Crossing the Class and Color Lines: From Public Housing to White Suburbia

From 1976 to 1998, the Gautreaux Assisted Housing Program moved over 7,000 low-income black families from Chicago's inner city to middle-class white suburbs—the largest and longest-running residential, racial, and economic integration effort in American history. Crossing the Class and Color Lines is the story of that project, from the initial struggles and discomfort of the relocated families to their eventual successes in employment and education—cementing the sociological concept of the "neighborhood effect" and shattering the myth that inner-city blacks cannot escape a "culture of poverty."

Leonard S. Rubinowitz is a professor at the Northwestern University School of Law.

James E. Rosenbaum is a professor of sociology, education, and social policy and a faculty fellow of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.