This text argues that in the post-depression years, Chicago was a pioneer in developing concepts and devices for housing segregation. The book shows that the legal framework for the national urban renewal efforts was forged in the heat generated by the racial struggles waged on Chicago's South Side. Its chronicle of the strategies used by ethnic, political and business interests in reaction to the great migration of southern blacks in the 1940s describes how the violent reaction of an emergent white population combined with public policy to segregate the city.