Angus Wright

1945 - 2022

Angus Wright
January 16, 1945 - October 20, 2022
Angus Lindsay Wright, age 77, died at home in Sacramento, California, on Thursday, October 20, 2022. An Emeritus professor of Environmental Studies at California State University, Sacramento, he was born and raised in Salina, Kansas, the youngest of six children in a closely knit family. His mother worked outside the home, raising funds for the YWCA. His father was a postal clerk who eventually become a Vice President of the American Postal Workers Union. A genuinely kind, sweet-tempered, honest, and charitable man, Angus was dearly loved by his wife, his children, grandchildren, friends, colleagues, and the thousands of students he taught and mentored.
Graduating from the University of Kansas, he spent a year at Cornell, and then went to the University of Michigan. where he earned a PhD in Latin American History with a dissertation entitled "Market, Land, and Class: Southern Bahia, Brazil, 1890 to 1942." His specialty as a historian of agricultural issues led him to become one of the first faculty members of the Environmental Studies Department of California State University, Sacramento. A dedicated teacher, he was especially proud of his first-generation and non-traditional college students and of the roles in environmental protection and policy so many of them went on to hold. Winning a Fulbright Fellowship, he did research in the fields of Sinaloa, Mexico, on the effects of agricultural pesticides on Mixtec migrant workers. The result was his first book The Death of Ramon Gonzalez: The Modern Agricultural Dilemma, which became a classic in Environmental Studies courses. He later co-authored To Inherit the Earth: The Landless Movement and the Struggle for a New Brazil, in 2003; and in 2009 collaborated with two other authors to write Nature's Matrix: Linking Conservation, Agriculture, and Food Sovereignty. He also contributed to international environmental policy as President of the Pesticide Action Network of North America and Food First; and was Chair of the Board of the Land Institute, a Salina-based research institute dedicated to developing sustainable agriculture.
Angus found tremendous joy in sharing lively conversation, music, and good food with friends and family. He deeply treasured his children and grandchildren and will be remembered by them as a keen appreciator of simple pleasures and a champion of human decency. He loved being outside, immersed in the beauty of the natural world, or tending to sustainable agriculture in his own organic garden. In Sacramento, he made the American River his second home, canoeing, swimming, or simply sitting on its banks watching the mergansers and blue herons. He loved to travel and meet people from different cultures, and he did so widely; with especially strong connections to, and love of, Mexico and Brazil. And he especially treasured the many travel adventures-some peaceful, others hair-raising-that he had with his wife Mary Mackey, a writer and fellow CSUS professor, with whom he shared a thirty-six year loving partnership.
He is survived by his wife Mary Mackey, his son Joe Wright, and his daughter Jessica Nakahara; three grandchildren, his elder brother Bruce Wright; and many nephews and nieces. He will be memorialized in a private ceremony. In lieu of flowers, please consider contributing to some of the many charities and organizations he supported: Amnesty International, Environmental Defense Fund, The Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, The Land Institute, Climate Central; and Sacramento Loaves and Fishes.