Emma Green, her mother, relocated to St. Louis in 1960[3] and raised her fifteen children in a three-bedroom apartment at Cochran Gardens[4] - the first high-rise project of Saint-Louis financed through the Housing Act of 1949, completed in 1953.

It became a dumping ground.In 1969 Gilkey, then a 20-year-old divorced mother of two[3] who called herself a Black Panther[2][3] led a nine-month rent strike of some twenty-two thousand public housing tenants against mismanagement of municipal agencies and the intolerable living conditions of St. Louis highrise ghettoes—Pruitt–Igoe, Cochran Gardens and the like.

Since 1978 the complex was modernized and outfitted with new engineering systems, owing both to Gilkey's fundraising skills and to Cochran's nearly downtown location that could not be ignored by city and federal authorities.

And they remind us that ownership or control of one's own residence should be an opportunity for every citizen.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.

"[11][13] President George H. W. Bush visited Cochran Gardens in May 1991, commending tenant management and personally Betha Gilkey[9] and attacking "government bureaucracy" and the "solutions of the 1960s".

[11] Federal supporters of tenant management did not publicize the fact that most of Cochran residents remained poor and lived on welfare throughout the decades of Gilkey's tenure.

[citation needed] As the co-chair of the New York-based National Congress of Neighborhood Women Gilkey negotiated for government grants helping establishment of tenant management in New York and other cities.