423-445; Mohai 1991, 1985; Morrison and others

1972: 259-279; Taylor 1989:175-205). By the early 1990s, the grassroots organization,

Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes (CCHW), claimed they worked with over

7,000 grassroots groups (many of them environmental) nationwide (CCHW 1991: 2;

Collette 1987: 44-45; Suro 1989).

During the post-TMI/Love Canal era, workers became more vigilant about what went

on inside as well as outside the factory. Inside the plants, they continued to push for

improved working conditions and negotiated increasing numbers of union contracts

that observed health and safety issues (Robinson 1991). In addition, increasing numbers of occupational safety and health groups were being formed. Workers heightened

their awareness of occupational illnesses and used OSHA guidelines to file grievances.

All this occurred against a backdrop of class-action suits against companies like Johns

Mansville for asbestos-related illnesses and growing activism among coal miners suffering from black lung disease.

Outside the factories, a key factor explaining the increased growth and sustained activism of the White working class was the mobilization around toxics. Mazmanian and

Morrell (1992: 27-28) argue that the toxics issue has not followed the typical issueattention cycle postulated by Anthony Downs (1972). If the cycle were adhered to, the

issue of toxic contamination would have receded in importance in the public’s mind

Toxics and Occupational

Health
20

since it first gained national attention in 1978. This could have been the scenario if

media coverage had waned, if the quick-fix technological solutions offered by bureaucrats had worked, and if other problems had emerged to eclipse the resonance that

toxics had in people’s mind. Toxics have however, remained in the news and have

continued to be a mobilizing factor because what people thought was the worst-case

scenario when the story first captured national attention in the late 1970s turned out to

be just the tip of the iceberg. The constant parade of new discoveries of toxic contamination (each new one seeming worse than the one that preceded it) has kept the issue

at the top of the agenda of many activists and foremost in the mind of many citizens. In

addition, many large firms—some long-time providers of jobs and supporters of local

civic organizations and events—were found to be sources of the contamination. Many

people felt that the trust or social compact between host communities and corporations

was broken. People were further dismayed to find that the government, policymakers,

scientists, and other experts could not offer ready solutions or any solutions at all. In

many instances, nothing was done while the government, business, and scientists

remained bogged down in long delays owing to legal or technical skirmishes. In some

cases, people discovered that there were no safeguards to protect them from the

whims of industry. The state lost legitimacy, and people, feeling they had been deserted by the state and mistreated by big business, mobilized to shift the balance of

power and to ameliorate the situation (Habermas 1975; Ingram 1987: 155-160; Pusey

1993: 92-110). Some of these radical groups like Citizens Clearing House for Hazardous Wastes, Zero Toxics Alliance, Protecting our Lives and Resources, Ohio Valley

Environmental Coalition, and Concerned Neighbors in Action also participated in the

environmental justice movement.

Conquest, removal, and reservations—People of color lived in inhumane conditions

in the United States during the 1800s and the early 1900s. When Jamestown, Virginia,

was established in 1607, about 1 to 12 million Native Americans lived in the United

States; however, by 1890 when the last of the Native American wars ended, there were

only about 250,000 surviving Native Americans (McNickle 1973; Stiffarm and Lane

1992: 23-53; Wax 1971: 17). Under the 1830 Indian Removal Act, Native Americans

were driven from their land and forced onto desolate reservations. They lost their traditional hunting, gathering, and fishing grounds and their sacred sites. The treks (Native

Americans were forced to march hundreds of miles to relocation sites in the West) took

a heavy toll on tribes; about 20,000 Indians died on the trek west (Lurie 1982: 131-144;

Josephy 1968; Debo 1970). Native Americans, forced to live in some of the most inhospitable areas of the country (Lenarcic 1982: 137-139), used some of their traditional

knowledge and practices to develop resource management techniques to sustain

themselves on the reservations. Notwithstanding, Indians were in a precarious position in the 1860s. In California, for example, the federal government signed a series

of treaties with Native Americans that outlined reservation boundaries—primarily in

places not wanted by or too inaccessible to Whites. As the Gold Rush intensified, however, White miners responded to the federal government’s efforts to define and protect

Indian territory with violence. Bands of miners held Sunday “shoots” in which many

Native Americans were massacred to prevent them from holding land. Because of

political pressure, the California Indian treaties were never ratified by the U.S. Senate.

Indians had trouble in other states as well. In the Pacific Northwest, Native Americans

struggled with fish and game agencies to preserve their treaty fishing rights. For example, the state of Washington systematically broke six treaties signed with Native

People of Color and

the Environment

Native Americans
21

Americans between 1854 and 1855. During the 1890s, Great Lakes Indians found

themselves living on barren reservations doing odd jobs for local Whites. Timber companies collaborated with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to strip the land of trees to

transform Native Americans into farmers (DeLoria 1994: 5-7). As DeLoria (1994: 4)

argues, from the 1890s to the 1960s Indians were the “Vanishing Americans” because

most people thought Native Americans had been exterminated.

Termination and uban relocation—During the Great Depression, the BIA was ordered to find lands for homeless California Indians who were living in poverty on the

outskirts of cities or in remote mountainous areas of the state. At the same time,

wealthy, white landowners were having financial difficulties so the program was used

to assist them rather than Native Americans. To prevent the landowners from going

bankrupt, lands classified as “submarginal” by the Department of Agriculture were

purchased from White landowners and given to Indians. Native Americans who moved

to these lands were organized into tribal governments by the BIA under the 1934 Indian

Reorganization Act. Throughout World War II, Indians moved to the west coast to work

in the war industries, but they lost their jobs to returning White veterans after the war

(DeLoria 1994: 6). Toward the end of the post-Hetch Hetchy era, Native Americans

began organizing to end discrimination and bring some basic civil and human rights to

their communities. Though Native American protest organizations have existed since

the 1910s, the modern protest movement began during World War II. In 1944, young

Native American intellectuals formed the National Congress of American Indians

(NCAI) and embarked on an effort to unite Indian nations (pan-tribalism) for the purpose of influencing state and federal decisions affecting Native Americans (compensation for territory or resources, termination policy, etc). The NCAI also stressed the

importance of preserving Native American cultural traditions and institutions. Taking a

moderate approach of advocating the needs of Native Americans while participating in

the policy debates regarding Native American nations, NCAI enjoyed moderate success (Cornell 1988: 119; Lenarcic 1982: 145-148; Weeks 1988: 261-262). In the 1950s,

the BIA launched a program to remove Indians from the reservations, sell the land, and

terminate the tribal system. The BIA undertook a massive relocation program that

placed thousands of Indians in low-paying jobs in urban areas such as Minneapolis,

Chicago, and San Francisco (DeLoria 1994: 6). Native Americans responded to these

actions by organizing protest groups in their communities.

Organizing for environmental and social change—The intensified efforts of Native

Americans for equality, justice, and basic human and civil rights began in the 1940s

and 1950s. In 1960, the Chicago Conference of Native Americans produced a document—The Declaration of Indian Purpose (the final version of which appeared in June

1961)—that called for united action among Indian nations, the right to self government,

the right to determine their economic destiny, tribal nationalism, complete autonomy to

protect Native American land rights, and the right to protect Native American cultural

heritage. Young Native Americans attending this meeting and dissatisfied with the pace

of Native American progress launched an organization to speed up the process. The

National Indian Youth Council (NIYC)—founded in 1961—aimed to help Indian people

understand and support the idea of tribal nationalism and to chart a future course of

action to deal with the issues facing Native Americans. In 1964, they took action to

challenge the state of Washington’s restriction of Native American fishing rights. The

NIYC organized a “fish-in,” mounted legal challenges, and participated in many nonviolent collective actions. The fish-ins were sometimes met with violence. For instance, on

Labor Day, 1970, Indians from the Nisqually and Payallup Tribes set up a fishing camp
22

near Tacoma, Washington. Almost 300 Tacoma city police, state police, and state

game wardens armed with telescope rifles and tear gas, raided the camp. Men,

women, and children were severely beaten and arrested illegally (for disorderly conduct). The cars of the Native Americans were impounded and destroyed while in police

custody (DeLoria 1994: 12). Though the battle between Indians and the state of Washington regarding fishing rights was not resolved until 1974 (in favor of the Native Americans), NIYC, buoyed by its success in challenging a state government, undertook a

series of initiatives during the1960s and 1970s (sometimes in collaboration with NCAI)

to attain the goals of the Declaration of Indian Purpose (Lenarcic 1982: 148-155;

Nabakov 1991: 362-363).

