The Chicago Reader Profiles Redlined by Linda Gartz

The Chicago Reader sat down with author Linda Gartz to discuss her timely debut memoir, Redlined: A Memoir of Race, Change, and Fractured Community in 1960s Chicago (She Writes Press/April 2018). Set against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement, Redlined exposes the racist lending rules that refuse mortgages to anyone in areas with even one black resident. As blacks move deeper into Chicago’s West Side during the 1960s, whites flee by the thousands. But Linda Gartz’s parents, Fred and Lil choose to stay in their integrating neighborhood, overcoming previous prejudices as they meet and form friendships with their African American neighbors.

Here's an excerpt from the interview:One community emblematic of the ravages of redlining is West Garfield Park, one of the city's poorest, most neglected neighborhoods. The city of Chicago has transferred millions of TIF dollars and is now planning to build a new police academy in the community for $95 million—money that many argue could be better spent on other services.Before World War II, the community looked quite different: it was home to recently settled German immigrants. But that wouldn't be the case for long, as documented in Linda Gartz's new memoir Redlined: A Memoir of Race, Change, and Fractured Community in 1960s Chicago. Gartz, a longtime Chicago TV producer, describes a far different West Garfield Park than the one that exists today: "At the time of Dad's birth, in 1914, West Garfield Park was a neighborhood of wooden sidewalks, dirt streets, and butterflies fluttering above open prairies."

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