This book examines national fair housing policy from 1960 through 2000 in the context of the American presidency and the country's segregated suburban housing market. It argues that a principal reason for suburban housing segregation lies in Richard Nixon's 1971 fair housing policy, which directed Federal agencies not to place pressure on suburbs to accept low-income housing. After exploring the role played by Lyndon Johnson in the initiation and passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, Nixon's politics of suburban segregation is contrasted to the politics of suburban integration espoused by his HUD secretary, George Romney. Nixon's fair housing legacy is then traced through each presidential administration from Gerald Ford to Bill Clinton and detected in the decisions of Nixon's Federal Court appointees.

Charles M. Lamb has been involved in fair housing research for thirty years. He was a fair housing specialist with the US Commission on Civil Rights in Washington from 1975 to 1977. Since 1977, he has taught constitutional law and civil rights at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Professor Lamb has published widely in professional journals and co-edited four books: Supreme Court Activism and Restraint, Implementation of Civil Rights Policy, Judicial Conflict and Consensus: Behavioral Studies of American Appellate Courts, and The Burger Court: Political and Judicial Profiles. He is a member of the American Political Science Association.

1. Separate worlds, separate lives; 2. Lyndon Johnson and the Fair Housing Act; 3. George Romney's blueprint for suburban integration; 4. Richard Nixon, centralization, and the policymaking process; 5. Suburban segregation from Gerald Ford to Bill Clinton; 6. The Federal courts and suburban segregation; 7. Conclusions.