A People's History of Environmentalism in the United StatesThis book offers a fresh and innovative account of the history of environmentalism in the United States, challenging the dominant narrative in the field. In the widely-held version of events, the US environmental movement was born with the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in 1962 and was driven by the increased leisure and wealth of an educated middle class. Chad Montrie's telling moves the origins of environmentalism much further back in time and attributes the growth of environmental awareness to working people and their families. From the antebellum era to the end of the twentieth century, ordinary Americans have been at the forefront of organizing to save themselves and their communities from environmental harm. This interpretation is nothing short of a substantial recasting of the past, giving a more accurate picture of what happened, when, and why at the beginnings of the environmental movement. |
Contents
Shaking Up What When and Why | 1 |
Farming Fishing and Our Very Own Dark Satanic Mills | 13 |
Class Conflict in Forests and Parks | 35 |
Sanitation and Worker Health and Safety | 57 |
By Which Working People and Nature Get a New Deal | 77 |
Organized Labor Takes the Lead against Pollution | 97 |
Inventing Environmental Justice | 117 |
Rethinking Environmentalism Past and Present | 139 |
A Few Books and Articles That Changed the Way We Think about Class and the History of Environmentalism in the United States | 147 |
Notes | 159 |
179 | |
183 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Addams Alice Hamilton American Auto Workers began camp campaign century Chávez chemical Chicago Children’s Civilian Conservation Corps coal common Concord River County Cumbler decades Detroit economic efforts employees enrollees environment Environmental History established explained factory farmers federal Folder forest game laws game warden garbage groups Hampshire health and safety historians Hull House hunting Ibid immigrants industrial initially Ken Hechler Lake land landscape legislation living Love Canal Lowell Lowell Offering manufacturing Massachusetts Mazzocchi Merrimack Merrimack River Michigan mill girls Montrie movement nature OCAW ofthe Olga Madar operatives organized labor outdoor Pennsylvania pesticides plant pollution problems production protect radical reformers regulatory residents River rural SCP Collection social sportsmen’s clubs strip mining tion union United Auto Workers United Farm Workers University Press urban wages Walter Reuther waste Wild women woods working-class workplace wrote York