The Contract Buyers League: A Personal Evaluation

Abstract

The most spectacular, and probably the most important event in the three and a half year history of the Contract Buyers League was the payment strike which began in July 1969 and was phased out in June 1970. By the end of the strike somewhere around 100 families had been thrown out of their homes in an all too familiar spectacle: 300 sheriffs deputies and police, equipped with gas masks, truncheons, dogs, helicopters and all the anti-riot trimmings, would surround entire city blocks and evict as many as 12 families at a time. Fortunately, CBL managed to reinstate most of these families fairly rapidly.