Thesis ID: CBB001567209

“Our Lady of the Rivers”: Marjorie Harris Carr, Science, Gender, and Environmental Activism (2010)

unapi

Macdonald, Margaret F. Peggy (Author)


University of Florida
Newman, Louise


Publication Date: 2010
Edition Details: Advisor: Newman, Louise.
Physical Details: 352 pp.
Language: English

This dissertation is the first scholarly biography of Marjorie Harris Carr, who led one of the United States' most influential grassroots environmental movements beginning in 1962. For thirty-five years, Carr struggled to stop construction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' 107-mile Cross Florida Barge Canal--which would have linked the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean--and to restore the dammed Ocklawaha River Valley to its pre-canal state. Her campaign coincided with the emergence of a national environmental movement that blended the science of ecology with a wave of potent environmental legislation signed into law by President Richard Nixon. Through Florida Defenders of the Environment (F.D.E.)--a coalition of volunteer scientific, legal, and economic experts from the University of Florida and other institutions--Carr demonstrated that the barge canal represented the conservation ethos of a bygone era. Work on a cross-state ship canal first started in the 1930s as a means of providing economic relief during the Great Depression. Construction stopped when World War II commanded the nation's economic and military resources. The canal remained in a state of suspended animation after Congress officially authorized the project in 1942 but failed to appropriate funds for construction. The project was resurrected in the 1960s as a shallower barge canal that would follow the same path as the 1930s ship canal. Plans called for the completion of five locks and three dams, plus the dredging of a twelve-foot-deep channel across the center of the state. The Ocklawaha River would be dammed at two points, and the St. Johns and Withlacoochee Rivers would also be altered significantly. Carr and Florida Defenders of the Environment demonstrated that the canal was a pork-barrel project that was neither economically nor environmentally sound. Canal boosters maintained that the canal would foster improved economic activity along the canal route, but F.D.E.'s economists accused the Corps of Engineers of fabricating an unrealistic benefit-to-cost ratio based upon incomplete and inaccurate data. In addition to proving that there was no economic justification for the canal, F.D.E. challenged the Corps of Engineers' nineteenth-century conservation ethos, which viewed the environment as a collection of natural resources to be manipulated and exploited by humans for human benefit alone. The Ocklawaha River Valley--which lay in the path of the Cross Florida Barge Canal--merited preservation as a unique regional ecosystem that supported a diverse variety of native flora and fauna, F.D.E. maintained. The Corps of Engineers had failed to include the loss of this environmental asset in its economic calculations. F.D.E. sued the Corps of Engineers in U.S. District Court for violating the public interest. Using its groundbreaking environmental impact statement to bolster its case against the Corps, F.D.E. won a temporary injunction against construction of the canal in January 1971. Days later, President Nixon halted construction of the canal. Carr led F.D.E.'s ongoing battle to restore the Ocklawaha River Valley until her death in 1997. Carr's leadership of the campaign to save the Ocklawaha River Valley furthers our understanding of women's role as leaders of the nascent environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Moreover, her biography--which begins in the early twentieth century and ends at the century's close--contributes to our appreciation of women scientists' struggle to combine career and family. A lifelong naturalist and zoologist, Carr battled discrimination in academia and professional science, ultimately turning to conservation and environmental activism as an outlet for her professional aspirations. This dissertation positions Carr as a reference point from which conclusions can be drawn regarding other women scientists' experiences between the Great Depression and the late twentieth century. This dissertation contributes to the historiography of women and science, taking a longer view of Carr's career as a scientist and environmental activist. Using primary sources previously unavailable to scholars, this dissertation reveals the complexities of Carr's thwarted career as a scientist in the mid twentieth century, which ultimately contributed to her successful leadership of one of the nation's most important environmental conflicts. This dissertation examines Carr's struggle to remain relevant as a female scientist--in the midst of institutionalized discrimination in academic and professional science--and positions her at the center of the nation's burgeoning environmental movement, which was strengthened by the campaign to save the Ocklawaha River Valley and other battles over Florida's environment. Ultimately, the environmental struggles of the late twentieth century were informed by competing discourses over the best use of the nation's air, land, and water, as a new environmental ethos challenged manifest destiny, which Americans had used to justify their exploitation of the earth for centuries.

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Description Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 73/12(E), Jun 2013. Proquest Document ID: 1035268505.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001567209/

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Authors & Contributors
Wilhelm, Chris
Whitington, Jerome
O'Connor, Ryan
Freyfogle, Eric T.
Musil, Robert K.
Macdonald, Peggy
Concepts
Environmentalism
Political activists and activism
Conservation biology
Conservation movement
Science and gender
Nature and its relationship to culture; human-nature relationships
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century
19th century
21st century
20th century, early
18th century
Places
United States
Florida (U.S.)
Laos
Niagara Falls
Georgia (U.S.)
Japan
Institutions
Everglades National Park
World Bank
United States. Army. Corps of Engineers
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