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Environmentalism is a common pursuit in modern activist endeavors, but in the early and mid-twentieth century, it was less of a concern. Though it wasnt front and center, damage to the ecosystem from human activity was happening under the noses of American citizens. Many people simply didnt realize these effects until one woman made it her mission to change that. Rachel Carson made an indelible mark on environmental protection in the United States, and along the way, proved that in the early ages of feminism, a woman had the power to make a difference.Young Rachel LouiseAn information board at the Rachel Carson Homestead in Springdale, PA. Source: Wikimedia CommonsRachel Louise Carson, born on May 27th, 1907, was the third and youngest child of Robert and Maria Carson. She grew up in Springdale, Pennsylvania, a small town near Pittsburgh. At a young age, Carson developed a love for nature, inspired by her mothers same interest, and a talent for writing. By the age of 10, she had been published in a childrens magazine.Neither her older brother nor her sister completed high school, and Rachel became the first child in her family to do so. She continued her education at Pennsylvania College for Women, now Chatham College. Carson originally planned to major in English, but changed her focus to biology partway through her studies. The ocean was of special interest to her, and her collegiate work included a research project in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. She graduated magna cum laude in 1929. A Masters degree in Zoology followed at Johns Hopkins University, but unfortunately, her desire to pursue a doctorate was foiled by strained family finances.Woods Hole, MA, was one of the locations that helped to develop Rachels love for the ocean and the life within it. Source: Kenneth C. Zirkel/Wikimedia CommonsRachel began looking for a career to support her family, which would eventually include her two orphaned nieces. It was the onset of the Great Depression, and jobs were hard to come by, especially in the field of biology, where opportunities for women at the time were severely limited. She looked for a job in teaching, but failing to secure one, took the civil service exam. She outscored all of the other applicants to become the second woman ever hired by the US Bureau of Fisheries in 1936.A Daring CareerA portrait of Rachel Carson. Source: Smithsonian Institute Archives/Wikimedia CommonsCarsons job at the Bureau of Fisheries allowed her to combine her two talents and interestswriting and natural sciences. She appeared on public radio programs and made brochures to help citizens understand the latest scientific information. She published several articles, most of them relating to marine biology. Eventually, she was promoted to Editor-in-Chief for all US Fish & Wildlife Service publications (The Bureau of Fisheries was merged with the Bureau of Biological Survey to create the Service in 1940).A view from the Rachel Carson Wildlife Refuge in Maine. Source: Hollingsworth John and Karen, US Fish and Wildlife Service/Wikimedia CommonsIn the meantime, Carson was also publishing independent work. In 1937, her article Undersea was published in the Atlantic Monthly, and she was recruited to expand the piece into a full-length book. Her first book, Under the Sea-Wind, was published in 1941, and it established Carsons celebrated writing style, displaying her ability to combine the scientific with the literary to engage audiences. While her writing style was appreciated, Under the Sea-Wind lagged in sales. Her second book, The Sea Around Us, released in 1951, was much more successful. It broke records by staying on the New York Times Bestseller list for 86 weeks, and won a National Book Award for nonfiction as well. The book highlighted Carsons love for the sea and is often described as poetic.Amongst her successes, Rachel continued to care for her ailing mother and adopted her grandnephew, Roger Christie. She developed a notable friendship with a woman named Dorothy Freeman, who had written to her after reading her novels. Freeman summered on the coast of Maine, and Carson soon began spending a great deal of time in Maine with her friend. There is a great deal of speculation about their intimate friendship, and Carson is often labeled as queer as a result. The pair wrote to one another frequently when they were apart, and they destroyed many of their letters before Carsons death.Creating Environmental ConsciousnessStanding in the Atlantic Ocean with fellow scientist Robert Hines. Source: US Fish & Wildlife Service/Wikimedia CommonsThe Sea Around Us was followed in 1955 by The Edge of the Sea, which explores the ecology of the oceans shoreline. Carsons three ocean-centered novels are considered The Sea Trilogy today, but their acclaim paled in comparison to that of her fourth novel, Silent Spring, published in 1962. Silent Spring was first published as a three-part series in The New Yorker before its release as a book. This novel exposed America to the threat of chemical pesticides, particularly Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, or DDT. After World War II, DDT became widely used throughout the United States to kill insects that threatened Americas farms and home gardens. However, it