Ivory Perry and the fight against lead poisoning in St. Louis.

• Author: Lipsitz, George
• Position: Lead: The Poisoning Continues

Children are still being lead poisoned in St. Louis. Seventeen years after Ivory Perry's death, and more than 35 years since his activism provoked the Board of Alderman to pass an ordinance designed to remove poisonous lead from the blood streams of children and from the places where children live, six new cases are discovered every day. At least 1800 children develop lead poisoning every year.

Lead poisoning causes serious damage to children. It retards their intellectual development and inhibits their ability to learn. It can lead to permanent and irreparable damage. Even though lead poisoning is completely preventable, the city of St. Louis still refuses to spend the money needed to make children safe. Instead, the city treats our children like human lead detectors, waiting until they actually develop signs of lead poisoning before removing toxic lead based paint from the places where children live and play.

Ivory Perry would have known what to do to defend our children. He was a fearless and tireless activist, a man who addressed the hurts and concerns of his community by organizing campaigns, demonstrations, and protests. Ivory Perry thought that there was important work to be done in the world and that it was up to us to do it. Dr. King used to say that some people are like a thermometer; they only register the temperature around them. They accept passively the conditions that exist, and try not to have any opinions different from the people in power.

But some other people, Dr. King went on to say, are like thermostats. They turn up the heat through their actions. Ivory Perry was a thermostat, and if he knew that children in St. Louis were still suffering from lead poisoning, he would expect us to turn up the heat and demand that city officials scrape and paint the walls and remove the window and door frames that are hurting our children.

No one invited Ivory Perry to fight against lead poisoning; he invited himself. As a housing specialist and community outreach worker for the Human Development Corporation's Union-Sarah Gateway Center, Perry noticed that many children in the neighborhood seemed to have colds, even in the summer. Water dripped from their eyes and noses constantly. They picked at peeling plaster on the walls of their dwellings and put it in their mouths. With the help of Wilbur Thomas who worked for Dr. Barry Commoner at the Center for the Study of the Biology of Natural Systems at Washington University, Perry...