Rachel Carson

During the 1960s, the civil rights movement had encouraged other movements, such as women's rights, homosexual rights and environmentalism rights, to come out and face problems. One of the activists who initiated a movement was Rachel Carson. 



Rachel Carson was born on May 27, 1907 on a family farm in Pennsylvania. She had enjoyed nature and writing stories since a young age and had her first story published in St. Nicholas Magazine, a local magazine, when she was ten. She began her career as a marine biologist at the U.S Bureau of Fishing, and later on pursued a career as a writer in the 1950s. 







Carson wrote while she was a marine biologist, with her first three books, Under the Sea-Wind (1941), The Sea Around Us (1951), and The Edge of the Sea (1955). These books talked about her underwater research and geologic discoveries from submarine technologies, some topics being: how islands were formed, how temperature affected sea life, or how currents changed and merged. All her book contained, to some degree, how the environment was affected by chemicals or climate change, but not until her fifth book did she question chemicals and people advocating for them openly. 






Her book Silent Spring was written in 1962, the beginning of the environmentalism movement. It warned people of the dangers from misuse of chemicals, such as DDT, and other scientific technologies that would potentially harm the environment. In her book, she questioned whether humans had the right to control nature and control who died and lived. She believed that because of pesticides such as DDT was killing human through a cycle where, the chemicals would go into the soil, water and plants, in turn infecting fish, that would be eaten by humans. 








Many groups protested against this, mainly being farmers and chemical producing factories, because this would come out of their income. She was attacked in many ways, including labeled a communist because she was taking away jobs. But, as the movement faded, others started recognizing environmental problems such as pollution and climate change, continuing the environmental movement. 



Sources: www.rachelcarson.org