Saul Alinsky
Community organizer who defended confrontation and compromise for social justice.
Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909 – June 12, 1972) was an American community activist and political theorist. Through the Chicago-based Industrial Areas Foundation, he helped poor communities organize to press demands upon landlords, politicians, bankers and business leaders, winning national recognition and notoriety. In his widely cited 1971 book *Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer*, Alinsky defended the arts of confrontation and compromise in community organizing as keys to the struggle for social justice.
Alinsky was born in Chicago to Lithuanian Jewish emigrant parents and was the only surviving son of Benjamin and Sarah Tannenbaum Alinsky. His father worked as a tailor and later ran a delicatessen and cleaning shop. Raised in a strict Orthodox household, Alinsky was devout until age twelve, when he feared being forced into the rabbinate. Though he did not personally encounter much antisemitism, he accepted it as a pervasive fact of life. He later considered himself an agnostic but would always identify as Jewish. At the University of Chicago, he studied sociology under Ernest Burgess and Robert E. Park, who argued that social disorganization, not heredity, caused slum conditions. Alinsky, having lived in a slum, dismissed their academic jargon as complacent and out of touch with real suffering. The Great Depression ended his interest in archaeology, and a graduate fellowship led him to criminology. As a nonparticipant observer, he spent time with Al Capone’s mob, learning the importance of personal relationships. He later worked with juvenile delinquents and at Joliet Correctional Center, but found the experience dispiriting: when he cited poor housing or unemployment as causes of crime, he was labeled a red. In 1938, he left his last job to become a full-time activist, raising funds for the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, organizing for unions, fighting evictions, and agitating for public housing. He worked alongside the CIO and John L. Lewis, and later claimed to have mediated between Lewis and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Alinsky’s key idea was to apply organizing skills to the worst slums and ghettos, enabling the most oppressed to control their own communities. He began with the Back of the Yards neighborhood, made infamous by Upton Sinclair’s *The Jungle*, where he and park supervisor Joseph Meegan formed the Back of t
- born
- January 30, 1909, Chicago, Illinois
- died
- June 12, 1972
- field
- Community activism, political theory
- nationality
- American
- known_for
- Founding the Industrial Areas Foundation; author of *Rules for Radicals*
Verified Timeline
Quick Facts
- Birth Name
- Saul David Alinsky
- Birth Date
- 1909-01-30
- Birth Place
- Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
- Death Date
- 1972-06-12
- Death Place
- Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, U.S.
- Education
- University of Chicago (PhB)
- Occupation
- Community organizer, writer, political activist
- Years Active
- 1960s
- Notable Works
- Rules for Radicals (1971)
- Spouse
- Helene Simon · Jean Graham · May 15, 1952 · 1970 · end=div · Irene McInnis Alinsky · May 1971
- Children
- 2
- Awards
- Pacem in Terris Award, 1969
Facts from the source article.
Lore & Background
In 1938, Alinsky left his last employment at the Institute for Juvenile Research, University of Illinois at Chicago, to become a full-time political activist. He raised funds for the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War and for southern sharecroppers, organized for the Newspaper Guild, fought evictions, and agitated for public housing. He worked alongside the CIO and its president John L. Lewis. Alinsky's idea was to apply organizing skills to the worst slums and ghettos so that oppressed communities could control their own destinies. With Joseph Meegan, a park supervisor, he set up the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council (BYNC) in the Chicago Stockyards area, rallying a mix of Catholic ethnics (Irish, Poles, Lithuanians, Mexicans, Croats) as well as African Americans to win concessions from local meatpackers, landlords, and city hall. In January 1946 the BYNC threw its support behind the first major walkout of the United Packinghouse Workers. In 1940, with support from Roman Catholic Bishop Bernard James Sheil and Chicago Sun-Times publisher and department-store owner Marshall Field, Alinsky founded the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), a national community organizing network that partnered with religious congregations and civic organizations to build broad-based organizations and train local leadership. Alinsky wrote that in modern urban civilization, multitudes of people had been condemned to urban anonymity, which he saw as eroding the foundations of democracy.
Reader's Guide
Alinsky's significance lies in his development of community organizing as a practical method for poor and marginalized groups to gain political and economic power. His work through the IAF inspired later movements on both the left and right. Beginning in the 1990s, his reputation was revived by commentators on the political right as a tactical inspiration for the Republican Tea Party movement, and later, through indirect associations with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as the alleged source of a radical Democratic agenda. On the left, Alinsky has been criticized for an aversion to broad ideological goals, yet he has also been identified as an inspiration for the Occupy movement and campaigns for climate action. His 1971 book *Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer* remains a widely cited manual for activists. Alinsky's approach emphasized local democracy: organizers would facilitate, but local people had to lead and participate. Residents had to control their own destiny, gaining not only new resources but new confidence. As one observer put it, 'Saul knew that if I grab you by the shoulders and say do this, do that and the other, you're going to resent it. If you make the discovery yourself, you're going to strut because you made it.' Alinsky's legacy is contested, with different political factions claiming or rejecting his methods.
Did You Know?
- Alinsky studied in America's first sociology department at the University of Chicago under Ernest Burgess and Robert E. Park.
- For two years as a 'nonparticipant observer,' Alinsky claimed to have hung out with Chicago's Al Capone mob, who taught him 'the terrific importance of personal relationships.'
- Alinsky raised funds for the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War before becoming a full-time activist in 1938.
- Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson said Alinsky's aims 'most faithfully reflect our ideals of brotherhood, tolerance, charity and dignity of the individual.'
- Alinsky considered himself an agnostic but when asked about his religion would 'always say Jewish.'
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