became apparent that the chemical was killing multiple types of wildlife. It caused eggshell thinning in birds, playing a role in the decline of creatures such as the Bald Eagle. In addition, DDTs effects on humans hadnt been studied in depth. In Silent Spring, Carson encouraged both the government and the public to look at pesticide use with a new concern.The Impact of Silent SpringA smiling portrait of Carson. Source: Wikimedia CommonsSilent Spring was an immediate sensation, igniting controversy on a national level. Chemical companies lashed out at Carson, attempting to discredit her as a hysterical woman. Former Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson wrote to former president Dwight D. Eisenhower, saying that Carson was probably a communist and wondered why a spinster was so worried about genetics. She was called a pseudoscientist and faddist in the media. Several businesses pulled ads from CBS after they planned a special on Carsons work in April 1963. 15 million viewers watched the special regardless, and President Kennedys Science Advisory Committee soon released a report validating Carsons research.These two factors launched public concern to new levels. Carson testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, advocating for new labeling on chemical products. The environmental awareness that resulted from Silent Spring would only grow, and DDT was eventually banned for use in the United States. The burden of proof around pesticide and chemical safety was shifted to manufacturers of such products, and regulations grew around their use.The Rachel Carson Conservation Park is located in Montgomery County, Maryland. Source: John Brighenti/Wikimedia CommonsHidden from public knowledge was Carsons diagnosis of breast cancer, which she received in 1960. In fact, she told only her closest friends and family, fearing that after Silent Spring was published, the information would be used against her somehow. She underwent surgeries and therapies such as radiation, but her illness was deemed terminal. Despite her health, she went on to publish Silent Spring and continue advocacy work after its publication. Although she understood the importance of Silent Spring, Carson expressed disappointment that it was this work for which she would be remembered, rather than her true love, the ocean and its biology. She died on April 14, 1964, at her home in Silver Spring, Maryland.Remembering Carson TodayRachel Carson conducting research with fellow scientist Bob Hines in the Atlantic Ocean in 1952. Source: US Fish & Wildlife Service/Wikimedia CommonsIn the modern era, Silent Spring remains celebrated as a seminal work in environmental and scientific literature. The book was celebrated anew in 2012 with the release of a 50th anniversary edition, which the Natural Resources Defense Council called more relevant than ever.The National Audubon honors American women who advance conservation with the Rachel Carson Award annually. However, Carson isnt just remembered in America. The British Ecological Society awards the Rachel Carson Prize, recognizing early-career scientific authors focusing on people and nature, and Applied Microbiology International celebrates outstanding environmental microbiology progress with the Rachel Carson Environmental Conservation Excellence Award. In 1966, the US Fish & Wildlife Service, along with the state of Maine, established the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. It covers 50 miles of coastline in York and Cumberland counties in the southern part of the state, including boreal forests, dunes, meadows, and coastline.A Rachel Carson monument in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Source: Laura A. Macaluso/Wikimedia CommonsRachel Carson made incredible strides for environmental awareness in the United States. Because of her, the natural world has been elevated and recognized for its importance. Dedication to its preservation and conservation is a direct result of her work. In addition, she proved that women were qualified to play an integral role in the scientific world. Carson challenged the idea that humans were superior to nature, and essentially created the modern environmental movement that is so important to the world today.

Be my victim. With these words, an icon of horror was born in 1992s Candyman. The vengeful spirit of a Black artist lynched for having an illicit affair with a white woman, the titular killer begins terrorizing Helen Lyle, a graduate student researching the Candyman legend, which shes sure is a myth.However, he quickly proves to be all too real. And when hes summoned after his name is said into a mirror, he kills his victims with his rusty hook-hand.Universal/MGMActor Tony Todd as Candyman in the 1992 film.Throughout the course of the movie, Lyle uncovers the true story of Candyman while encountering the more terrifying everyday realities of poverty, police indifference, and drugs that plagued the lives of Black Chicagoans and had been for decades.Since the film, Candyman has become a famous urban legend of its own. The characters chilling demeanor and tragic backstory have resonated with generations of horror fans, leaving a lasting legacy that keeps viewers asking: Is Candyman real?From a history of racial terror in America to one Chicago womans disturbing