Redlining Remembered

A new memoir wrestles with a familial history of racism and redlining

by Tammy Xu 3 months ago 1 Comment

Linda Gartz’s family lived three generations in West Garfield Park, from the time her father was born in 1914, when it “was a neighborhood of wooden sidewalks, dirt streets, and butterflies fluttering above open prairies” to her senior year of high school in 1966. By the time the family moved away, racial riots had destabilized the neighborhood, and white residents were fleeing for the suburbs. Gartz’s new memoir, Redlined, combines recent scholarship on redlining with the intimacy of a treasure trove of diaries her parents kept throughout the years. The result is a compelling chronicle of both a neighborhood’s journey and a personal one, as Gartz pieces together her past and works to place the events of her childhood in historical context.

Visual Arts

Reflections on a Tender Power

Two artists on the experiences of Black women

by Tammy Xu 4 months ago

milo bosh

On Friday the 13th, Rootwork Gallery, an arts space in east Pilsen, felt inviting and meditative as people arrived for the artists’ talk of “A Tender Power: A Black Womanist Visual Manifesto.” Soft music played as the founding curator of Rootwork, Tracie D. Hall, greeted attendees, answered questions, and served portions from an epic vegan lasagna to early arrivals.

History | Lit

Uncovering Forgotten Histories

A new guidebook brings forth Black women’s contributions to their South Side communities

by Tammy Xu 4 months ago 3 Comments

Lifting As They Climbed co-author Essence McDowell speaks at the book's release at the Arts Incubator in Washington Park (Kiran Misra)

All of my life I sat in history classes when we were young, and we didn’t see ourselves. No one ever handed me a book full of Black women, about Black women, by Black women, ever, in my public education.”

Agriculture | Animals

A City of Hen-Keepers

The joys and challenges of keeping backyard chickens

by Tammy Xu 5 months ago 2 Comments

Tammy Xu

Around noon on a Saturday in February at the Southside Occupational Academy in West Englewood, the school’s hallways were filled with urbanites clutching pamphlets about raising bees and goats and ducks. The occasion was the sixth annual Urban Livestock Expo, where residents curious about urban agriculture from all over Chicago could learn from organizations such as Advocates for Urban Agriculture, Chicago Honey Co-op, and Chicagoland Chicken Enthusiasts. In the auditorium a crowd listened attentively as the manager of a beekeeping supply store explained the best ways to monitor a colony’s health during Chicago’s bitter winters, while down the hall a classroom played host to a goat and its many admirers.

Politics

Charting Chicago’s Latinx Population

“The Latino Neighborhoods Report” puts urban planning in conversation with urban communities

by Tammy Xu 9 months ago

Little Village's 2017 Mexican Independence Day Parade (Bridget Gamble)

On October 11, a study of twelve predominantly Latinx community areas in Chicago was published by the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy (IRRPP) and the Great Cities Institute, research centers affiliated with the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). “The Latino Neighborhoods Report” examines income levels, employment opportunities, homeownership rates, and health insurance coverage in each of the twelve community areas; most notably, it finds that education rates among Chicago’s Latinx communities lag well behind their Black and white counterparts.