Target: St. Louis

A stunning documentary about environmental racism during the Cold War, TARGET: ST LOUIS exposes the secret history and conspiracy surrounding the U.S. Army aerosol radiation testing in segregated neighborhoods of North St. Louis. After Hiroshima, the United States Army, eager for new ways to weaponize atomic power, engaged in a series of classified open-air studies designed to test the effects of aerosol radiation in a metropolitan setting. At first, the tests were described as defensive, the latest strategy against the threat of Russian bombers. But as later declassified documents suggest, the goal of the testing (performed primarily in low-income and African-American neighborhoods of North St. Louis), was to develop offensive capabilities which could match the climate and terrain of downtown Moscow. Consequently, generations of St. Louis inhabitants were unwitting participants in a government testing program which, like the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Project, was facilitated by the U.S. Department of Public Health. Investigating the historical catalyst for these events, the survivors' quest for answers and the subsequent Federal legislation requiring informed consent by human subjects, TARGET: ST. LOUIS is a compelling and shocking documentary audiences won't soon forget. Among those interviewed in this doc, an Official Selection at numerous festivals including Los Angeles CineFest and Baltimore International Black Film Festival, are Dr. Lisa Martino-Taylor, an associate professor of sociology at St. Louis Community College and author of "Behind the Fog: How the US Cold War Radiological Weapons Program Exposed Innocent Americans", as well as Fannie Lou Hamer, co-founder and vice-chair of the Freedom Democratic Party, social activist/actor Dick Gregory and others.