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. The community sinks into increasing poverty and crime after two race riots destroy its once vibrant business district, but Fred and Lil continue to nurture their three apartment buildings and tenants for the next twenty years in a devastated landscape—even as their own relationship cracks and withers.
After her parents’ deaths, Gartz discovers long-hidden letters, diaries, documents, and photos stashed in the attic of her former home. Determined to learn what forces shattered her parents’ marriage and undermined her community, she searches through the family archives and immerses herself in books on racial change in American neighborhoods. Told through the lens of Gartz’s discoveries of the personal and political, Redlined delivers a riveting story of a community fractured by racial turmoil, an unraveling and conflicted marriage, a daughter’s fight for sexual independence, and an up-close, intimate view of the racial and social upheavals of the 1960s.
Industry Reviews
Awards
The Chicago Writers Association's Indie Nonfiction Book of 2018
Kirkus Reviews Best Indie Book of 2018
An Amazon Best-Seller
2018 First Place Nonfiction, Illinois Woman’s Press Association, Mate E. Palmer Award
2018 Sarton Women's Book Awards finalist in Memoir
2018 Readers' Favorites Book Awards Silver Medal in Non-Fiction―Social Issues
2018 International Book Awards Finalist in Multicultural Non-Fiction
2018 New York Book Festival Award: Honorable Mention, Biography/Autobiography
2019 Chanticleer JOURNEY Book Awards First-Place Winner in Narrative Non-Fiction and Memoir
2019 IPPY Silver Medal Winner in Autobiography/Memoir II (Coming of Age/Family Legacy/Travel)
2019 Next Generation Indie Book Awards: Finalist in Current Events/Social Change
2019 Next Generation Indie Book Awards: Finalist in E-Book Non-fiction
2019 Eric Hoffer Award Finalist in The da Vinci Eye
2019 Foreword Indies Finalist in Adult Nonfiction―Family & Relationships
2019 Foreword Indies Finalist in Adult Nonfiction―Multicultural
Redlined is now included in the Smithsonian Institution’s libraries at the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
Editorial Reviews
"Linda Gartz’s memoir Redlined offers a 'ringside seat to black/white race relations and the racist mortgage policies that help explain why this intractable social issue remains with us into the 21st century.'"
-The Atlantic
"A stunning debut memoir . . . . A rich remembrance of a captivating, transformative era in American history.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“. . . an exceptionally rich and readable memoir of family, change, and coming of age in the tumultuous 1960s."
—Foreword Clarion Reviews, Five Stars
“Redlined is absolutely riveting from cover to cover, all but impossible to put down.”
—Midwest Book Review, Reviewer's Choice
"I didn’t just love reading this memoir, I appreciated it. . . . Redlined is a beacon of enlightenment in our current American society. I finished Gartz’s memoir feeling educated and hopeful.”
—Readers’ Favorite, Five Stars
“In this compelling journey into the depths of racism, Linda Gartz peels back the onion of America’s original sin to a new level in a captivating personal story told through the lives of her Chicago family. Gartz probes the invisible web of oppression that affected both whites and blacks. Redlining destroyed the American dream without its victims even knowing it.”
—Bill Kurtis, author of Bill Kurtis On Assignment and The Death Penalty on Trial: Crisis in American Justice, Peabody and Emmy Award-winner, news anchor for CBS Television network, and TV host for A&E
“Many watched from afar as Chicago and other major cities underwent rapid racial change in mid-twentieth century America. Linda Gartz lived it . . . with her sharp eye, excellent writing, and unique perspective, she brings this critical and turbulent period to life.”
—Steve Fiffer, coauthor of Jimmie Lee & James: Two Lives, Two Deaths, and the Movement that Changed America
“Moving and empathetic, Linda Gartz’s memoir illuminates the inner worlds of two generations of white working-class Chicagoans as the daughter of landlords who remained in a struggling black community long after their white neighbors had fled . . . a deeply humane perspective on [how] economic need, racism, and ideals of duty shaped the lives of urban white Americans in the twentieth century.”
—Beryl Satter, Professor, Department of History, Rutg