In 1968, a new group—the American Indian Movement (AIM)—arose in the Indian

section of Minneapolis. Organized to address the issues faced by Indians living in urban areas, AIM concentrated on the part of the Native American agenda neglected by

NCAI and NIYC, both of which focused on Native Americans living on reservations. The

American Indian Movement also focused on gaining tribal autonomy and the restoration

of tribal lands (Lenarcic 1982: 148-155; Olson and Wilson 1984: 172-175). The American Indian Movement provided legal and health services and education and organized

programs to reduce crime, alcoholism, and suicides. The American Indian Movement

adopted a more militant posture than NCAI and NIYC. In 1969, AIM participated in the

occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, in 1972 led a march on Washington, DC, called the Trail of Broken Treaties, and in 1973 became involved in violent

confrontations with federal marshals and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in the

siege of Wounded Knee (South Dakota). Despite a post-Wounded Knee purge of AIM

activists by law enforcement officers, AIM gained a large Native American following that

transcended the age and ideological barriers that hampered the NCAI and NIYC. Because of their militant stance, however, AIM was not embraced in some Indian communities. Consequently, AIM activists were banned from some reservations. Nonetheless,

AIM still remains an active organization (Lenarcic 1982: 148-155; Johnson and others

1997).

Other forms of Native American protests were occurring elsewhere. In 1968, the Canadian government announced that the Mohawk Indians (of New York) should pay tolls to

use the Cornwall Bridge and pay duties on the goods transported across the bridge.

The Mohawks blockaded the bridge in December. They were arrested, tried, and acquitted in March 1969. The incident, widely reported in the “Akwesasne Notes,” a national Indian newspaper, inspired Native Americans all across the country to protest. In

August of that year, there was a major confrontation in Gallup, New Mexico. The NIYC,

some of whom had participated in the fish-ins, protested the Gallup Ceremonial Festival, charging that the festival was controlled by non-Indians and that Native American

participants in the festival got minimal support. Problems occurred in the Pacific Northwest as well. The Quinault Tribe had been pleading with non-Native Americans to refrain from littering its 29 miles of beaches but to no avail. The tribe wanted to protect its

resources, but tourists wandered over the area collecting large quantities of driftwood

and destroying the tribe’s fishing nets. The tribe closed the beach to the public in 1969.

Whites wrote letters to the governor asking him to take legal action against the tribe.

Slade Gorton (of the Gortons of Gloucester fish processing family), then Attorney General and later U.S. Senator, said the tribe did not have the “unchallenged right to exclusive control of the beaches.” He wanted to go to court to protect the rights of Whites,
23

but the beaches remained closed for some time. For the next three decades Gorton

made several attempts, some successful, to curtail Indian rights. Finally, Indian tribes

(some flush with funds from casino operations), banded together to launch a successful campaign to oust Gorton from the Senate in the 2000 election (DeLoria 1994: 7-9;

see footnote 3).

In October 1969, a day after a large convention of urban Indians met in San Francisco,

their meeting place, the Indian Center, burned to the ground. The meeting place was

the nerve-center of Bay Area Indians; they needed a new gathering place. Across the

Bay sat Alcatraz, closed since 1964. A small group of Indians landed on the island

(claiming it under the 1868 Sioux Treaty); within a few hours they were chased off by

security guards. Ten days later, however, 200 Native Americans, calling themselves

“Indians of all Tribes” landed on Alcatraz. They occupied the island, proclaiming it to

be their spiritual center, university, and social service center. Alcatraz was of symbolic

importance. Indians thought it bore a striking resemblance to most reservations: no

water, no good housing, land unfit for cultivation, and no employment; in more ways

than one, a prison. The occupation continued for 1 1/2 years. Indians in Seattle

adopted the Indians of All Tribes and invaded Fort Lawton in the northwest corner of

the city in 1970. Rather than claiming the fort under the 1868 Sioux Treaty, they used

an old federal statute that allowed the use of abandoned federal military posts to be

used as Indian schools. Through negotiations, they secured a long-term lease to use

the land. They built the Daybreak Star Center, which provided an array of social services to Puget Sound Indians. Throughout the 1970s, many Indian groups occupied

other abandoned federal facilities (DeLoria 1994: 9-11; Johnson and others 1997).

Two books, Vine Deloria’s (1969) “Custer Died For Your Sins,” and Dee Brown’s

(1970) “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee”—had significant effects on Native Americans

by heightening Indian self-awareness and spurring them into activism. Other protest

actions occurred throughout the country as Native Americans asserted their rights.

Slavery, bondage, and exploitation of resources—By the early 1800s, the Northern

states began to industrialize, but the Southern states remained largely agrarian. Slavery had been in place for about 200 years, and African American labor was used to

exploit the resources of the South. Like Native Americans, African American slaves

were forcibly relocated to different areas of the South. With the removal of Native

Americans from the territories of Alabama and Mississippi, cotton plantations enveloped the region. Slaves often were used as scouts in the campaign to open up Indian

lands to Whites in the Western expansion. Mass movement of slaves accompanied the

spread of these plantations. The 1850 census showed that most slaves (2.5 million)

were directly involved in agriculture, and most of those (1,815,000) labored in the cotton fields. In addition, 350,000 slaves worked in tobacco, 150,000 in sugar, 125,000 in

rice cultivation, and 60,000 in hemp (Bennett 1993: 96; Parish 1989: 21-31). The slaves

who did not work in the field labored as domestics, craftspersons, mechanics, gardeners, blacksmiths, carpenters, millers, seamstresses, shoemakers, stonemasons, coopers, boat and ship manufacturers and crew, machine operators, and general workers.

Some of the larger plantations resembled industrial villages. Although the slaves were

often viewed as unskilled plantation workers or as workers who were taught their

trades by their masters, this was not always the case. Some slaves were highly skilled

in a variety of trades. Some slaves possessed skills they had developed in Africa.

When Europeans explored the African shores, they encountered people already skilled

in mining and metal work. West African craftsmen manufactured hoes, other farm tools,

and handicrafts. Between 5 and 10 percent of the slaves were hired out by their masters to cities and towns, the southern railroads, the tobacco and hemp factories, and

African Americans
24

small farmers. Those hired out were primarily field hands and domestics, but skilled

slaves also were hired out. This gave skilled slaves a measure of autonomy because

they could bargain for wages and keep some of the money they worked for; many used

this income to later purchase their freedom (Genovese 1974: 388-392).

Some of the early organizing efforts to improve the lives of African Americans occurred

in the North and West. For example, in California, delegates at the 1849 Constitutional

Convention declared California a free state, but there was a fugitive slave law (slave

owners could bring their slaves to the state and runaway slaves would be returned to

their owners), and African Americans could not vote or testify against Whites in court

(the testimony law). Over an 11-year period, beginning in 1852, African Americans

organized a series of California Colored Conventions first aimed at repealing the testimony law and later at improving education for African Americans, supporting African

American newspapers, and opposing pending legislation to prohibit African American

migration to the state. The testimony law was not repealed until 1863, but even then not

for Chinese or Native Americans. Delegates at the fourth California Colored Convention

(1865) shifted their attention to suffrage; this issue was resolved by the 15th Amendment to the Constitution (Jiobu 1988a: 31).

After the Civil War, there was a brief period of Reconstruction (1865-1880s) during

which time African Americans could buy land, farm, open schools and businesses, and

vote. By the 1890s, however, Jim Crow laws (de jure segregation) were instituted to

ensure the continued exploitation and inequality of African Americans. In 1909, White

and Black intellectuals opposed to racism (like W.E.B. Dubois from the militant Niagra

Movement) founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

(NAACP)—an organization devoted to developing a legal strategy to attack Jim Crow

laws (Morris 1984:12-13; Woodward 1974).

The system of sharecropping further reinforced the inequality of African Americans.

Under the system of sharecropping, Blacks became more improvished no matter how

hard they worked. In 1898, for instance, 175 of 300 Black families in Daugherty County,

Georgia, ended the year owing a total of $14,000; 50 families broke even, i.e., they

earned nothing for the year; and 75 families earned a total of $1,600. The net deficit

of Blacks in the county that year was $12,400, and the cumulative debt was about

$60,000. The appropriated Black surplus value24 was used to rebuild the South and fuel

the growth of the North (Bennett 1993: 251; Tolnay and Beck 1991: 24). By 1910, more

than half of all employed African Americans worked in agriculture (Geschwender 1978:

169). African Americans tended horses (as smiths and grooms) and dominated as

jockeys until they were banned. They also dominated the barbering trade, and a few

barbers attained a middle class lifestyle (Jiobu 1988a: 23). Interestingly, as the 1800s

drew to a close, a populist rural movement of agrarian radicalism aimed at uniting the

White working class and African Americans against the White middle and upper class,

swept across the South. The economic elites, however, used racial fear and hatred to

prevent a coalition between poor Whites and African Americans from forming (Woodward 1974). As the first wave of African Americans started working in the urban centers

24 Surplus value refers to the profits obtained from a

laborer’s work. The profits can be accumulated by

capitalists for personal consumption or to further capital

accumulation (Scase 1992).
25

of the North, they were recruited as strike breakers and were offered the most dangerous factory jobs. Because of rigid segregation, they lived in the most dilapidated,

crowded, unsanitary, and unsafe housing. They earned lower wages and paid higher

rents than Whites (Dubofsky 1996: 12; Hurley 1995; Morris 1984; Tuttle 1980).

