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The Calumet region historical guide
The landscape of the Calumet, an area that sits astride the Indiana-Illinois state line at the southern end of Lake Michigan was shaped by the glaciers that withdrew toward the end of the last ice age--about 45,000 years ago. In the years since, many natural forces, including wind, running water, and the waves of Lake Michigan, have continued to shape the land. The lake's modern and ancient shorelines have served as Indian trails, stagecoach routes, highways, and sites that have evolved into many of the cities, towns, and villages of the Calumet area. People have also left their mark on the landscape: Indians built mounds; farmers filled in wetlands; governments commissioned ditches and canals to drain marshes and change the direction of rivers; sand was hauled from where it was plentiful to where it was needed for urban and industrial growth. These thousands of years of weather and movements of peoples have given the Calumet region its distinct climate and appeal.
Drawing on historic sources as well as present-day interviews, Lead Babies and Poisoned Housing is a story about systemic racism, environmental injustice, and the failure of government. In 2016, 1,100 mainly minority residents of a low-income housing complex in East Chicago, Indiana, received a letter from the city forcibly evicting them from their homes because a high level of lead was found in the soil under their houses. The residents were given two months to move. Many could not find safe housing nearby. The site was designated by the Environmental Protection Agency as a Superfund site because of the large amount of toxic material on it. More than 1,300 similar sites are located throughout the United States. Over 70 million people live within three miles of one of these sites. Five years later, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Inspector General charged three federal agencies—EPA, HUD, and CDC—with causing the lead poisoning of children living in the complex. The EPA, responsible for the cleanup, had been aware of the situation for 35 years. The director of the local housing authority admitted to building the complex over a demolished lead smelter. When health issues arose, the housing authority blamed the residents’ sanitary habits rather than its own failure to maintain the structures. The Center for Disease Control and Preventions’s testing of blood lead levels was revealed to be faulty. In short, the very agencies that were supposed to protect these people instead neglected, ignored, and blamed them. But this isn’t just a story of victimization; it is also about empowerment and community members insisting their voices be heard. Lead Babies and Poisoned Housing records the human side of what happens when the industries responsible for polluting leave, but the residents remain. Those residents tell their stories in their own words—not just what happened to them, but how they acted in response. We should listen, not only for justice, but as a cautionary tale against repeated history.
Excerpt from The Calumet Region Historical Guide: Containing the Early History of the Region as Well as the Contemporary Scene Within the Cities of Gary, Hammond, East Chicago (Including Indiana Harbor), And Whiting This Guide is one of a series of guidebooks to states, cities, and metropolitan areas compiled by the Writers' Program, Work Projects Administration. A special unit of field workers and editors under the supervision of the editorial staff of the State office of the Indiana Writers' Project, for more than a year has been collecting, writing, and editing the material contained herein. Headquarters for the work has been the Gary Commercial Club and Chamber of Commerce, Gary, Indiana. Fringing the southern tip of Lake Michigan in northwest Indiana is an arc of land about 16 miles long, and at most, ten miles wide. Within this arc is a grouping of four industrial cities: Gary, Hammond, East Chicago (including Indiana Harbor), and Whiting. The area, through local usage, is known as the Calumet Region. The term Calumet Region, as used in the title of this book, has been arbitrarily circumscribed to mean these four cities and their immediate environs. The term is not susceptible of precise definition. Popular usages vary in their geographical delimitation of the region. Thus there are some who hold it to embrace all the territory lying contiguous to the southerly shore of Lake Michigan from St. Joseph, on the eastern coast, to Waukegan, on the western, as far south as the basin of the Kankakee River. Others restrict it to the Lake Michigan litterol from South Chicago (included) to and embracing Michigan City, with a southerly extension to the Little Calumet River. For the purpose of this guidebook it has been thought advisable to fix the western limit as the Illinois-Indiana State boundary, co-terminous with the western boundary of Hammond, and the eastern as the easterly line of the Indiana Dunes State Park. The southern line of the region has been set as the southernmost point in the city of Gary, about ten miles from the southern tip of Lake Michigan. Numerous towns, hamlets, and points of interest are treated as environs. Because of its industrial and commercial eminence and the resultant wholly industrial cities, the Calumet Region dramatically illustrates the industrial age - the twentieth century. This region, within a few miles of the eastern city limits of Chicago, lay dormant during the nineteenth century waiting for electricity and the machine age to give it life. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Most of Richard Dorson's thirty years as folklorist have been spent collecting tales and legends in the remote backcountry, far from the centers of population. For this book he extended his search for folk traditions to one of the most heavily industrialized sections of the United States. Can folklore be found, he wondered, in the Calumet Region of northwest Indiana? Does it exist among the steelworkers, ethnic groups, and blacks in Gary, Whiting, East Chicago, and Hammond? In his usual entertaining style, Dorson shows that a rich and varied folklore exists in the Region. Although it differs from that of rural people, it is equally vital. Much of this urban lore finds expression in conversational anecdotes and stories that deal with pressing issues: the flight from the inner city, crime in the streets, working conditions in the steel mills, the maintenance of ethnic identity, the place of blacks in a predominantly white society. The folklore reveals strongly held attitudes such as the loathing of industrial work, resistance to assimilation, and black adoption of middle-class-white values. Miliworkers and mill executives, housewives, ethnic performers, storekeepers, and preachers tell their stories about the Region. The concerns that occupy them affect city dwellers throughout the United States. Land of the Millrats, though it depicts a special place, speaks for much of America.
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