Dozens of boxes of paper files and computer discs containing campaign records, strategic plans, letters to the editor, action alerts, and lots and lots of maps were among the materials turned over to the Library of Congress from Aaron Mair’s home office and his Adirondack Council office in Albany recently, all in crates bound for the Library of Congress Manuscript Division.
The Library hopes to document the work of pioneers to protect vulnerable communities, often in urban areas, that are struggling to cope with the impacts of locally generated air and water pollution, excessive noise, commercial traffic, and proximity to heavy industries. Library historian Josh Levy worked with Mair and other Council staff to select and transport items for the collection.
Capital District resident Mair has been fighting to protect open space, control air and water pollution and make neighborhoods safer for residents of Albany’s Arbor Hill and West Hill, for decades. He has also worked to protect wilderness, wildlife and open spaces, first as a volunteer and eventually the President of Sierra Club, and today at Director of the Adirondack Council’s Forever Adirondacks Campaign.
“We are very proud that Aaron’s papers will be the first environmental justice manuscript collection at the Library of Congress,” said Adirondack Council Executive Director Raul J. Aguirre said. “He is a pioneer in the EJ [environmental justice] movement who is still among the most skilled and creative activists doing the work today. He is Old Guard and Avant-Garde at the same time.”
Among Mair’s campaigns included in the Library’s collection will be records from the successful struggles to shut down a state-run trash incinerator in a residential neighborhood in Arbor Hill; clean up industrial pollution and reestablish outdoor recreation at Tivoli Lake Preserve, between low-income housing and Albany’s biggest rail yard and industrial/warehouse complex; and force General Electric to begin the removal of toxic PCBs from the Hudson River.
The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States — and extensive materials from around the world — both on-site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. Collections, reference services and other programs and plan a visit at www.loc.gov.
The Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress holds more than 12,000 collections and over 73 million items, with collections touching upon nearly every aspect of American history and culture. The division’s holdings are strongest in American national government, federal judiciary, diplomacy, military history, American literature, women’s history, Black history, history of science, and the history of the Library of Congress.
“The Aaron Mair Papers include correspondence, maps and mapping data, reports, subject files, oral history transcripts, photographs, audiovisual material, campaign signs and other ephemera, and a substantial number of digital files documenting Mair’s professional and personal life and the history of the environmental justice movement,” according to the Library of Congress.
Until retirement in 2021, Mair’s profession and day job involved epidemiological cartography for the state Department of Health. There, his skills helped state officials map-out the locations of illness outbreaks and track the spread of infectious disease. Those mapping skills would also lead him to become an expert in tracking and protecting voting rights and representation in local and state government.
After watching Albany County divide communities of majority-Black and -Latino voters into the White-majority districts around them, Mair challenged the county’s voting maps and twice won lawsuit forcing the redrawing of the maps. By creating voting districts where Black and Latinos hold majorities, Mair helped to diversify county government and secure fairer representation for communities of color.
Today, Mair is bridging the former divide between environmental justice and long-established environmental organizations, many of which have been led and supported mostly by wealthy people of European heritage.
As the first Black man elected President of the Sierra Club’s board of directors, Mair found himself in the shoes of John Muir, the club’s founder, only with millions more members to motivate and guide. That experience made him a natural fit to lead the Adirondack Council’s Forever Adirondack Campaign, aimed at protecting clean water and wilderness and creating new jobs to accomplish both goals. He is working to recruit and train a new generation of workforce to take on the green jobs related to wilderness protection, curbing climate change and developing the nation’s clean energy infrastructure.
He helped to establish the Timbuctoo Summer Climate and Careers Institute that currently brings students from Brooklyn’s Medgar Evers College to the Adirondacks to learn gain the skills and credentials they will need for careers in fighting climate change. Students get a glimpse into forest management, wilderness protection, climate sciences, and life in the Adirondacks. The Adirondacks get a new set of advocates and a larger pool of talent for future climate and conservation projects.
Mair also worked to establish a new historic marker in the Adirondack Village of Lake Placid commemorating the Timbuctoo Suffrage Settlement, a Black-majority community in the early 1800s where some 3,000 Black men gained the right to vote in New York’s state and local elections by accepting a land grant of 40 acres from abolitionist Gerrit Smith. It was one of a dozen such Black-majority communities in the Adirondacks in the 19th Century.
Photo of Aaron Mair by Nancie Battaglia provided by the Adirondack Council.
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