The great migration and the urbanization of African Americans—Between 1870

and 1900, African Americans or Blacks moved from one part of the South to another

and from rural to urban centers of the South to take advantage of job opportunities and

to follow the expanding cotton cultivations. Several social, economic, and environmental push factors such as escalating racial violence (executions, lynchings,25 imprisonment, assault, threats, and intimidation); institutionalized discrimination on public conveyances, in the courts, and in the educational system; economic and labor market

structure (low wages, confinement to the secondary labor market,26 and constrained

job opportunities); and environmental disasters (the boll weevil,27 devastating rains and

floods that ravaged cotton crops in 1915 and 1916 in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama,

Georgia, and Florida) motivated Blacks to move out of the South. In the North, pull

factors such as a less hostile racial climate and expanding job opportunities prompted

Blacks to consider migration. During the first decade of the 20th century, about 170,000

Blacks moved from the South. The rate of outmigration increased during the second

and third decades of the century; about 500,000 African Americans left the South from

1910 to 1919, and up to 750,000 migrated to the North during the 1920s. The Great

Migration marks one of the greatest redistributions of population in the history of this

country. At its peak, Blacks left the South at the rate of about 16,000 per month

(Bennett 1993: 269; Drake and Cayton 1993: 58, 62; Marks 1991: 36; Tolnay and

Beck 1991: 20-21, 25; U.S. Bureau of the Census 1920, 1975).

Discrimination increased dramatically in the North as the Black population swelled;

Blacks continued organizing to change conditions. In 1941, a group of African Americans in the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, led by A. Philip Randolph, threatened

to march on Washington to protest discriminatory treatment. The March on Washington

25 Between 1882 and 1930, 1,663 Blacks were lynched in

the Cotton Belt alone and 1,299 were executed. About

90 percent of the people lynched and executed in the

South were Black (Tolnay and Beck 1991: 27). Though

work by Johnson (1923: 272-274) and Fligstein (1981)

call into question the relation between lynchings and

black outmigration from areas of lynching, Tolnay and

Beck (1991) find such a relation existed.

26 A dual labor market is defined as one having two major

sectors: the primary labor market and the secondary

labor market. In the primary labor market, jobs have high

wages, good working conditions, good benefits,

employment stability, job security, chances for promotion

and advancement, and due process in the administration

of work rules. The secondary labor market has less

attractive jobs. These jobs pay low wages, have poor

working conditions, unstable employment, harsh and

arbitrary work rules, little or no due process in

administering work rules, limited promotion or

advancement, and limited benefits (Piore 1994: 359).

27 The outbreak that began in Texas in 1898 spread

eastward. Thousands of agricultural workers lost their

jobs in the wake of the devastation. The boll weevil

outbreak ended the single-crop dependency of the South

(Marks 1991: 37).
26

Movement (MOWM) inspired the formation of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE);

an organization committed to Black nonviolent resistance. The CORE complemented

the legal approach of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Randolph, influenced by Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolence and civil disobedience, also

called for mass demonstrations against Jim Crow laws in 1943. During this time, 75

percent of African American men were employed as unskilled laborers—janitors, porters, cooks, and factory workers. Only 25 percent of White males were similarly employed. Fifty percent of the employed African American women were domestics, and

another 20 percent were low-paid service workers, whereas less than 1 percent of

White females were domestics, and less than 10 percent were in the low-paid service

sector. President Roosevelt responded to the threat of mass disruption from MOWM

and CORE by banning discrimination in defense-related industries and by creating the

Fair Employment Practices Commission (Franklin 1967: 578-579; Geschwender 1978:

199-200; Morris 1984: x-xi, 1).

During the 1950s, African Americans launched the civil rights movement. The movement was aimed at dismantling de jure and de facto segregation and discrimination,

protecting the right to vote, and instituting fairness and equality. Movement strategies

included economic boycotts, street marches, and mass meetings. The authorities responded by jailing thousands. Throughout the period, African Americans and other

people of color continued to link racial oppression with class oppression as a way of

improving human, civil, and environmental conditions. Some civil rights activities, such

as the 1953 Baton Rouge and the 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycotts, attacked racial

discrimination in urban transportation systems (Morris 1984: ix). African Americans

successfully organized car pools and ride-shares and walked to enforce the boycott.

In Montgomery, African Americans were jailed for organizing and participating in the

bus boycott, and the courts ordered activists to stop organizing car pools. Blacks refused to patronize the buses until they could be guaranteed equal and humane treatment. African Americans concerns, of necessity, extended beyond those of the urban planners and environmentalists. African Americans demonstrated that it was not

enough to be concerned only with transportation efficiency and service to Whites; racial

discrimination, as condoned by the system, was intolerable. African Americans pushed

for quality public service for all citizens. By the mid-1950s, groups such as the United

Defense League (UDL founded in 1953), the Montgomery Improvement Association

(MIA founded in 1955), the Inter Civic Council (ICC founded in 1956), the Alabama

Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR founded in 1956), and the Southern

Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC founded in 1957) were organized to build the

infrastructure and coordinate the activities of the civil rights movement (Morris 1984:

21, 40-41, 83).

Civil rights, environment, and social justice—Civil rights activism intensified in the

early 1960s with the formation of organizations such as the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)—founded in 1960 (Morris 1984: xiii). Influenced by the

nonviolent direct action strategies of Thoreau and Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. led a

movement that used protests, marches, sit-ins, and voter registration drives as organizing tools. In 1963, about 250,000 civil rights supporters marched on Washington, and

by 1964 the Civil Rights Act was passed, and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. During the

1960s, the Black Power Movement emerged as another vehicle through which African

Americans protested racism and discrimination. Espousing Black pride, Afro-centrism,

and Black nationalism, this group sometimes voiced opinions that countered those of

the civil rights movement leadership.
27

Women and the civil rights and Black Power movement—Although women were

crucial to the operation and success of the civil rights movement and the Black Power

Movement, both movements were male dominated. Women were viewed as supporters

of the male leadership rather than as equal partners. In one of the major civil rights

groups, SNCC, women questioned their relegation to clerical tasks. The Nation of Islam

also emphasized female subservience. However, African American women, having

developed leadership and organizational skills in the church and as school teachers,

etc., played pivotal roles in these movements as the roles of Rosa Parks and Fannie

Lou Hamer indicate (Andersen 1993: 284; Evans 1979, 1989: 271; Hamer 1967).

As was the case in many cities across the country, Blacks in Gary, Indiana, linked the

struggle for civil rights with those of environmental equality. During the 1950s and

1960s, labor activists, NAACP representatives, and community residents decided to

push for recreational rights. The Midtown section of Gary where most Blacks lived, had

a severe shortage of recreational facilities, and the two existing neighborhood parks

were poorly maintained. Blacks were barred from using other city parks and living in

other neighborhoods. Marquette Park, which had a public beach, was guarded to ensure that Whites had exclusive use of the facilities. When Whites used fear, intimidation, and vigilante tactics to deny Blacks use of recreational facilities, the police did

not protect the rights of Blacks. As early as summer 1949, a multiracial group of about

100 residents and labor activists calling themselves the Young Citizens for Beachhead

Democracy, rallied at city hall, then drove to Marquette Beach to take control of the

beach. As the caravan neared Miller, one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in the

Gary metropolitan area, the protesters encountered an angry mob of Whites wielding

bats, clubs, iron pipes, and rocks. Though the caravan was greeted with a torrent of

rocks, they continued on to the beach. The protesters spread out their blankets, hung

banners, and planted an American flag in the sand. Their takeover of the beach, however, was short lived. Police arrived, and claiming that the beach was closed for the

day, promptly ordered the picnickers to leave. The group left but printed up flyers about

their excursion and distributed them at the city’s factory gates (Hurley 1995: 119-120).