murder, the true story of Candyman is even more tragic and frightening than the movie itself.Why Ruthie Mae McCoys Murder Is Part Of The True Story Of CandymanDavid WilsonABLA Homes (made up of the Jane Addams Homes, Robert Brooks Homes, Loomis Courts and Grace Abbott Homes) in Chicagos South Side, where Ruthie May McCoy and 17,000 others lived.Though the events of Candyman may seem like they could never happen in real life, one story suggests otherwise: the tragic murder of Ruthie Mae McCoy, a lonely, mentally ill resident of the ABLA homes on Chicagos South Side. On the night of April 22, 1987, a terrified Ruthie called 911 to request help from the police. She told the dispatcher that someone in the apartment next door was trying to come through her bathroom mirror. They throwed the cabinet down, she said, confusing the dispatcher, who thought she must be crazy.What the dispatcher didnt know is that McCoy was right. Narrow passages between apartments allowed maintenance workers easy access, but they also became a popular way for burglars to break in by pushing the bathroom cabinet out of the wall. Although a neighbor reported gunshots coming from McCoys apartment, police chose not to break down the door due to the risk of being sued by residents had they done so. When a building superintendent finally drilled the lock two days later, he discovered McCoys body face-down on the floor, shot four times. History Uncovered Podcast Episode 7: The Real-Life Stories Behind Candyman In 1987, Ruthie Mae McCoy was found murdered inside her Chicago apartment after telling police that someone was trying to break in through her bathroom mirror and with that, the story of Candyman was born.The movie contains several elements of this sad tale. Candymans first confirmed victim is Ruthie Jean, a Cabrini-Green resident murdered by someone who came through her bathroom mirror. Like Ruthie McCoy, neighbors, including the coincidentally-named Ann Marie McCoy, saw Ruthie Jean as crazy. And like Ruthie McCoy, Ruthie Jean called the police, only to die alone and without help.No one is quite sure how the details of McCoys murder ended up in the movie. Its possible that director Bernard Rose learned of McCoys murder after deciding to shoot his movie in Chicago. Its also been suggested that John Malkovich had an interest in making a movie about the story, and shared the details with Rose. Either way, the case became part of the true story behind Candyman.And whats also known for certain is that McCoys death was far from unusual in Chicagos public housing.Poverty And Crime In Chicagos Cabrini-Green HomesRalf-Finn Hestoft / Getty ImagesA policewoman searches the jacket of a teenager for drugs and weapons in the graffiti-covered Cabrini Green Housing Project.The movie takes place and was partially filmed at the CabriniGreen housing project on Chicagos Near North Side. Cabrini-Green, like the ABLA homes where Ruth McCoy lived and died, was built in the early 1940s to house thousands of Black Americans who came to Chicago for work and to escape the terror of the Jim Crow South, largely during the Great Migration. The modern apartments featured gas stoves, indoor plumbing and bathrooms, hot water, and climate control to offer comfort to residents through the brutal cold of Lake Michigan winters. This early promise held out, and the homes appeared in television shows like Good Times as a model of a decent standard of living.But racism fueled neglect from the Chicago Housing Authority, which transformed Cabrini-Green into a nightmare. By the 1990s, in full view of Sears Tower, 15,000 people, almost all African American, lived in dilapidated buildings rife with crime and the drug trade. Library of CongressResidents Elma, Tasha Betty, and Steve in their apartment in the ABLA Homes, 1996.Around the time Candyman premiered in 1992, a report revealed that only nine percent of Cabrini residents had access to paying jobs. The rest relied on public assistance, and many turned to crime in order to survive. Particularly telling are some of the words Ruth McCoy spoke to the police dispatcher: The elevators working. Elevators, lights, and utilities were so often out of order that, when they did function, it was worth mentioning.By the time the film crew arrived to shoot the disturbing interior of the Candymans lair, they didnt have to do much to make it convincing. Thirty years of neglect had already done their work for them.Similarly, Americas troubling trend of violence against Black men, and particularly those who formed relationships with white women, set the stage for another crucial plot point in Candyman: the tragic villains origin story. Is Candyman Real? True Accounts Of Interracial Relationships Inciting ViolenceWikimedia CommonsFormer champion boxer Jack Johnson and his wife Etta Duryea. Their 1911 marriage sparked violent opposition at the time, and a second marriage to another white woman resulted in Johnson being jailed for years.In the film, the talented Black artist Daniel Robitaille fell in love with and impregnated a white woman whose portrait he was painting back in 1890. Upon discovery, her father hires a gang to beat him, saw off his hand and replace it with a hook. They then covered him in honey and let bees sting him to death. And in death, he became Candyman.Helen Lyle is implied to be