Bertha Gilkey

Bertha Gilkey (née Knox; March 18, 1948 – May 25, 2014) was an African-American activist of tenant management of public housing properties. and raised her fifteen children in a three-bedroom apartment at Cochran Gardens Initially intended for low-income whites, the 704-unit block was desegregated in 1956. Emma Green and her children were among its first black tenants.

Activism In 1969, Gilkey, then a 21-year-old divorced mother of two The city replaced its Housing Authority board,

Cochran Tenant Management Corporation The Cochran Tenant Management Corporation became the first of its kind in St. Louis. Her experience fell in accord with the Republican campaign for deregulation and changing the rules of welfare administration.

Jack Kemp, Housing Secretary under George H. W. Bush, regularly cited Gilkey in an honor roll of civil rights heroes, alongside Abraham Lincoln, saying that tenant property management is "one of the most powerful manifestations of revolutionary ideals since 1776." and attacking "government bureaucracy" and the "solutions of the 1960s". Gang wars with drive-by shootings resumed in Cochran in September 1991, She was the subject of a 1993 NBC show Fired Up! The Bertha Gilkey Story produced by John Singleton. Gilkey played a prominent role in an attempt by the Metropolitan Planning Council in Chicago to implement Tenant Management in Chicago as documented in a 60-minute documentary, Fired-Up: Public Housing Is My Home directed by James R. Martin. The film was seen nationally on Public Television in 1989–90.

Gilkey died on May 25, 2014, at the age of 66 due to a two-year battle with cancer in Prattville, Alabama.