The beach takeover generated publicity, but mainstream civil rights groups like the

NAACP criticized the action as unnecessarily militant. Another group promoting racial

harmony, the Anselm Forum, rejected invitations to participate because they thought

revolutionaries had masterminded the plan. The Midtown Youths Council also charged

the rally was orchestrated by “pinkos and radicals” solely to create dissension. With the

Black community in disarray about the beach protest, city officials ignored the problem.

Within a few years, however, the campaign to integrate Marquette Park had the full

backing of civil rights groups. In July 1953, two car loads of young Black women from

the NAACP visited Marquette Park. While they were at the beach, their cars were vandalized and when they returned to their cars, a gang of White youths threatened and

assaulted the women. As the youths were about to overturn the cars, the police arrived

and dispersed the crowd but made no arrests. Civil rights leaders used the incident to

demand that the city protect Black beach goers. The mayor promised protection, and

true enough, a few weeks later when Black representatives from the Urban League and

the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance visited the park, there was no trouble. Although some Blacks continued to experience hostility, no full-scale violence occurred.

As the police presence at the park receded, however, Whites escalated their attacks on

Blacks. Blacks did not feel secure about visiting the park. In 1961, another incident

forced civil rights leaders to revisit the issue of Marquette Park. On Memorial Day, a

Black man was severely beaten on the beach by Whites as the police looked on. Five
28

hundred Blacks jammed city council chambers demanding that the city investigate the

actions of the police, integrate the police force patrolling the park, and issue a public

statement deploring the actions. The mayor refused to take action and urged Blacks

to be patient. Even during the 1960s and 1970s when Richard Hatcher, the first

African American Mayor of the City, was in office, Blacks still felt uncomfortable using

Marquette Park. Racial violence still erupted at the park. Adopting an avoidance strategy, Blacks stayed away from the beach when Whites were there and used it late

evenings and nights. They also used less popular (but more polluted) beaches to the

west of the city and congregated in one section of the beach—regardless of which

beach they were using. Rather than relaxing and enjoying the environmental amenities,

Blacks were concerned with amassing large enough numbers to stave off threats and

danger (Hurley 1995: 120-122). Blacks in other cities such as Chicago and Detroit had

similar experiences when they tried to use public parks and beaches. During the 1960s

and 1970s, Blacks throughout the country also organized campaigns to reduce pollution, improve sanitation, clean up neighborhoods, and reduce the incidence of lead

poisoning in African American communities.

Appropriation of land and loss of citizenship—In the first half of the 1800s, territory

(which later became Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California) was appropriated

from Mexicans living in the Southwest. The area had a regional economy based

on farming and herding; an elite class of wealthy Mexican landowners dominated the

affairs of the region (Cortes 1980: 697-719). Under the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe

Hidalgo, which resulted from the Mexican American War of 1846-48, Mexicans living

in the Southwest were considered U.S. citizens. Between 7,500 and 13,000 Mexicans

(Californios) lived in California in 1848, and they were the power elite; however, within

50 years, they were a powerless minority living on the margins of society (Jiobu 1988a:

23-25).

During the Gold Rush, Whites (the 49ers) poured into California along with thousands

of Chinese and some Chileans. Whites took control of the gold fields (in the North)

arguing that all non-Whites were foreigners, which made them ineligible to own land

or become citizens. The state government imposed taxes on foreign miners, and even

though Californios were citizens under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, they also were

taxed. Still, the major source of Californio’s wealth (their vast land holdings in the southern part of the state) remained intact—but not for long. Soon the state levied heavy

taxation against these holdings and forced the Californios to prove the validity of their

land titles. Before this, Californios were taxed on the basis of what they produced, not

on the acreage of the land. Californios fought the new taxation mechanism in the

courts, but the protracted legal battles that ensued bankrupted the Californios and left

most of them landless (Jiobu 1988a: 23-25).

The construction of the railroads and the expansion of agriculture stimulated demand

for low-wage Mexican labor. Mexican workers were employed chiefly in the cultivation,

harvesting, and packaging of fruits, vegetables, and cotton in California and sugar

beets in Colorado and California. At the turn of the century, Mexican workers were

used in the sugar beet industry of central California to curb the demands of Japanese

workers and in Colorado to help control the German and Russian workers. They also

worked in New Mexico and Arizona in copper, lead, and coal mines (Dubofsky 1996:

3; Jiobu 1988a: 21-22). Until the 1920s, movement across the border between Mexico

Chicanos and Other

Latinos
29

and the United States was informal and largely unrestricted. Throughout the century,

Mexican Americans were offered some of the worst jobs for low wages. They were

often paid less to do the same jobs as Whites. This split labor market28 has been further

divided by gender; Mexican American women are assigned worse jobs than Mexican

American men and receive lower wages (Dubofsky 1966: 13; Takaki 1993: 318-319).

Mexican Americans often toiled in “factories in the fields” where about 2,000 men,

women, and children worked in 100-plus degree heat, had no drinking water, shared

eight outdoor toilets, and slept among the insects and vermin (Dubofsky 1996: 24).

Farm labor, repatriation, and community organizing—About the same time the

Southwest was demanding an increased pool of cheap labor to fuel its development,

World War I and the 1924 National Origins Act drastically reduced the supply of labor

from Europe and Asia. Employers in the Southwest, therefore, resorted to recruiting

African Americans from the South and Mexicans; Mexicans were exempt from the

immigration quotas of the National Origins Act (Acuna 1988: 141-143; Grebler and

others 1970: 63-65). As late as 1930, 45 percent of all Mexican American men worked

in agriculture, and another 28 percent of the men worked as unskilled, nonagricultural

workers (Cortes 1980: 708). Because men migrated to find work, women were often

left to care for the family. This resulted in Latinas working outside the home. By 1930,

21 percent of Mexican American women were employed as farmworkers, 25 percent

in unskilled manufacturing jobs, and 37 percent in domestic and other service work

(Amott and Matthaei 1991: 76-77; Zinn and Eitzen 1990: 84). As unemployment soared

during the Great Depression (1930s), the government instituted a Mexican repatriation

program, which resulted in the deportation of 500,000 Mexicans (or about 40 percent of

the Mexican American population). About 50 percent of those repatriated were American born (Acuna 1988: 200-206; Cortes 1980: 703-711; Grebler and others 1970: 526;

Jiobu 1988a: 22-23). Mexican Americans organized local protests in response to these

activities. In 1929, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) was founded

in Texas. The league promoted Americanization, greater educational opportunities,

civil rights, and greater equality for Mexican Americans. Like the NAACP, the organization launched many legal battles to end discrimination and legal segregation (Moore

1970: 143-145).

In the workplace, Mexican American workers were pitted against Asians and Eastern

European workers and were excluded from some unions. During the 1930s, Mexican

Americans formed their own unions and played significant roles in organizing mining

and agricultural workers. In California alone, they established 40 agriculture unions;

most were short lived. The most important of them was the Cannery and Agricultural

Workers Industrial Union (Jiobu 1988a: 23). In 1930, thousands of Mexican Americans

went on strike at more than 130 plants belonging to the Southern Pecan Shelling Company. Despite violent attacks and mass arrests, the strikers were successful in reversing a wage cut (Amott and Matthaei 1991: 78). Other strikes followed. Mexican American workers went on strike at the El Monte strawberry fields in 1933, the Redlands

citrus groves in 1934, the Salinas lettuce packing facilities in 1936, the Stockton canneries in 1937, and at the Ventura lemon groves in 1941 (Jiobu 1988a: 23).

28 A split labor market exists when there are at least two

groups of workers doing the same work but are paid

different wages. The condition also exists if workers are

not doing the same work, but their wages would differ if

they did the same work (Bonacich 1994: 474-476).
30

As the United States geared up for World War II, labor shortages led to a new federal

policy on Mexican immigration. In 1942, the bracero program was launched. Under the

agreement between the United States and Mexico, laborers were given contracts to

work in the United States for specific periods. The bracero program undercut wages

and thwarted unionization drives. By 1960, braceros supplied 26 percent of the Nation’s

seasonal farm labor. Growers paid the braceros less than American workers, and were,

therefore, able to reap bigger profits (Amott and Matthaei 1991: 79-80; Cortes 1980:

703-711; Jiobu 1988a: 23). Despite the formal arrangements of the bracero program,

Mexican Americans were subjected to successive waves of deportations in the effort

to reduce illegal immigration. During periods of heightened deportations, there were

“sweeps” and raids of the barrios, homes, and businesses that violated the civil, human, and legal rights of Mexican Americans (Grebler and others 1970: 521; Mirande

1985: 70-90).

