John L. Lewis: An Unauthorized Biography

Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909 - June 12, 1972) was an American community organizer and writer. He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing. He is noted for his 1971 book Rules for Radicals.

His organizing skills were focused on improving the living conditions of poor communities across America. In the 1950s, he began turning his attention to improving conditions in the black ghettos, beginning with Chicago’s and later traveling to other ghettos in California, Michigan, New York City, and a dozen other “trouble spots”.

Born in 1909 in Chicago, Illinois, to Russian Jewish immigrant parents, Alinsky attended Marshall High School in Chicago until his parents divorced and then went to live with his father who moved to California, graduating from Hollywood High School in 1926.

He graduated with a Bachelor of Philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1930, majoring in archaeology. His plans to become a professional archaeologist were changed due to the ongoing economic Depression.

After attending two years of graduate school at the University of Chicago, he began working for the state of Illinois as a criminologist, as well as an organizer with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). By 1939, he became less active in the labor movement and became more active in general community organizing, starting with the Back of the Yards and other poor areas on the South Side of Chicago.

He spent the next 10 years repeating his organization work across the nation, from Kansas City and Detroit to the barrios of Southern California. By 1950 he turned his attention to the black ghettos of Chicago. He traveled to California at the request of the San Francisco Bay Area Presbyterian Churches to help organize the black ghetto in Oakland.

Alinsky died in 1972 at the age of 63 from a heart attack near his home in Carmel, California.