In the late 1930s, he organized the
Back of the Yards Council in this
neighborhood, working with labor unions
and Catholic parishes. The council
empowered residents to fight for better
housing, employment and safety. Its first
offices were here, in the Davis Square Park fieldhouse.

In 1940, Alinsky began the Industrial Areas Foundation, which trained
organizers throughout the country, from the black ghetto of Rochester,
N.Y., to the Mexican-American barrios of California.

Alinsky devised theatrical protests that used irreverence and ridicule
as weapons, such as threatening to bring protesters from a bean
dinner to an orchestra concert attended by the civic elite. In the 1960s
his bold and imaginative tactics forced politicians in several cities to
negotiate with poor and minority communities whose protests had
been previously ignored.