Despite pressures, Mexican Americans continued to organize and to strike against

exploitive employers. In 1951, workers at the Silver Zinc Mine in Silver City, New

Mexico, went on strike. Women convinced their husbands to link issues of the home

and community (sanitation, pure drinking water) with their demands to improve wage

and job conditions. When the company obtained a court order to stop the workers from

picketing, women went on the picket lines in lieu of men to prevent replacement workers from entering the mines. Again, this strike was met with violence, but the workers

prevailed (Amott and Matthaei 1991: 78).

In addition to Mexican Americans, Puerto Rican immigrants to the United States also

became a cheap source of labor. Although Puerto Rico became a U.S. territory in 1898

and Puerto Ricans gained U.S. citizenship in 1917, immigration was slow till the 1940s.

Since then, Puerto Ricans have settled in urban centers of the east coast working in

factories and the unskilled service sector (Portes 1990: 160-184).

Chicanismo, environment, and social justice—The Chicano movement emerged in

the 1960s to create a positive Chicano self-image, to fight against racism, and to demand equal rights. Critical of preexisting Chicano organizations like LULAC and the

Community Service Organization (CSO), and influenced by the civil rights and Black

Power movements, the Chicano movement espoused a more militant ideology of

Chicanismo than LULAC and CSO. Movement leaders organized marches, rallies, and

voter registration drives (Acuna 1988: 307-358; Grebler and others 1970: 544; Moore

1970: 149-154). As a part of the movement, Alianza de Mercedes (Alliance of Land

Grants) was formed in 1963. This organization focused on reversing the illegal seizure

of land from Mexicans during the 1800s. Taking a page from the African American sitins and the Native American fish-ins and land occupations, this militant and confrontational, direct-action organization seized and occupied federal lands to make their point;

the leadership received long jail terms, and the organization faded away during the

1970s. Other organizations also were active at this time. For example, Crusade for

Justice, founded in 1965, focused on abuses of Mexican American civil and legal rights,

and La Raza Unida (People United) party concentrated on offering alternative candidates to the Democrats and the Republicans (Acuna 1988: 332-451; Moquin and Van

Doren 1971: 381-382).

One of the most successful organizations of the period was the United Farm Workers

(UFW), organized by Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and Jessie Lopez. Representing

migrant farmworkers, the UFW included Latinos, Filipinos, African Americans, and

Whites. During the 1960s, farmworkers had few or no outlets for their grievances; if
31

they spoke out about working conditions, they were fired and quickly replaced. Influenced by Gandhi and King, Cesar Chavez used various non-violent direct-action strategies in his efforts to organize migrant workers. The farmworkers launched a grape

pickers’ strike, and in 1965 a table grape boycott. In 1970, after years of violent confrontations and harassment, the growers finally recognized the UFW as the union representing the farmworkers. The growers also agreed to improve the working conditions

of the farm laborers (Levy 1975). The UFW also campaigned tirelessly against the use

of pesticides and was influential in the decision to ban dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane

(DDT). Despite the fact that the UFW was cofounded by women, Chicanas faced gender discrimination in the Chicano movement. Although they played crucial roles as

activists and organizers, many were denied leadership roles (Amott and Matthaei 1991:

82-86; Mirande and Enriquez 1979: 202-243).

The UFW organizing campaigns stimulated the formation of cooperatives. Chicanos

organized co-ops to make the transition from migrant farm laborers to growers and

producers. Using the 1964 Title III Economic Opportunity Act (that originally directed

most of its funding to African Americans in the South to relieve rural poverty), Chicanos

pushed for and obtained funding to establish co-ops in California. In 1969, Cooperativa

Campesina was established in Watsonville. The widespread attention this co-op received from the media and universities paved the way for the formation of other co-ops.

One of the largest and longest lived co-ops was Cooperativa Central (1971-85) located

on a 220-acre strawberry ranch in Salinas. Using the parcel system (borrowed from the

ejido system of cooperative farming of common lands in Mexico), families farmed parcels of 2 to 5 acres, depending on the productivity of the land. The cooperative was

responsible for irrigation, fumigation, marketing, and accounting. The cooperatives

offered the migrant farmworker several advantages: they were free from the unpredictable demand for labor and abysmally low wages, co-op members controlled field conditions, inability to speak English was not a stumbling block, they were familiar with the

farming system, co-op operations were built around the family unit, and each family had

one vote in the operations of the cooperative. In 1976, Cooperativa Central established

Tecnica Incorporada with funds from the California Comprehensive Employment Training Act to provide management and training assistance to aid the establishment of new

co-ops. Two years later, Cooperativa Central formed La Confederacion Agricola to

provide technical assistance to other co-ops (Rochin 1986: 103-104; Wells 1981: 416-

432, 1983a: 772-773, 1983b, 1990: 150).

During the post-Carson era, a third group of Latinos (Cubans) migrated to the United

States in large numbers. Unlike Chicanos and Puerto Ricans, Cuban immigrants were

from the middle and upper classes. They were the political and economic elites who

lost power during the revolution. They controlled many resources and were able to

migrate with them. Their migration was geographically concentrated in south Florida.

The Cubans also received help from the American government, which helped them to

establish themselves in the United States (Portes 1990: 169).

The Chinese—From the 1820s onward, the Chinese, and later the Japanese and

Filipinos, migrated as laborers to help in the opening and exploitation of the West—in

the Gold Rush, mining, building the railroads, farming, fisheries, sugar plantations, and

factories. For example, in 1860, in Butte County, California (a gold mining area), there

were 2,200 Chinese (Jiobu 1988a: 34). The immigration stream consisted primarily of

young men who were not allowed to bring wives, children, or other family members with

them. Asians worked long hours and were exposed to dangerous working conditions.

They were subject to severe discrimination and often were stripped of some of the

Asians Low-Wage Labor

and Westward

Expansion
32

basic rights accorded the White working class (Anderson and Lueck 1992: 147-166;

Carlson 1992: 67-84; Friday 1994: 2-7, 51, Lenarcic 1982: 140). Chinese were hired

to do menial tasks, and as the claims played out, white gold miners sold their old claims

to Chinese miners. Consequently, as the California Gold Rush ran its course, the percentage of Chinese miners steadily increased. In 1850, Chinese miners accounted for

1 percent of all miners; by 1860, they were 29 percent and by 1870, more than 50 percent of the miners (Jiobu 1988a: 34).

The railroad industry used both racial and ethnic discrimination to develop both a split

and dual labor market in the West. In 1862 when Congress authorized the construction

of the transcontinental railroad, Central Pacific had labor problems. There was not a

large pool of White laborers in the Pacific region who were willing to work on the railroads, so Central Pacific recruited Chinese laborers from the gold fields, farms, cities,

and from China. Most were acquired through labor contracting firms. At $35 per month

(minus the cost of food and housing), Chinese laborers were paid two-thirds of what

White laborers earned. White laborers benefitted in other ways too. Once Chinese

workers were hired, Whites moved up the occupational ladder to hold safer, more

highly-paid, Whites-only jobs such as foremen, supervisors, and skilled craftsmen.

The Chinese were left to tunnel through the mountains, dig through dangerously

deep snowbanks, and dangle in baskets along sheer cliff faces while they planted

explosives. Many Chinese lost their lives building the tracks across the sierras (Jiobu

1988a: 34-35).

From the 1870s to 1930s, a small elite group of Asian labor contractors also recruited

and managed the Asian and Asian American cannery workers (mostly Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos) and were able to obtain minimal benefits for workers (Anderson

and Lueck 1992: 147-166; Carlson 1992: 67-84; Friday 1994: 2-7, 51; Lenarcic 1982:

140). As large numbers of Whites lost jobs during the 1873-78 depression, anti-Chinese sentiment rose among the White working class and the unions. To further inflame

passions, Asian laborers often were used as strike breakers or to undercut the wages

of the White working class. This led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that curtailed

Chinese immigration to the United States (Dubofsky 1996: 25; Kitano and Daniels

1988: 22-23; Lyman 1974; Tsai 1986). Because of intense anti-Chinese sentiment in

the country, Chinese were robbed, beaten, and driven from small rural communities.

They became increasingly urbanized, concentrating in cities like Los Angeles and San

Francisco where they created Chinatowns (Chan 1990: 44; Kitano and Daniels 1988:

29; Tsai 1986: 67). In 1900, 75 percent of all the employed Chinese women worked

in manufacturing—in garment industry sweat shops or in the canneries (Amott and

Matthaei 1991: 209-211). Thirty-three percent of the people in the truck-gardening

business, 70 to 80 percent of those in wool milling, 90 percent in cigar-making, and

50 percent of workers in the garment-making industry were Chinese (Jiobu 1988a: 36).

