Toxic Debt

Josiah Rector is assistant professor of history at the University of Houston. 

For more information about Josiah Rector, visit the Author Page.

"[Josiah Rector] has written a book that advances two major interventions. First, it pushes back the environmental justice movement’s genesis to midcentury union organizing. Second, and just as significantly, it firmly connects the effects of debt and austerity—that is to say, capitalism—to environmental racism...Toxic Debt is an outstanding book...relentlessly clear-eyed in its focus on contemporary injustice and resistance."—Scott W. Stern, The New York Review of Books

"A groundbreaking study that opens up new questions and perspectives in urban and environmental history, while simultaneously showing a real understanding of the stakes for present and future residents of Detroit . . . . a major achievement . . . . a new model for understanding and explaining our current environmental challenges, as well as their causes and consequences."—Journal of American History

“An outstanding book examining multiple issues of environmental justice in Detroit. . . .  Alongside the issues, Rector highlights the story of the many people involved in environmental justice activism, critically examining successes and failures in their efforts to bring about change. . . . Highly recommended.”—CHOICE

"A must-read for anyone doing work on the environment, sociology, public health, policy, or labor in Detroit and beyond . . . . accessible and important for wide-reaching audiences, including activists, policymakers, practitioners, and scholars."—Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

“Josiah Rector’s history of environmental justice in Detroit is breathtaking in its ambition and scope. Integrating environmental justice, urban history, and political economy, Rector lays out how environmental inequality came to be, as a confluence of white segregationists working with capitalists in industry, finance, and real estate at the expense of workers and communities. This dazzling debut is extensively researched, innovative, and a must-read for those interested in environmental justice, labor history, and contemporary problems that continue to land particularly hard on Black, Brown, and poor bodies and communities in Detroit and beyond.”—Julie Sze, author of Sustainability: Approaches to Environmental Justice and Social Power

“Toxic Debt is a vital record of a decades-long war against descendants of enslaved Africans who have fought to make the city of Detroit their home. Josiah Rector documents with disturbing clarity how those who fled to Detroit to escape southern racism became the targets of labor exploitation, environmental abuse, mass water shutoffs, and attacks on their democratic rights. Black Detroit has been marked for expulsion from the city because it is a community that has never been part of the corporate vision of a new kind of Detroit. What most distinguishes the book is its account of Black Detroit’s unrelenting, determined, and principled resistance.”—Mark P. Fancher, ACLU of Michigan Racial Justice Project Attorney