"To Love the Wind and the Rain": African Americans and Environmental History.

"To Love the Wind and the Rain": African Americans and Environmental History. Edited by Dianne D. Glave and Mark Stoll. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, c. 2006. Pp. xvi, 271. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 0-82295899-6; cloth, $55.00, ISBN 0-8229-4275-5.)

The thirteen essays in this anthology indicate how African Americans, both rural and urban, related to natural and human-manipulated environments over more than two hundred years. Rarely were they free to do as they pleased. Instead racism, class bias, and partisanship limited their authority over the landscape that they farmed, the neighborhood in which they lived, and the spaces where they hunted, fished, swam, and enjoyed their leisure time. Editors Dianne D. Glave and Mark Stoll indicate that interdisciplinary analysis has generated new historiography, and the essays attest to the validity of their claim. Individual essays indicate how contests over space can foster new understanding of people and places. Examples particularly relevant for southern historians include essays on slave hunting and fishing, turpentine production, and park designation in Miami. Even essays about northern urban areas, including analyses of the 1919 Chicago riot and black suburban development following World War II, can inspire studies on related southern topics.

The essays indicate that racism placed African Americans at a disadvantage. Yet they also indicate that class status and political involvement created opportunities for some African Americans to negotiate their space, enjoy leisure, clean up neighborhoods, and ultimately live in white suburbia. The introduction, unfortunately, does not guide readers to this understanding, and the lack of an analytical introduction contributes to a lack of flow from chapter to chapter and to a general lack of cohesion. Regardless, individual essays stand out as models of analysis.

The essays appear in chronological order, but an alternative order might benefit readers. Those needing a historiographic overview could start with Martin Melosi's "Environmental Justice, Ecoracism, and Environmental History." Melosi positions the environmental justice movement within civil rights activism broadly defined and distinct from the traditional environmental movement, characterized as a white, middle-class effort. Readers could follow with Mart Stewart's essay, "Slavery and the Origins of African American Environmentalism," which explains the heritage of negotiation between unfree African Americans and others who controlled various environments. Scott Giltner's fine essay on slave hunting and fishing provides an example of how the unfree negotiated their access to spaces and defied authority in the process.

Alternative interpretations find equal time in the anthology, evidenced by Cassandra Y. Johnson's and Josh McDaniel's analysis of slave and freedmen involvement in turpentine production in the coastal South. The legacy of such negotiation fostered negative attitudes toward wildlands and forests among turpentine producers' descendants, which helps explain why African Americans did not place environmental recreation high on their list of leisure pursuits or environmental activism high on their list of concerns.

Environmental historians have wrestled with the ways that race and culture affected attitudes toward the environment, and several essays in addition to Johnson's and McDaniel's address this. Colin Fisher claims that African Americans and ethnic working classes jockeyed for position on beaches and in green spaces in Chicago, and this precipitated the 1919 riot. Sustained racial intimidation after the riot caused many to fear nature and avoid it. Gregory Bush's article on black use of beaches in Miami likewise indicates that many African Americans believed the environment provided valuable leisure opportunities, but they claimed their marginalized spaces over decades through custom as well as legal designation.

Several authors acknowledge that class helped define African American relations with the environment, including Dianne Glave, who argues that gardening gave southern women opportunities to earn income and enjoy beauty in their yards, and Elizabeth Blum, who claims that black as well as white middle-class women were biased against the poor, which affected their environmental activism. Politics exacerbated class divisions and contributed to race conflict, as Eileen M. McGurty makes clear in her analysis of detoxification in Warren County, North Carolina, during the 1980s and 1990s. A multiracial coalition slowly disintegrated as personal goals, special-interest politics, and racism destroyed alliances. Yet Gregory Bush explains how efforts to designate Historic Virginia Key Beach in Miami, a landmark civil rights site, succeeded largely due to African American women and grassroots mobilization, combined with an interracial coalition of urban planners, politicians, and activists who refused to let local officials forget the park and its significance to civil rights struggles.

Authors also address cultural influences that affected African Americans and their attitudes toward the environment. Mark Stoll argues that biblical interpretation and faith inspired southern African Americans who carried out their agendas within the safe harbor of rural churches, specifically Baptist and Methodist congregations. While Stoll concludes with concern about the future of such church-based environmental justice efforts, Dianne Glave outlines a recent development--black environmental liberation theology--and its activist agenda, which mobilizes urban congregations and national organizations that serve the black church today.

Contributors from a variety of disciplines ensured that the contents reflected interdisciplinary approaches. They included historians who utilize rich primary sources, spatial analysis, and literary and aesthetic critique, as well as natural resource planners, urban planners, and environmental activists who draw on their experiences to explain how racism and racial identification affected environmental issues. As a whole, the collection addresses critical junctures in African American history--slavery, progressive reform, urbanization, the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and the postmodern, affirmative-action era. Some topics, particularly emancipation and reconstruction, are not treated adequately, however, and the collection does not address African American farm ownership in any substantive way. The rich essays indicate not only the good work already done but also opportunities for expansion and further study.

DEBRA A. REID

Eastern Illinois University