Biography

Was the classic "outside agitator" who drew inspiration for a life of activism from sources as disparate as Frank Nitti, John L. Lewis and Mohandas K. Gandhi, and enlisted the help of the Catholic Church in Chicago to helped organize the meatpacking workers against the industrial giants Armour and Swift; rallied blacks in a vote drive to Chicago's Loop during longtime mayor Richard J. Daley's administration; formed The Woodlawn Organization to prevent the University of Chicago expansion's displacement of residents of the city's South Side; and in Rochester, N.Y., formed the organization F.I.G.H.T. against Eastman-Kodak's attempt to prevent union activity.

Subject of Herb Schapiro's play "The Love Song of Saul Alinsky", produced in Chicago in 1998 by Terrapin Theatre, directed by Pam Dickler and with Gary Houston as Alinsky.

Children from first marriage: son David and daughter Kathryn.

In 1969, while a political science major at Wellesley College, Hillary Clinton chose to write her senior thesis on Alinsky's work, with Alinsky himself contributing his own time to help her. Years later, when she became First Lady, Wellesley College did not make her senior thesis publicly available, because of a White House request.

Always remember the first rule of power tactics; power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

If the ends don't justify the means, what does?

True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within.