Before Earth Day April 22, 1970
In 1962 Rachel Carson’s best-seller, Silent Spring, generated widespread awareness and concern over the large-scale use of toxic pesticides right in the backdoor of many densely populated communities. That same year Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin flew to Washington to discuss a proposal for then-President Kennedy to draw attention to environmental issues. Senator Nelson describes that meeting. –
“The idea was to persuade President Kennedy to give visibility to this issue by going on a national conservation tour. I flew to Washington to discuss the proposal with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who liked the idea. So did the President. The President began his five-day, eleven-state conservation tour in September 1963. For many reasons the tour did not succeed in putting the issue onto the national political agenda. However, it was the germ of the idea that ultimately flowered into Earth Day.”
Concerns for the environment continued to increase and by the late 1960s the Wall Street Journal coined the term “Breathers Lobby” in reference to the grassroots organizations lobbying for cleaner air through organizations like GASP in LA and Pittsburgh, the Delaware Clean Air Coalition and others.
And then the Cuyahoga River, (Cleveland, OH), a river saturated with oil and toxic chemicals, burst into flames by spontaneous combustion.
The awareness and interest of pollution issues was growing tremendously and -
“Even Broadway picked up the environmental theme when the smash-hit musical Hair lampooned air pollution with a hilarious song called
“The Air,” which ended in a choking chorus of coughs. Readers were sampling a range of provocative books on the environment: The Whole Earth Catalogue, John Sax’s The Environmental Bill of Rights, Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb, and Charles Reich’s The Greening of America.”
Source
Senator Nelson had finally come up with a way to generate greater awareness of environmental concerns; he wrote –
“I was satisfied that if we could tap into the environmental concerns of the general public and infuse the student anti-war energy into the environmental cause, we could generate a demonstration that would force this issue onto the political agenda. It was a big gamble, but worth a try.
At a conference in Seattle in September 1969, I announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment and invited everyone to participate. The wire services carried the story from coast to coast. The response was electric. It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters, and telephone inquiries poured in from all across the country. The American people finally had a forum to express its concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes, and air - and they did so with spectacular exuberance.”
April 22, 1970, The First Earth Day
20 million people, an entire 10% of the country’s population, participated in some element of the first Earth Day and here are some comments from the past –
“In Chicago, the sun seemed pale and distant on Earth Day, and the city’s monitoring devices showed levels of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere above the danger point for infants and the elderly. Several thousand persons attended a rally at Civic Center Plaza, where Illinois Attorney General William Scott declared that he would sue the City of Milwaukee for dumping sewage into Lake Michigan. The Chicago Tribune ran front page side-by-side photos taken during and after the rally, showing an amazing sight. When the demonstrators left, “there was no post-rally litter remaining to be cleaned up,” the newspaper reported.” Source
“Perhaps the most impressive observance was in New York City, whose mayor, John V. Lindsay, had thrown the full weight of his influence behind Earth Day. For two hours, Fifth Avenue was closed to traffic between 14th Street and 59th Street, bringing midtown Manhattan to a virtual standstill. A rally filled Union Square to overflowing as Mayor Lindsay, assisted by celebrities Paul Newman and Ali McGraw, spoke to a sea of demonstrators.
“In Washington, the focus of events was the Washington Monument and its adjacent Sylvan Theatre, where thousands of Earth Day demonstrators congregated to hear speeches as well as music by Pete Seeger and others. One of the most noteworthy statements, by Denis Hayes, made it clear that Earth Day was a beginning, not an end in itself: “If the environment is a fad, it’s going to be our last fad…We are building a movement, a movement with a broad base, a movement which transcends traditional political boundaries. It is a movement that values people more than technology, people more than political boundaries, people more than profit.”
“At the Washington Monument, a crowd of ten thousand gathered to hear folk music from Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs and speeches by Senator Edmund Muskie, muckraker I.F. Stone, Chicago Seven defendant Rennie Davis, and others. Earlier, 1,700 people had marched to the Interior Department offices to leave symbolic puddles of oil on the doorstep, and some Connecticut Girl Scouts in canoes had pulled tires and debris from the Potomac River. In Philadelphia, twenty-five thousand people heard Muskie call for “an environmental revolution” and criticize government priorities that spent “twenty times as much on Vietnam as we are to fight water pollution, and twice as much on the supersonic transport as we are to fight air pollution.” Source
“There was no point in marching to Capitol Hill, Congress had recessed so that members could return to their constituencies and address Earth Day rallies. Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and most other major American cities were also scenes of Earth Day rallies; in fact, 80 percent of all observances were urban affairs.” Source
“But the real focus was the schools. The National Education Association estimated that ten million public school children took part in Earth Day programs. Earth Day organizers said two thousand colleges and ten thousand grade and high schools participated.” Source
“There were plenty of theatrics, dramatic gestures, and attention-getting stunts. So many students in Omaha, Nebraska wore gas masks that the supply ran out. Indian sitar music greeted the dawn over Lake Mendota at the University of Wisconsin, accompanied by “an apology to God.” In San Francisco, “Environmental Vigilantes” dumped oil into a reflecting pool at Standard Oil Company offices to protest oil spills. At Boston’s Logan Airport, a group of young people was arrested for blocking a corridor to protest the development of a supersonic transport. A group in Denver gave the Atomic Energy Commission an award –
“Environmental Rapist of the Year.”
“At least twenty-two U.S. Senators participated, as did governors and local officials across the nation. The governors of New York and New Jersey signed laws creating new state environmental agencies. The Massachusetts legislature passed an environmental bill of rights. President Nixon, through an aide, said he had said enough about his concern about pollution and would be watching, rather than participating in Earth Day, and hoping it would lead to an ongoing anti-pollution campaign. Nixon had, in fact, in his State of the Union speech three months earlier, called for a national fight against air and water pollution.” Source
After April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day
Eight months after the first Earth Day, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created. The new agency brought together 44 organizations scattered in nine departments, and empowered the U.S. government to more efficiently address environmental decay across the nation. Source 
“Public opinion polls indicate that a permanent change in national priorities followed Earth Day 1970. When polled in May 1971, 25 percent of the U.S. public declared protecting the environment to be an important goal a 2500 percent increase over 1969.” Source
Senator Nelson wrote of the first Earth Day -
“Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.” Source
July 3, 2005 Gaylord Nelson died of cardiovascular failure at age 89. Three months later on September 29, 1995 Senator Gaylord Nelson was awarded the The Presidential Medal of Freedom –
“The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest honor given to civilians in the United States…Twenty-five years ago this year, Americans came together for the very first Earth Day…They came together…because of one American - Gaylord Nelson. As the father of Earth Day…He inspired us to remember that the stewardship of our natural resources is the stewardship of the American Dream. He is the worthy heir of the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt…And I hope that Gaylord Nelson’s shining example will illuminate all the debates in this city for years to come.”
List of Earth Day events in your area
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