Many believe that the first Earth Day was a niche thing, celebrated only in pockets. But in reality, the day was marked nationwide with mass demonstrations, rallies and learning exercises.
In Illinois, the day was celebrated from the largest cities to the smallest towns, especially in schools, as thousands of the state’s schoolchildren took the day to learn to help the planet.
Tuesday is the 55th anniversary of the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, which was the brainchild of U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, one of the first environmentalists in the national political arena.
Nelson envisioned a day as a teach-in, defined by Merriam-Webster as “an extended meeting … for lectures, debates, and discussions to raise awareness or express a position,” namely on ecological matters, in Nelson’s case. In 1980, he wrote that “my primary objective” was “to show the political leadership of the nation that there was broad and deep support for the environmental movement.”
Certainly, it succeeded. Though it is incorrectly believed today that the initial day was celebrated only in certain sectors, or was just a “hippie thing.” Earth Day in 1970 became a moment for the masses.
In New York City, over 250,000 descended on Fifth Avenue, while huge rallies were also held in Chicago, Philadelphia, and other major cities. Various Earth Day activities were held in an estimated 2,000 colleges and universities, 10,000 high schools and grade schools, and thousands of communities, large and small.
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In all, an estimated 20 million Americans – 1 out of every 10 in the nation at the time – participated in the day in some form, even though Earth Day did not fall on a weekend; rather, April 22 was a Wednesday. Nelson conceded that “I was not quite prepared for the overwhelming response that occurred on that day.
Today, Earth Day and similar activities often tout climate change as the focus. In 1970, the emphasis was on pollution and how to clean it up.
Students of all ages took the lead on Earth Day in Illinois, as elsewhere. Few locales, though, were as committed as DeKalb County, where the Daily Chronicle printed a lengthy bullet-point list of the activities of local schools (newspapers.com).
Among the actions were the planting of 1,000 seedlings at Jefferson School in DeKalb, the collection of water samples from Somonauk Creek at Sandwich High School, and an audio-visual production at the former Notre Dame High School. Many county schools held various clean-ups, while others hosted speakers.
The Daily Chronicle admiringly wrote that the county’s “students, parents, and teachers have worked hard toward the same goal – today’s massive campaign for a healthier environment.”
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Nearby, Northern Illinois University held a variety of activities to build awareness, including seminars. The Associated Press reported that NIU students “demolished a car to symbolize the death of the internal combustion engine.” The wrecked car was then “hauled … to a used car parts lot.”
At Illinois State University in Normal, the school newspaper, the Daily Vidette, reported on an Earth Day parade of several hundred students that featured “almost 150 signs naming a species or an animal or a plant on the verge of extinction.”
An editorial in the Vidette on April 21, the day before Earth Day, expanded even further. Underneath the headline “Every Day Must be Earth Day!,” the paper declared that “more than one day is needed to clean up pollution and end over-population … an Earth Day parade cannot end DDT pollution or clean up a stream or make all junkyards disappear. Yet it can make people aware of these problems," and the need for solutions.
Classes and clubs at Dixon High School organized a clean-up of downtown, sold buttons and aided the grade schools in securing films, fliers and speakers. At Jefferson Elementary School in Dixon, members of Junior Girl Scout Troop 107 held a “litter hunt” in a five-block area around the school. The Dixon Evening Telegraph reported that the “hunt” filled 12 large grocery bags.
Some 400 students of kindergarten through sixth grade at Northlawn School in Streator collected trash as they went to school on Earth Day. The effort resulted in a half-ton of garbage that was taken off the city streets. Even though the weather was rainy in Stonington, southeast of Springfield, students of the local junior and senior high school were out at 5:30 a.m. to clean up the village’s downtown area.
In Rolling Meadows, kindergarten students at Central Road School created litter bags for cars to reduce pollution, though, as the Chicago Daily Herald reported, the youngsters were “hardly able to pronounce the word.”
Older students at Central were more pointed. One girl in fifth grade wrote a letter to President Nixon, asking, “Why do we have Pickle Week and only an Earth Day?”
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Though there were critics of the inaugural Earth Day, it was generally a unifying moment in an otherwise tumultuous time in American history. The nation was just two years removed from the unrest and assassinations of 1968, and there was still rampant division on the Vietnam War. Eleven days after Earth Day, the nation was stunned by the deadly clash at Kent State University.
One of the lasting legacies of the first Earth Day was the Environmental Protection Agency, founded eight months later by Congress in December 1970 in response to the outcry of the previous April.
In 1980, Nelson 12 twelve federal acts that had become law since the first Earth Day, including the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act.
While the first Earth Day had a substantial impact, celebrations of the day greatly lagged in the years that followed. Those celebrations revived in 1990 with the 20th anniversary of the first Earth Day, and have particularly grown in recent years.
Today, Earth Day is celebrated by one billion people in some 193 countries worldwide, a far cry from Nelson’s initial expectations. However, the activities in the United States, like almost everything else, have been greatly politicized, and the term “pollution” – a hallmark of that first Earth Day – has largely passed from the public vernacular.
• Tom Emery is a freelance writer and historical researcher from Carlinville, Illinois. He may be reached at 217-710-8392 or ilcivilwar@yahoo.com.