She Fought Hard To Preserve The Florida Everglades And Spent 5 Years Researching The Ecology And History Of The Area
As the summer kicks into full gear and we start to stay outside and enjoy nature a lot more, it’s important to remember the people in history who have fought to preserve our planet’s natural beauty and ecosystems.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas has been referred to as the ‘Guardian of the Glades’ for all the work she did to protect and stress the importance of the Florida Everglades. This is her story.
Marjory was born in Minnesota in 1890. After graduating high school in 1908, she attended Wellesley College to study English literature. She was elected Class Orator and graduated in 1912.
After college, she briefly lived in Newark, New Jersey, and met newspaper editor Kenneth Douglas. They married a few months after meeting, but their marriage did not last long, as Kenneth quickly developed an issue with alcohol and put them both in debt.
In 1915, her father invited her to live with him in Miami, Florida, where she got a job as a society reporter and editor for the Miami Herald, which her dad had founded in 1908.
During World War I, Marjory began volunteering for the American Red Cross in 1917 and got to travel to Europe. Throughout this time, she continued writing for the Herald and wrote about her experiences there.
After finishing her work with the Red Cross and returning to Miami, she was made assistant editor at the Miami Herald. This was when the subject of her articles turned toward redevelopment concerns in Florida and other topics she was passionate about, like women’s suffrage, civil rights, and more, in her popular daily column “The Galley.”
Marjory left the Herald and turned to freelance writing in 1923. She wrote award-winning short stories for a series of publications and started teaching at the University of Miami from the late 1920s to the early 1930s.
Since she was known as a vocal advocate for Florida’s natural beauty and the Everglades, author Harvey Allen approached Marjory in the early 1940s to contribute to his book series about rivers in America.
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However, she asked if she could write about the Everglades instead. She spent five years doing heavy-duty research on the ecology and history of the Everglades and how vital they are to Florida’s residents and ecosystem.
Her book, The Everglades: River of Grass, was published in 1947 and was extremely powerful in portraying the message of how if the Everglades were destroyed by human construction, the important species of creatures that live within and support the ecosystem of the Everglades would be wiped out.
The book’s first line, “There are no other Everglades in the world,” is still referenced as one of the most impactful and eye-catching opening lines in a book on conservation.
After her book became a success and had people finally talking about how important it was to preserve the Everglades, Marjory joined the Everglades Tropical Park Committee and continued to publicly criticize groups whose overdevelopment threatened them. She soon became known as a wonderful author and activist.
In 1969, she became the first president of the Friends of the Everglades group, which she helped establish. She began writing and publishing novels and wrote nine books throughout her life.
Throughout the 1970s and 1990s, Marjory was recognized for her environmental activism and won esteemed awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton in 1993.
She saw some of her efforts to preserve the Everglades finally pay off when the United States Congress passed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Everglades Protection Act in 1991, which funded water treatment facilities. She had several schools and buildings named after her throughout Florida as well.
Marjory lived out the rest of her days at her home in Coconut Grove, Florida, and lived to be 108 years old. She passed away in May 1998. Unfortunately, the Florida Everglades still face great danger, so keeping Marjory’s activist spirit alive and educating ourselves on their importance remains essential.
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