ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

A Condition of “Depression and Doubt”: Racism and Lead Poisoning during the Civil Rights Era

• In Event: The History of Distrust in Medical Science

English Abstract

There has long been skepticism around the meaning of lead poisoning as a cause of sickness and disease. Skepticism and doubt created by institutions looking to deflect blame are part of the story. In Chicago, public housing units built by the 1940s were wrapped up in debates about exposure to lead paint. Public housing administrators blamed the paint industry for the danger and vice-versa. Both the lead industry and housing officials would also blame inner city Black and Puerto Rican residents for their own leaded bodies, suggesting their suffering was the result of an inner biological inferiority that made them inherently prone to disease. By the Civil Rights era, Chicago activists were vocal about lead poisoning. The Chicago Student Organization for Urban Leadership (SOUL) was formed in 1964 to combat lead poisoning among children and adults in Chicago. By the 1970s, other groups throughout the country including the Black Panther Party and Brooklyn Sub-Committee on Lead Poisoning were on the front lines of fighting this environmental danger in impoverished communities. Yet, the dangers of lead poisoning remain shrouded in mystery for many Americans today, seemingly erased along with leaded gasoline. This paper examines how Civil Rights era organizations demanded visibility at a time when the dangers of lead poisoning were often excluded from broader questions of disease and illness, in part through the lack of consensus around causation and symptoms, and reluctance to see the longer term impacts of environmental disasters and exposure from scientists and public health officials.

Author

• Richard M Mizelle, University of Houston