How did "environmentalism" come to be? When did we start realizing that many of the environmental issues our world is facing is not only natural, but also anthropogenic? The first annual Earth Day was April 22, 1970. The establishment of this event in the United States sparked a nation wide movement towards the appreciation and preservation of our resources, while combating the frivolous and wasteful mentality that the industrial revolution had sparked. Grass-roots groups realized that they were not alone in caring.
The 1960s is often associated with hippies and environmentalism. The early 1960s were also a period of great turmoil within the United States. The Civil War movement had many characteristics that soon influenced the anti-war and environmental movements. Carl Anthony, the co-founder of Race, Poverty and the Environment, makes many interesting connections that link race and socioeconomic conditions of the early 60s with a movement towards united change for the natural frontier. Anthony reminisces as he points out that through the rest of the 20th century, environmentalism remained a movement dominated by the white middle-class. This uniformity unfortunately led to some cases of narrow-minded prioritizing that focused on 'fixing' issues in areas that would benefit this demographic, but hurt others: "their priorities really reflected the issues of [concern to] predominantly suburban constituencies, and ... many actually went against the interests of the communities of color." This effected many African American families, as well as other impoverished minorities of that time.
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