An Iterative Course-Based Soil Lead Research and Partnering Model to Address Systemic Racism and the Enduring Legacy of Redlining

Abstract

Widespread racial injustice calls for research that not only characterizes and responds to short-term challenges, but that also propels the interests and desired outcomes of historically marginalized communities in sustained ways. In this study, we present an ongoing Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) at Wittenberg University, engaging students with the environmental injustice of lead pollution in Springfield, Ohio. Environmental Science Research Methods students coproduce research with frontline community leaders in racially segregated lead-vulnerable neighborhoods. In 2020, the class collaborated with a black-led nonprofit, The Conscious Connect, to explore garden feasibility at existing and potential Children’s Equity Zones. To better aid planning and policy, cumulative soil lead results and housing variables were analyzed in the context of discriminatory Home Owners’ Loan Corporation redlining zones (i.e., lending risk) established in the 1930s. Ratings were assigned from A to D (desirable to hazardous) in ways that discriminated against low-income and more heterogeneous (greater percentage of black and nonwhite immigrant populations) neighborhoods. Redlined neighborhoods in Springfield have remained economically, racially, and ethnically segregated. Median soil lead concentrations were lowest in exclusionary neighborhoods (A