Dr Brennan's research project, Environment and Democracy in Boston, 1900 to 2000, examines how ordinary residents battled the effects of racism through the development of community organizations. In Boston, ethnic minorities struggled to maintain urban villages where they could sustain their culture. From the 1950s to the 1970s urban renewal projects invalidated the property rights of working-class residents by claiming real estate through eminent domain and rebuilding neighborhoods in order to attract suburban residents back to the urban core. As a result of geographic isolation and alienation, Boston’s non-white community experienced the effects of environmental racism. Degradation of the everyday environment, coupled with the denial of essential services, operated as the foundation of how Boston’s working-class minorities perceived and experienced inequality. Due to environmental conditions, a cascading effect ensued as banks, grocery stores, and pharmacies refused to locate in minority communities while unwanted land uses such as junkyards and asphalt plants moved in. Beginning in the 1960s, Boston’s non-white community employed civil rights strategies and tactics to improve their neighborhoods. Resident-directed activism, organizing, and networking culminated in the creation of two groups that changed the trajectory of Boston minority neighborhoods: the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) and Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE). These organizations stood in the vanguard of the emerging environmental justice movement.