Overview

In the mid-1990s, residents of Anniston, Alabama, began a legal fight against the agrochemical company Monsanto over the dumping of PCBs in the city's historically African American and white working-class west side. Simultaneously, Anniston environmentalists sought to safely eliminate chemical weaponry that had been secretly stockpiled near the city during the Cold War. In this probing work, Ellen Griffith Spears offers a compelling narrative of Anniston's battles for environmental justice, exposing how systemic racial and class inequalities reinforced during the Jim Crow era played out in these intense contemporary social movements. Spears focuses attention on key figures who shaped Anniston-from Monsanto's founders, to white and African American activists, to the ordinary Anniston residents whose lives and health were deeply affected by the town's military-industrial history and the legacy of racism. Situating the personal struggles and triumphs of Anniston residents within a larger national story of regulatory regimes and legal strategies that have affected toxic towns across America, Spears unflinchingly explores the causes and implications of environmental inequalities, showing how civil rights movement activism undergirded Anniston's campaigns for redemption and justice.

Full Product Details

9781469627298

Table of Contents

Reviews

Spears constructs a thoughtful and nuanced narrative that supports a call for reform in the manufacture, use, and regulation of the chemical industry and military-industrial complex.-- H-Net Reviews

A tale of civic redemption.-- Anniston Star

Makes a powerful case for considering health and environmental activism as integral components of the long civil rights movement. . . . Scholars will be metabolizing Spears's observations for years to come.--The Journal of Southern History

Author Information

Ellen Griffith Spears is associate professor in New College and the Department of American Studies at the University of Alabama, USA.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available