From about 1900 to the Great Depression, Chinese men worked as factory workers,

laundry men, and small merchants (Chan 1991; Espiritu 1997: 29). The activities,

groups, and clans in the Chinatowns were coordinated and supervised by the Chinese

Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA). In addition, the CCBA tried to combat

anti-Chinese discrimination and acted as a liaison between the Chinese community and

the larger society (Lai 1980: 223).

The Japanese—Japanese immigration increased shortly after passage of the Chinese

Exclusion Act in 1882. Japanese workers took the railroad and domestic service jobs

left vacant by the Chinese. In 1909, 10,000 Japanese worked on the railroads and

about 15,000 as domestic servants (Jiobu 1988a: 42). At the same time, the Japanese
33

were subject to rising anti-Japanese sentiment. In 1907, Japanese immigration was

partly curtailed when Japan agreed to limit the number of laborers emigrating. Under

this arrangement, the second wave of young men leaving were allowed to marry and

bring their wives because women were not considered laborers (Chan 1990: 62;

Duleep 1988: 24; Kitano 1980; Kitano and Daniels 1988: 55-56; Peterson 1971: 30-55).

The Japanese gravitated toward farming. Using the skills acquired in their homeland,

they grew fruits and vegetables successfully on marginal land in California. In 1910,

30,000 Japanese in the United States were involved in agriculture; between 30 and

40 percent of the Japanese in California were in agriculture. Most were field hands

working under the padrone system. Under the system, a Japanese labor contractor

(Dano-san) organized a group of Japanese laborers (as many as 100 laborers) and

contracted with farmers to work the fields. The padrone system enabled workers who

spoke little or no English to work; they also maintained the cultural integrity of their

communities by working as a part of these units. Because the work groups in the

padrone system functioned as quasi-unions, the Dano-sans actually bargained for

better wages for the workers (Jiobu 1988a: 42-43).

The Japanese made the transition from farm laborers to farm owners and growers.

In 1900 there were 39 farmers, but by 1909 there were 13,723 Japanese farmers. In

1910, the Japanese controlled 2 percent of all of California’s farmland (17,035 acres

owned and 17,762 acres leased); by 1919, their crops were valued at $67 million (Jiobu

1988a: 42-43). Most of these farmers owned small plots; however, their success

spurred the passage of the Alien Land Act of 1913. This bill declared aliens (Asians

really) ineligible for citizenship and, therefore, ineligible to own land. Japanese farmers

forestalled the seizure of their properties by transferring the title of their land to their

American-born children (Jiobu 1988b: 357-359).

The Filipinos—Another group of Asian immigrants, the Filipinos, started migrating to

the United States in 1903 after the Spanish American War. Under the pensionado plan,

the first wave of Filipinos were college students who studied in the United States then

returned home to occupy high-level government positions. Soon, thousands of field

laborers migrated to Hawaii and California. Unlike the pensionados, most of the second

wave of immigrants were poorly educated, young, single men fluent in neither English

nor Spanish; 20 percent were married, but only 12 percent brought their wives. Like

the Japanese, field laborers were organized in the padrone system. Filipino padrones,

however, settled for lower wages than their Japanese counterparts in order to win

contracts. They also undercut the bids of Mexican laborers who contracted with employers on an individual basis (Jiobu 1988a: 49-51).

Exclusion, internment, and loss of land—In 1917, immigrants from India were excluded by immigration laws, and the National Origins Act effectively stopped immigration from Korea and Japan. Filipinos were excluded in 1934 (Chan 1991; Espiritu 1997:

18; Sharma 1984). About 60 percent of the Filipinos were migrant farmworkers composing, for instance, 80 percent of the asparagus growers ( Chan 1991; Espiritu 1997:

29;). Like their Latina counterpart, Asian women were at times discriminated against

even more severely than the Asian men. For example, Japanese female farmworkers

in Hawaii earned 55¢ per day compared to the 78¢ earned by Japanese men (Takaki

1989: 135). Chinese women were barred from entering the United States before the

general Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) was passed. The 1875 Page Law, an antiprostitution statute, barred prostitutes from entering the country and effectively stopped the

immigration of Chinese women as almost all Chinese women seeking entry to the

country were assumed to be prostitutes by the United States (Espiritu 1997: 18-19).
34

The Japanese exclusion occurred at a time when the Japanese were embarking on

successful business ventures and trying to integrate themselves more fully into American Society. Clubs such as the Japanese American Citizen’s League (JACL)—founded

in the 1920s–served an integrationist function (Kitano and Daniels 1988: 55). The Japanese were successful in the tuna industry. In 1916, 13 percent of all tuna fishermen

were Japanese; however, by 1923, 50 percent of the tuna fishermen were Japanese.

The Japanese introduced the poling method of catching tuna—a method that inflicted

minimal damage to the fish (Jiobu 1988a: 43).

The Japanese also continued to enter the agricultural business. By the 1940s, the

Japanese dominated a small but important segment of California (and west coast)

agriculture. Although they were less than 2 percent of the population of California,

they produced 30 to 40 percent of the fruits and vegetables grown in the state. In

1940, about 40 percent of the Japanese population was directly involved in farming,

and many others were involved in related businesses. In addition, urban Japanese

dominated the contract gardening industry. The Japanese marketed their produce,

bought supplies, and hauled products to market by using Japanese-owned businesses

developed through mutual credit associations (Jiobu 1988a: 43).

The lives of the Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, and Asian Indians improved during World

War II because their governments were allies of the United States (Espiritu 1997: 42-

43). Life for Japanese-Americans however, changed dramatically after the bombing of

Pearl Harbor in 1941. By summer 1942, over 110,000 Japanese Americans—almost

the entire west coast population—were interned in relocation camps enclosed by

barbed-wire fences and patrolled by armed guards. Because they were given little time

to prepare for the forced evacuation, many families abandoned their homes, farms,

businesses, and belongings. The internment, which lasted until 1944, devastated the

Japanese community emotionally and psychologically. It eroded the economic position

of the Issei (first generation) and weakened their position in the family and community.

This was particularly true of the male heads of households who lost most of their authority and legitimacy in the family (Amott and Matthaei 1991: 225-229; Espiritu 1997:

42-43; Jiobu 1988a: 46-47; Kitano and Daniels 1988: 64, 567).

Leading up to the Depression, Filipino padrones undercut the wages of white field

laborers, which led to violent encounters as Whites retaliated. In 1929, Whites would

contract for $1.50 to $1.70 per ton to pick grapes, whereas Filipinos received 90¢ per

ton. During the Depression, however, wages for Filipinos fell dramatically. In 1929,

Filipino asparagus workers earned $4.14 per day, and by 1933 they earned $3.30 per

day. Consequently, Filipinos began to unionize. In 1934, Filipinos went on strike against

the Salinas fields, but two rival Filipino unions undermined their attempt (Jiobu 1988a:

50-52). In addition, in the 1930s, Filipino workers in the Pacific Northwest began to

unionize (Friday 1994: 3). Farmworkers seeking out-of-season jobs labored in the

canneries in Alaska and made up about 15 percent of the workforce (Jiobu 1988a: 50).

Whereas middle class White women were considered frail, and it was taboo for them to

engage in strenuous outdoor activities, such taboos did not extend to women of color.

Hence, women of color worked in the fields, hauled heavy equipment and products

long distances, were forced on long treks as their communities were relocated, and had

to fight to defend their territories. They shared the same indignities meted out to men of

Gender Relations

Among People-ofColor Groups
35

color. Their outdoor experiences were not undertaken for the purposes of recreation,

exploration, or feminist liberation; the experiences of minority women were a function of

work, enslavement, attempts to escape slavery, or territorial defense. Women of color

did not have the time, money, or freedom to contemplate vacations and expeditions.

Because of the conquest and domination of people of color, at some points, men and

women of color from the respective racial groups and ethnic groups shared common

environmental experiences. When they were separated spatially and occupationally,

men and women had different experiences. For instance, Native American men and

women were moved onto reservations together and African American men and women

were enslaved and subjected to the same kind of work conditions. In the late 1800s

and early 1900s, however, the African American men migrated to distant cities or rural

areas to work in factories and mines, etc. Similarly, Latinos migrated long distances for

jobs leaving Latinas behind.

