Civic Empowerment in an Age of Corporate Greed by Edward Lorenz (review)

Book Reviews 119 relationship between William Sherrill and African American activism in Detroit beyond the election of 1939. The book’s organization is hard to follow. Chapter 4, “Expressions of Garvyism and Black Nationalism,” provides information the reader needed to fully understand Jolly’s arguments in the previous two chapters; reordering these chapters would have helped immensely. Similarly, the interjection of Sherrill’s project to incorporate a predominately black neighborhood into the separate municipality of Crispus detracts from the overall narrative of the 1939 election. The work is also redundant to the point of reusing extended quotations (p. 84 and p. 138), and the overall impression is that of a work rushed through production. Jolly leaves a variety of questions unanswered. While he establishes that Sherrill was content, at the beginning of World War II, to allow the European nations to exhaust themselves in war, Jolly moves directly from a June 1941 editorial to his views on the post war period without indicating what Sherrill thought about the war after Pearl Harbor (p. 173). Jolly also refrains from noting Sherrill’s factual errors, such as his naming Africa as the “largest continent” (p. 213). This is consistent with his general unwillingness to be critical of Sherrill. For example, Sherrill led the UNIA increasingly toward a role of supporting the African independence movements necessarily led by Africans. While Jolly’s own evidence indicates that this cost the UNIA the prophetic vision it had had under Garvey, which substantively contributed to its inability to attract or maintain members, he seems too close to Sherrill to offer such a critique of his leadership. Jolly’s arguments in “By Our Own Strength” are interesting and valuable, but the book is difficult to follow and marred by redundancy. Most tragically, the author fails to illuminate fully either William Sherrill’s contributions to Black Nationalist thought or the deep roots of black liberation in Detroit, largely because he tries to tie the two too closely together. Alan Scot Willis Northern Michigan University Edward Lorenz. Civic Empowerment in an Age of Corporate Greed. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2012. Pp. 340. Notes. References. Index. Cloth, $39.95. 120 The Michigan Historical Review In this case study of Fruit of the Loom firms, Edward C. Lorenz explores the intersection of citizen activism and industrial pollution during the second half of the twentieth century. In doing so, he exposes how poor corporate leadership and a lack of federal and state oversight created opportunities for environmental, economic, and social abuses. Moreover, the corporation’s history reveals the evolution of an ideology and methodology in business management that fostered the exploitation of environmental resources and people, thereby demonstrating the need for renewed citizen empowerment and widespread reform in institutional leadership practices. In a brow-raising introduction and eight thought-provoking chapters, Lorenz recounts how Fruit of the Loom subsidiaries are responsible for seven of the costliest Superfund sites in the United States. At the heart of his analysis is the Velsicol plant in St. Louis, Michigan. Established as Michigan Chemical in 1930, the plant became part of the Velsicol Chemical Corporation in the 1960s and, shortly thereafter, a Northwest Industries conglomerate. The facility produced DDT and other pesticides, but the site’s operators paid little attention to the disposal of the chemicals and the risks they posed to workers and local residents. Velsicol’s management, according to Lorenz, pioneered a different set of corporate behaviors in the 1960s and 1970s that ignored repeated complaints about emissions and contamination from local government, residents, and critical experts. These poor management practices were responsible for the poisoning of cattle-feed that led to the largest food contamination accident in American history. The St. Louis facility closed in 1978, but its toxic legacy lived on in the ecosystems of the Pine River watershed, as well as a series of lawsuits, news reports, and community forums. As tends to be the case with environmental pollution, the onus of proving corporate negligence, especially when it comes to human health, falls upon ordinary citizens. In the wake of these unfortunate events, residents of the communities impacted by the firms mobilized for action. In St. Louis, the corporation...