Dorothy Gautreaux Lawsuit Challenges Chicago Public Housing Segregation

Dorothy Gautreaux, a community organizer and resident of the Altgeld Gardens public housing project on Chicago’s South Side, becomes lead plaintiff in a landmark class-action lawsuit filed by six Black tenants with help from the American Civil Liberties Union. The suit alleges that the Chicago Housing Authority and Department of Housing and Urban Development violated the Fourteenth Amendment and Civil Rights Act of 1964 by building public housing projects only in predominantly Black neighborhoods, resulting in further entrenchment of Chicago’s segregated housing patterns. In 1966, only 63 of over 10,000 public housing units constructed by CHA are located outside low-income Black neighborhoods.

Gautreaux is chosen as first plaintiff due to her experience in civil rights causes as a tenant leader at Altgeld Gardens and her unique surname. The lawsuit becomes the nation’s first major public housing desegregation case, aiming to prove an intentional pattern of racial discrimination by CHA. Uncontradicted evidence will establish that the public housing system operates with four overwhelmingly white projects in white neighborhoods and 99.5 percent of remaining units concentrated in Black neighborhoods.

Gautreaux will not live to see the legal victory, dying of cancer in 1968 months before a federal judge rules in favor of plaintiffs in 1969. The landmark civil rights lawsuit will reach the Supreme Court in 1976 and fundamentally change public housing policy in Chicago and nationally. CHA will be banned from building new public housing only in predominantly Black communities unless they build equal numbers in racially diverse areas. The resulting Gautreaux Assisted Housing Program becomes the nation’s first “housing mobility program,” distributing Section 8 housing vouchers to more than 7,000 Black families and inspiring the national Moving to Opportunity program.