Asian families also were torn apart because of immigration rules—young men migrated

in search of jobs leaving their families behind in Asia (Almquist 1979: 430-450; Chan,

1990: 66; Duleep 1988: 24; Kitano 1980: 563). Employers in the West contributed to

the splitting of families. They preferred to hire single men because it was less costly to

feed, clothe, and house one male worker than whole families. In addition, an all-male

workforce was often treated as a migrant workforce; they were shifted to where labor

demand was strongest and expelled when no longer needed (Chan 1991: 104; Espiritu

1997: 16-17; Glenn 1986: 194-195). For decades, Chinese communities in America

were predominantly male—males outnumbered females by a ratio of about 250 to 1

at the end of the 1800s (Lai 1980: 223). The male-female ratio in the Japanese community was better, but still problematic. In 1900, there were about 21 Japanese males

for every Japanese female (Chan 1991: 107-108; Espiritu 1997: 20; Ichioka 1988:

164), and the ratio in the Filipino population was 14 males for every female (Jiobu

1988a: 49).

These migration patterns resulted in dramatic changes in the households of people of

color. Because traditional cultural norms were severed abruptly, the new and changing

realities sometimes meant women had to work outside the home, becoming the sole

head of the family, or that men had to take on domestic chores or traditional “women’s

work.” In some cases, the woman’s status was enhanced vis-a-vis the males because

of the responsibilities she had to assume (Espiritu 1997: 1-41). Not surprisingly, this

created difficulty in family relations and in devising a common agenda. Despite these

separations, however, men and women of color were united in their struggle to end the

racial oppression that forced them into subservient, inhumane work and living conditions and barred them from having access to most environmental amenities.

By the early 1900s, people of color made the transition from being strike breakers to

unionized workers able to express their concern about deplorable working conditions.

They continued to fight incredible racial discrimination on the job such as being stuck in

the most dangerous, dirty, and hazardous work sites with little or no chance of promotion, and being paid lower wages than Whites. People of color had unskilled jobs, which

meant they worked longer hours than skilled laborers (Whites). In 1920, skilled laborers

worked an average of 50.4 hours per week. In comparison, unskilled laborers, worked

an average of 53.7 hours per week (Dubofsky 1996: 24). Thus, by the early 1930s,

people of color began to use strikes as a way to protest and gain improvements in their

work conditions. For instance, African Americans in unionized factories and steel mills

like Gary Works staged wildcat strikes and work stoppages to call attention to their

plight (Hurley 1995).

People of Color and

Environmental

Justice

People of Color—Race,

Class, and

Environmental Attitudes
36

To understand the position of workers of color and the likelihood that they would adopt

pro-environmental positions, one has to recognize the existence of split and dual labor

markets and understand the role of race, class, and gender in structuring and perpetuating oppressive work environments. During the 1800s and early 1900s, oppression

among Whites vis-a-vis the work place and access to environmental amenities

amounted to White-on-White class and ethnic oppression. That is, native-born Whites

of Northern European descent composed the middle class that discriminated against

the immigrant and Southern and Eastern Europeans. The latter group comprised a

large portion of the working class. However, when people of color were introduced into

the workforce, regardless of their social class or ethnic or racial background, they were

subject to harsher forms of discrimination in their interactions with middle and working

class Whites. At the outset, the relationship between Whites and people of color in

America, was marked by extreme forms of oppression such as enslavement, internment, and deportations, and dispossession and denial of land. Throughout the 20th

century the oppression continued in the form of rigid occupational, educational, and

residential segregation among other things (see footnote 3).

This meant that while the White working class was able to start advocating a radical

working class environmental agenda at the turn of the century, people of color saw

racial oppression as their biggest problem in the community and in the workplace.

This is not to say that they were unable to perceive other forms of discrimination—

they did—but they had to overcome the racial oppression in the workplace in order to

relieve occupational discrimination (Hurley 1995, see footnote 3). When both the employers and the unions reinforced patterns of de jure and de facto discrimination and

segregation, workers of color were left to their own devices or social networks to resolve their problems.

On the job, workers of color had to deal with the class oppression of unsafe, hazardous

work and the racial and gender oppression of being permanently assigned to the most

dangerous jobs for the lowest wages. People of color were aware that these jobs were

the least likely to be cleaned up and made safe. The White worker, because of his or

her race, knew that with time, he or she would be moved to safer jobs. Workers of

color knew such opportunities did not exist for them. The interlocking and multiple

sources of oppression (race, class, and gender) led workers of color to support occupational safety improvements, and demand racial equality. The demand for racial

equality often put workers of color at odds with White workers who thought that safer

working conditions, higher wages, and increased job opportunities for Blacks would

come at the expense of progress for White workers (see footnote 3).

It was the image of a silent spring, a spring silent of bird song, that motivated thousands of middle class Whites to become active in the reform environmental movement

in the 1960s. In the early 1990s, another image motivated people of color to form the

environmental justice movement. They were aroused by the specter of toxic springs—

springs so pervasive and deadly that no children sang. Soon after the publication of

Carson’s “Silent Spring,” middle class Whites relocated to pristine areas and cleaned

up and slowed or prevented the degradation of their communities. Long before the phenomenon known as NIMBYism (Not In My Backyard) was labeled, middle class residents skillfully used zoning laws, legal challenges, and every other means available to

them to control and maintain the integrity of the communities in which they lived. Their

success left developers and industry flustered; but only temporarily.

The Environmental

Justice Movement
37

Because effective community resistance is costly, industry responded to the challenges of middle class White communities by identifying the paths of least resistance

(Blumberg and Gottlieb 1989, Powell 1984, Trimble 1988). By the 1980s, working class

White communities recognized that that path went through their communities as well.

As working class communities organized to stop the placement of LULUs in their neighborhoods, industry quickly adjusted to the new political reality. Consequently, the path

of least resistance became an expressway leading to the one remaining toxic frontier

(in the United States, that is)—people-of-color communities. By the 1990s, people-ofcolor communities were characterized by declining air and water quality, increasing

toxic contamination, health problems, and declining quality of life. Since the 1970s,

there have been isolated efforts to mobilize communities of color around environmental

issues; such efforts began paying off during the late 1980s (Hurley 1995). From 1987

through the early 1990s, the book “Toxic Waste and Race” (UCC 1987) did for people

of color and the environmental justice movement what “Silent Spring” did for middle

class Whites in the 1960s.

The environmental justice movement, which began to take shape in the early 1980s

with campaigns opposing the siting of landfills and the discovery of DDT contamination

in African American communities in Alabama, gained momentum with the publication of

a 1983 U.S. Government Accounting Office and a 1987 United Church of Christ (UCC)

Commission for Racial Justice study that linked race and class with the increased likelihood of living close to toxic waste sites (UCC 1987, U.S. Government Accounting

Office 1983). The UCC study claimed that race was the most reliable predictor of residence near hazardous waste sites in the United States (UCC 1987). This widely-publicized study was significant because it was the first to effectively bridge the race relations and environmental discourses.29 The study framed the environmental discourse in

terms of racial injustice as it reported the findings of a national study of environmental

inequality. The study framed the findings—that minorities were more likely to live close

to hazardous waste sites than Whites—as a case of “racism” and “toxic injustice” in

which minority communities were being “targeted” as repositories of hazardous waste

sites. The UCC study also helped to stimulate the mobilization of minority environmental activists who used the injustice frame to campaign against perceived environmental

racism and seek “environmental justice” (see for example, Bullard 1993; Taylor 1993,

2000: 508-580).

Three years after the UCC study, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry sponsored the National Minority Health Conference. The conference focused on

environmental contamination and environmental justice (Institute of Medicine 1999: 3).

That same year, 25 researchers and policymakers gathered at the University of Michigan to discuss the relation between race and environmental inequality. Out of the

Michigan conference came one of the first books on environmental inequality, “Race

and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards” (Bryant and Mohai 1992). In addition,

working groups were formed to (a) advise the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

29 Frame bridging is the process by which two structurally

separate but ideologically compatible frames are

connected to describe an issue. See Snow and others.

1986: 464-481 for a discussion of frame bridging

processes.
38

on environmental justice policies,30 and (b) plan a national environmental justice conference. The conference, the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership

Summit, was held in Washington, DC in 1991. The 600-plus delegates at the Summit

ratified the principles of environmental justice.31 Since then the principles have been

widely used in government agencies, policy institutions, environmental justice organizations (EJOs), and other nonprofit groups. During the 1990s, hundreds of EJOs were

formed and have had significant impact on corporate behavior (especially siting decisions and operations of facilities) and environmental policy and planning (Bryant and

Mohai 1992; Bullard 1993; Taylor 1999: 33-68). In 1994, President Clinton issued an

environmental justice Executive Order (EO 12898 1994)32 that mandated agencies like

the EPA to incorporate environmental justice considerations into their operations. In

response, the EPA developed interim guidelines in 1998 to help identify cases where

minority populations might experience “disparate impacts” from exposure to pollution.

In addition, the EPA and other agencies created offices and staff positions to deal with

environmental justice issues (see EPA 1995, EO 1994).

