West Side Rising: How San Antonio's 1921 Flood Devastated a City and Sparked a Latino Environmental Justice Movement

A tropical depression in 1921 caused severe flooding in San Antonio, killing over eighty people and damaging the central business district. The city's response shaped its environmental policies for the next fifty years, with the Anglo elite pushing for the construction of the Olmos Dam. Communities Organized for Public Services launched a successful protest in the mid-1970s, bringing flood control to often inundated neighborhoods and disrupting Anglo domination of the political landscape. West Side Rising is the first book focused on San Antonio's enduring relationship to floods, demonstrating how disasters can expose systems of racism, injustice, and erasure and inspire activists to dismantle these inequities.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 28 July 2022
Publisher: Trinity University Press,U.S.

On September 9, 1921, a tropical depression stalled just north of San Antonio, overwhelming its winding network of creeks and rivers. Floodwaters ripped through the city's Latino West Side neighborhoods, killing over eighty people. Meanwhile, a wall of water crashed into the central business district on the city's North Side, wreaking considerable damage. The city's response to this disaster shaped its environmental policies for the next fifty years, carving new channels of power. Decisions about which communities would be rehabilitated and how thoroughly were made in the political arena, where the Anglo elite largely ignored the interlocking problems on the impoverished West Side that flowed from poor drainage, bad housing, and inadequate sanitation. Instead, the elite pushed for the $1.6 million construction of the Olmos Dam, whose creation depended on a skewed distribution of public benefits in one of America's poorest big cities. The discriminatory consequences, channeled along ethnic and class lines, continually resurfaced until the mid-1970s, when Communities Organized for Public Services, a West Side grassroots organization, launched a successful protest that brought much-needed flood control to often inundated neighborhoods. This upheaval, along with COPS's emergence as a power broker, disrupted Anglo domination of the political landscape to more accurately reflect the city's diverse population.

West Side Rising is the first book focused squarely on San Antonio's enduring relationship to floods, which have had severe consequences for its communities of color in particular. Examining environmental, social, and political histories, Char Miller demonstrates that disasters can expose systems of racism, injustice, and erasure and, over time, can impel activists to dismantle them.

Dimension: 228 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781595349736