the reincarnation of Candymans white lover. This aspect of the story is especially terrifying because the risk to interracial couples and to Black men in particular was all too real throughout the history of the United States.The timing is an important detail. By the late 19th century, white mobs took their anger out on their Black neighbors, with public lynchings becoming common.In 1880, for example, lynch mobs murdered 40 African Americans. By 1890, the year cited in the movie as the start of the Candyman legend, that number had more than doubled to 85and those were only the recorded killings. In fact, widespread violence was so popular that mobs even organized lynching bees, a grotesque, murderous counterpart to quilting bees or spelling bees.Wikimedia CommonsVictims of a 1908 lynching in Kentucky. Bodies were often left in public for days, their murderers having no need to fear arrest by local law enforcement.No one was spared from this brutality. Even the world-famous boxer Jack Johnson, upon marrying a white woman, was hounded by a white mob in Chicago in 1911. In 1924, Cook Countys only known lynching victim, 33-year old William Bell, was beaten to death because The dead man was suspected of having attempted to attack one of two white girls, but neither girl could identify Bell as the assailant.The lynching described in Candyman remains so terrifying because it was a lived, daily reality for generations of African Americans, whose reflection can be seen in the terror experienced by the Candyman. In fact, it wasnt until the 1967 Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia that interracial couples gained legal recognition for their partnerships, by which time thousands of attacks and murders had been committed against African Americans all over the country. In February 2020, the House of Representatives passed a bill making lynching a federal crime. Beyond the real terrors of the Black experience in the United States, Candyman also expertly draws on myths, stories, and urban legends to create a new horror icon with deep roots in familiar tales. Bloody Mary, Clive Barker, And The Legends Behind CandymanUniversal and MGMTony Todd was reportedly paid $1,000 for every sting he received from the live bees used in the film. He was stung 23 times.So who is Candyman? The original Candyman was a character in British horror writer Clive Barkers 1985 story The Forbidden. In this story, the titular character haunts a public housing tower in Barkers native Liverpool. Barkers Candyman draws on urban legends like Bloody Mary, whos said to appear after repeating her name several times in a mirror, or the Hookman, infamous for stories in which he attacks teenage lovers with his hook hand.The Biblical story of Samson is another possible influence. In the Book of Judges, the Philistines rule Israel. Samson takes a Philistine wife, crossing racial lines, and notably slays a lion in whose belly bees produce honey. This influence can be seen in Candymans swarms of spectral swarms of bees and the references to sweetness throughout the film. What sets Candyman apart from other horror icons is that, unlike Jason Voorhees or Leatherface, he only ever kills one person on-screen. He has much more in common with tragic avenging anti-heroes than he does with the monstrous image associated with him.The Candyman Story On The Silver ScreenCandymans bloody appearance jolts Helen Lyle to the realization that what shes dealing with is horrifically real.So was there an actual, real-life Candyman? Is there a legend in Chicago about the ghost of a vengeful artist wrongfully killed?Well, no. The truth is that there is no single origin to the story of Candyman, except perhaps in the mind of Tony Todd. Todd worked out Candymans painful human backstory in rehearsals with Virginia Madsen. In truth, the character draws on genuine historical violence, myths, and stories like those of McCoy and countless others to reveal the pain experienced by millions and the fears they inspire. Todd made creative use of his knowledge of history and racial injustice to give life to Barkers character. His improvisations impressed Rose so much that the original version he had written was scrapped, and the fateful, furious ghost we now know was born.Whether or not Candyman drew on Ruthie Mae McCoys murder directly for inspiration, or whether it was simply a coincidental case of local research adding realism to the movie, is impossible to say. What is known is that her tragic death was one of many like it, caused by neglect and ignorance as much as aggression or criminality. Perhaps he scariest thing about Candyman isnt his potential for violence and terror, but his ability to force audiences to think about the people like McCoy who were being demonized in the Cabrini-Green Homes and the very real terror Black Americans have faced throughout history. In the end, the true story of Candyman is about much more than a hook-wielding monster.After learning the complex true story of Candyman, read about the Tulsa Massacre, in which Black Oklahomans fought back against racist mobs. Then, learn about the harrowing lynching of 14-year old Emmett Till, whose death galvanized the civil rights movement in America.The post The True Story Of Candyman That Inspired The Horror Classic appeared first on All That's Interesting.