Overview

In 1966, Alexander Polikoff, a thirty-nine-year old volunteer ACLU attorney and a partner in a Chicago law firm, 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 roll on year after year, decade after decade, carrying Polikoff and his intrepid colleagues to the nation's Supreme Court. Despite legal roadblocks and political constraints, the case would set the stage for a nationwide experiment aimed at ending the concentration - and racialization - of poverty through public housing. Inspiring and absorbing, the narrative of Gautreaux as told by its principal lawyer moves with ease through local and national civil rights history. Ultimately, this story - itself a critical, still-unfolding chapter in recent American history - urges us to take an essential step toward ending racial inequality, which Alexis de Tocqueville prophetically named America's """"most formidable evil.

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9780810124202

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Reviews

"""This is an inspiring and fascinating book. The story of Alex Polikoff and his forty-year crusade to bring the constitutional promise of equality to public housing is dramatic evidence that lawyers--and the law--can still be a force for progress in the United States."" --Scott Turow ""Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of the dream of integration. Not Alex Polikoff. In ""Waiting for Gautreaux"" he tells the compelling story of his personal quest for fairness and openness in housing. Both moving and informative this is history as it should be. Polikoff is a modern-day hero."" --Alex Kotlowitz ""With the same thoroughness and tenacity he demonstrated in the lawsuit, Alex Polikoff traces the ups and downs of the Gautreaux litigation. If you want to understand the past, present, and future of public housing in this country, you need to read ""Waiting for Gautreaux."""" --Abner J. Mikva, Former Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit"

This is an inspiring and fascinating book. The story of Alex Polikoff and his forty-year crusade to bring the constitutional promise of equality to public housing is dramatic evidence that lawyers--and the law--can still be a force for progress in the United States. --Scott Turow With the same thoroughness and tenacity he demonstrated in the lawsuit, Alex Polikoff traces the ups and downs of the Gautreaux litigation. If you want to understand the past, present, and future of public housing in this country, you need to read Waiting for Gautreaux. --Abner J. Mikva, Former Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of the dream of integration. Not Alex Polikoff. In Waiting for Gautreaux he tells the compelling story of his personal quest for fairness and openness in housing. Both moving and informative this is history as it should be. Polikoff is a modern-day hero. --Alex Kotlowitz

With the same thoroughness and tenacity he demonstrated in the lawsuit, Alex Polikoff traces the ups and downs of the Gautreaux litigation. If you want to understand the past, present, and future of public housing in this country, you need to read Waiting for Gautreaux. --Abner J. Mikva, Former Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit<br>

Author Information

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. He is the author of many articles on urban affairs and of Housing the Poor: The Case for Heroism (Ballinger, 1977). Polikoff is the recipient of a 2006 The American Lawyer Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives in the Chicago area with his wife, a writer of fiction for young people, and continues to work at BPI. Clarence Page is a nationally syndicated columnist and a member of the Chicago Tribune's editorial board. He appears frequently on television and has won many journalism awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

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