Saul Alinsky and the Dilemmas of Race

"Saul Alinsky was the most famous--and notorious--community organizer in America. In a long and controversial career, Alinsky helped organize communities nationwide, stressing the power of locally grounded decision-making. Mark Santow here foregrounds Alinsky's attempts to grapple with the impact on race on urban communities in and around Chicago, as metropolitan color lines were constructed, contested, and reinforced. He focuses on Alinsky's work with the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, the Organization for the Southwest Community, and the Woodlawn Organization, showing how his emphasis on local organizing and territorial identity both abetted the pursuit of justice and made residential integration all the more elusive. Santow's account of Alinsky's successes and failures enriches the social history of urban America and its enduring dilemmas"--