Love Canal Revisited: Race, Class, and Gender in Environmental Activism

Thirty years after the headlines, Love Canal remains synonymous with toxic waste.

When this neighborhood of Niagara Falls, New York, burst upon the nation’s consciousness, the media focused on a working-class white woman named Lois Gibbs, who gained prominence as an activist fighting to save families from the poison buried beneath their homes. Her organization, the Love Canal Homeowners Association, challenged big government and big business—and ultimately won relocation. But as Elizabeth Bl...