People-of-color environmental activism and the environmental justice movement grew

out of an awareness of the increasing environmental risks people of color faced and a

dissatisfaction with the reform environmental agenda. The advent of the environmental

justice movement marks a radical departure from the traditional, reformist ways of perceiving, defining, organizing around, fighting, and discussing environmental issues; it

challenges some of the most fundamental tenets of environmentalism that have been

around since the 1800s. It questions some of the basic postulates, values, and themes

underlying reform environmentalism. The environmental justice movement also questions the ideological hegemony of reform environmentalism and the tendency to marginalize or dismiss other perceptions. In addition, environmental justice questions the

racial and class homogeneity of the environmental movement, male dominance in

environmental organizations, racism in the movement (as manifested through publications, hiring practices, and the composition and recruitment of the membership and

the board), the relation with industry, strained relation with people-of-color communities, and the practice of ignoring the environmental issues that plague people-of-color

communities.

The injustice frame—“Toxic Waste and Race” and other books and newspaper articles that began appearing in the late 1980s and early 1990s had an immediate impact.

These publications made an explicit connection between race, class, and the environment. Using the injustice frame, they articulated the issues in terms of civil and human

rights, racism, and discrimination. They identified the widespread perception that

people-of-color communities were viewed as politically impotent and were either unwilling or unable to take control of and change the social and environmental conditions in

their communities.

30 This group, originally named the Michigan Group, has

evolved into the National Environmental Justice Advisory

Council (NEJAC).

31 These were developed during a series of working

group meetings held around the country 1990 and 1991.

32 The Executive order states that “each Federal agency

shall make achieving environmental justice part of its

mission by identifying and addressing, as appropriate,

disproportionately high and adverse human health or

environmental effects of its programs, policies, and

activities on minority populations and low-income

populations in the United States and its territories. . . .”
39

This framing was the obvious bridge that transformed the previous attempts of people

of color to articulate their environmental concerns in a way that linked their past and

present experiences in an effective manner. Environmental justice embodied all these

concerns and experiences. The environmental justice movement sought to (1) recognize the past and present struggles of people of color; (2) find a way to unite in the various struggles; (3) organize campaigns around fairness and justice as themes that can

interest a variety of people—these are also themes that all people of color had built a

long history of community organizing around; (4) build a movement that linked occupational, community, economic, environmental, and social justice issues; (5) build broad

class and racial coalitions; (6) strive for gender equity; (7) use a combination of directaction and nondirect-action strategies; and (8) educate, organize, and mobilize communities of color. Because many people of color still live, work, and play in the same community, the environmental justice agenda made explicit connections between issues

related to workplace and community, health, safety, environment, and quality of life.

The environmental justice paradigm—Through the “Principles of Environmental

Justice” adopted at the 1991 People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit,

people-of-color environmental justice groups articulated an environmental justice paradigm (EJP) that outlines the movement’s ideology. The ideological foundations of the

movement are (1) ecological principles—to be guided by gaia or ecocentric principles, becoming stewards of the earth, developing a land ethic, reducing consumption

of resources, taking personal responsibility to reduce consumption, a commitment to

improving access to environmental amenities for people of color, and developing environmental education programs in communities of color; (2) justice—use notions of

intergenerational and intragenerational equity to inform decisionmaking, asserting the

rights and freedom of people of color, demanding respect for people of color, supporting international human rights issues, and opposing human-subjects experimentation;

(3) autonomy—uphold treaties and observe Native American sovereignty, promote

self-determination of people of color, and improve cultural relations between different

racial and ethnic groups; (4) corporate relations—hold corporations liable and accountable for violations of environmental law and for environmental damage, seek

compensation for victims of environmental crime, understand technological risks, advocate the reduction of environmental hazards, promote source reduction, and seek to

improve occupational health and safety; (5) policy, politics, and economic processes—participate actively in policymaking and political and economic strategies; and

(6) social movement building—commit to grassroots movement building and activist

strategies (Taylor 2000). The EJP differs from the NEP and other environmental paradigms in its attempt to link environmental principles with historical and contemporary

social and economic justice struggles (hence the stress on justice and autonomy), hold

corporations accountable, and to participate in the policymaking process.

A brief profile of people-of-color environmental justice organizations—People-ofcolor environmental groups serve many constituents of various racial and social-class

backgrounds. For instance, of the 331 people-of-color environmental groups listed in

the 1992 and 1994 “People of Color Environmental Groups Directory,” 30 percent indicated they served predominantly Native Peoples (Native Americans, Alaska Natives,

and Hawaiians) and another 28 percent served African American constituents. Fifteen

percent of the groups served predominantly Latinos and Chicanos, and 1 percent

served predominantly Asian constituents. Almost one-fourth of the people-of-color

environmental groups (24 percent) served a mixture of people-of-color constituents,

and the remaining 3 percent of the groups served a mixture of people-of-color and

white constituents.
40

Although people-of-color environmental organizations trace their organizational roots

back to 1845, most of these organizations (68 percent) were formed since 1980. In

comparison, only 28 percent of the White environmental organizations have been

formed since then (table 3). The table also shows that during the 1960s, while the

number of new White environmental organizations being formed skyrocketed from 79

between 1950 and 1959 to 173 between 1960 and 1969, the number of people-of-color

organizations (particularly those that started out as environmental organizations) was

low. This is the case because during the 1960s and 1970s, people of color were involved in various social justice struggles such as the civil rights movement, the Chicano

movement, and the Indian sovereignty, fishing, and land rights struggles. Unlike White

environmental organizations, many people-of-color environmental organizations start

off as non-environmental and later adopt an environmental agenda; overall 61 percent

of the people-of-color groups did not start off as environmental organizations. In general, the later the time period in which the organization is formed, the more likely it is to

have started as an environmental organization. Forty-seven percent of those starting in

the 1980s and 63 percent of those starting in the 1990s began as environmental organizations (Taylor 1999).

Gender equality is one of the organizing principles of the people-of-color groups. Consequently, women of color play significant roles in these organizations as general and

top leaders. Fifty percent of the groups list a female as their president, chair, or CEO.

Building on the infrastructure of civil rights and farmworker organizations, the South

and the Southwest have emerged as the two regions with the largest networks of environmental justice groups.

In the United States, race, class, and gender have had profound impacts on people’s

environmental experiences, which in turn has had significant impacts on political development, ideology, and activism. Occupational experiences and immigration policies

also have been instrumental in shaping environmental encounters and experiences.

This paper presents a more complex view of environmentalism than has been traditionally discussed. The history of American environmentalism presented by most authors is

Table 3—Percentage of white and people-of-color organizations formed from

1780 to 1994

White organizations People-of-color organizations 

Started as an

Frequency Frequency environmental

Year founded (n=1,053) (n=330) organization

Percent – – – Percent – – –

1780-1959 292 27.7 35 10.6 11.4

1960-1969 173 16.4 22 6.7 4.5

1970-1979 292 27.7 49 14.8 16.3

1980-1989 277 26.3 159 48.2 46.5

1990-1994 19 1.8 65 19.7 63.1

Conclusion
41

generally limited to the perspective of White middle class male environmental activism.

The tendency to view all environmental activism through this lens limits our understanding of how class, race, and gender relations structured environmental experiences and

responses over time. It also makes it difficult to understand the contemporary environmental movement and accurately predict the rise of the grassroots mobilization and the

environmental justice movement.

The inability of the White middle class environmental supporters of the reform environmental agenda to recognize the limits of that agenda has led working class Whites,

people of color, and some middle class activists, marginalized by the reform environmental discourse, to develop alternative environmental agendas. White working class

grassroots and environmental groups differ from those of White middle class reform

groups in the emphasis the former groups place on workplace and community experiences. Occupational health and safety and jobs are still minor parts of the agendas of

reform environmental organizations, but they are major issues for white grassroots and

people-of-color environmental justice groups. In addition, issues relating to toxics, the

urban environment, and environmental risks and burdens are more prominent on the

agendas of working class grassroots and environmental justice groups than on the

agendas of reform environmental organizations. Environmental justice groups differ

from White working and middle class groups in their use of networks involved in past

social justice struggles and religious groups. They use the injustice frame to identify

and analyze racial, class, and gender disparities and to emphasize improved quality of

life, autonomy and self-determination, human rights, and fairness.

The environmental movement is a powerful social movement; however, it faces many

challenges. Among the most urgent is the need to develop a more inclusive, culturally

sensitive, broad-based environmental agenda that will appeal to many people and unite

many sectors of the movement. To do this, the movement must reevaluate its relation

with industry and the government, reappraise its role and mission, and develop strategies to understand and improve race, class, and gender relations.

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