Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
In 1966, attorney Alexander Polikoff met three friends to discuss a pro bono case. Over lunch, they talked about the Chicago Housing Authority construction program. All the new public housing, it seemed, was going into black neighborhoods. If discrimination was prohibited in public schools, wasn't it also prohibited in public housing?And so began Gautreaux v. CHA and HUD, a case that would drag on decade after decade, carrying Polikoff and his intrepid colleagues to the nation's Supreme Court. Despite legal roadblocks and political constraints, the case set the stage for a nationwide experiment to end the concentration-and racialization-of poverty through public housing. Both the memoir of a dedicated advocate and the narrative of a tenacious pursuit of equality, this story-itself a critical, still-unfolding chapter in recent American history-proposes a creative new step toward ending racial inequality, which Alexis de Tocqueville prophetically named America's "most formidable evil."
About the Author:
Alexander Polikoff served for twenty-nine years as executive director of BPI, Business and Professional People for the Public Interest, a Chicago public interest law and policy center
Synopsis
In 1966, attorney Alexander Polikoff met three friends to discuss a pro bono case. Over lunch, they talked about the Chicago Housing Authority construction program. All the new public housing, it seemed, was going into black neighborhoods. If discrimination was prohibited in public schools, wasn't it also prohibited in public housing?
And so began Gautreaux v. CHA and HUD, a case that would drag on decade after decade, carrying Polikoff and his intrepid colleagues to the nation's Supreme Court. Despite legal roadblocks and political constraints, the case set the stage for a nationwide experiment to end the concentration-and racialization-of poverty through public housing. Both the memoir of a dedicated advocate and the narrative of a tenacious pursuit of equality, this story-itself a critical, still-unfolding chapter in recent American history-proposes a creative new step toward ending racial inequality, which Alexis de Tocqueville prophetically named America's "most formidable evil."
About the Author:
Alexander Polikoff served for twenty-nine years as executive director of BPI, Business and Professional People for the Public Interest, a Chicago public interest law and policy center