CHICAGO -- By spring, the intersection of 53rd Street and Prairie Avenue in Chicago will be awash in a sea of red tulips — 6 acres of them to be exact, planted Oct. 15 by artist Amanda Williams, 2022 MacArthur grant recipient, South Side residents, and the Emerald South Economic Development Collaborative.
The neighborhood beautification is part of Williams “Redefining Redlining” project that calls attention to the effects of redlining, the practice of systematizing discrimination based on where someone lives. The practice that denied members of the Black community the chance to invest in property from 1933-1968 continues to reverberate across the country. Racially restrictive covenants made popular by the real estate industry marked certain areas as undesirable if people of color lived there. While whites could build wealth through equity in homes, redlining enforced segregation and created a wealth gap from which Blacks have yet to rebound.
“I’ve been thinking about this idea for five or six years ... about redlining and the impact it had on our ability to shape our neighborhoods and our environment,” Williams said. “The work that I’ve been doing over several years to really interrogate the redlining maps. ... I decided what might it look like to tackle redlining as a term and process a lot more literally, so that people can see and understand. So we decided to re-create the footprint of the houses and apartment buildings that should be still standing in several of these lots.
