Levittown Racial Integration Essay

Racial Integration in Levittown, Pennsylvania During the late 1940s and throughout the 50s, many city-dwelling Americans were compelled to move to the suburbs, driven by a desire to forge a new and more comfortable lifestyle for their families. After World War Two, cities had become overcrowded as veterans returned and sought to purchase homes of their own. The implementation of the interstate highway system, coupled with the undertakings of developers to build new communities offering more affordable housing ensured suburban growth. As new communities began to sprout up all over the country, however, it became apparent that the promise of a relaxing life in the suburbs was not made to everyone. Restrictive racial covenants barring African
Americans from neighborhoods were in practice for many years after they were outlawed. Realty agencies and community planners were reluctant to sell homes to minority families, and whites living in the suburbs were equally appalled at the notion of having such families as neighbors. In Levittown, Pennsylvania, the battle of integration was won, but in practice, the makeup of the community has not changed.[1] The impetus for suburban migration from the Philadelphia area can be traced to the World War Two era growth of defense industry in the North; African Americans in the South seeking employment opportunities were drawn to these jobs, so much so that the percentage of the country’s African American population in the South decreased by nine percent between 1940 and 1945.[2] Blacks were not, however, easily assimilated into their new communities. Whites in northern cities were not pleased with the growing black presence; a poll showed that only 43 percent favored integrated public housing, and as cities became overcrowded, the close proximity of the two groups led to discord.[3] In Philadelphia and surrounding areas, Ku Klux Klan activity grew in response to black homeownership. An effigy of a black man was hung in the town of Chester, and a cross set ablaze in Upper Darby.[4] In the Juaniata Park neighborhood of Philadelphia, a black couple, Wiley and Bertha Clark, moved in and received mob harassment and a glass shattered window, courtesy of their new neighbors.[5] There was also a widespread fear among whites that the presence of blacks would undermine their social status and would eventually lead to interracial sex and further violence - ironic, considering much of the violence was being directed at blacks, rather than coming from them.[6] The Philadelphia area had a history of uneasy race relations. Although the city had been founded on Quaker principles stressing equality - Quakers in the area had called for an end to the slave trade as early as the 1700s - the addition of foreign immigrants to the city in the 1800s gave rise to housing shortages and increased crime.[7] As immigrants from Ireland, Italy, and Germany flocked to the United States in the period between 1820 and 1840, Philadelphia, as was the case with other major industrial American cities, faced an influx in population that displaced the black labor force. Added to this problem was the increasing amount of theft and vandalism taking place in the city, in direct proportion to the growth of population from immigration; much of the crime was wrongly attributed to blacks.[8] Around this same time period, Philadelphia abolitionists had started to speak out against the poor treatment of blacks, and the city’s growing resentment of blacks, coupled with anti-abolitionist sentiment, erupted in hostilities in August 1834 during a three day period in which 31 homes and two churches were destroyed, and one man was killed.[9] After the tension of the early to mid-nineteenth century, blacks had a period of prosperity owing to the formation of a catering guild, which according to W.E.B. DuBois, “transformed the Negro cook and waiter into the public caterer and restauranteur.”[10] Their position as domestic servants lent them a degree of respectability in the eyes of whites, and increasing real estate values and a greater number of black children in schools were signs of social improvement that would last through the early 1900s.[11] As blacks began to move to cities in the North during the Great Migration of 1910 to 1930, however, 140,000 came to Philadelphia and met with few job opportunities and substandard housing conditions where diseases such as tuberculosis and smallpox were rampant.[12] Blacks’ relations with German and Irish immigrants were fraught with conflict, and as these groups moved to the suburbs, blacks began moving into former immigrant neighborhoods, creating conflict with the remaining immigrant families and leading to a doubling of the city’s black population as more migrants continued to come from the south.[13] The black population in Philadelphia steadily increased through World War Two as many came looking for factory work in the defense industry; when the war ended and the need for such labor was not as great, however, blacks were the first to be fired from their jobs. By the early 1950s, a large portion of Philadelphia’s black population was near poverty.[14] As World War Two came to a close, veterans returned to a devastating housing shortage; during the war years, “housing starts fell from 1 million a year to fewer than 100,000.”[15] In Philadelphia, as in other cities and towns across the country, expenditures on public housing had suffered in light of wartime concerns. Returning veterans were forced to live with parents and in-laws as they sought their own homes and apartments.[16] According to the Philadelphia Homes Registration Office, 56,000 people had applied for homes in one year, but only 6,500 had been able to obtain housing. [17] For blacks, the problem was exacerbated owing to strictly enforced racial covenants barring them from owning homes in primarily white neighborhoods. 140,000 homes were built in the Philadelphia area between 1945 and 1955; of these, three quarters were in suburban counties prohibiting blacks, and blacks only purchased 1,000 of the remaining quarter of homes.[18] As racial tensions in Philadelphia became progressively worse, white residents were ready to make the move from urban centers to the suburbs. They were able to do so with increasing ease thanks to the interstate highway system, which had been created under the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956.[19] President Roosevelt had known that cities would experience a population influx after the war, and wanted highways that would facilitate the movement of people to and from metropolitan centers.[20] President Eisenhower was able to deliver Roosevelt’s vision to the American public, creating over 42,000 miles of highway across the country.[21] In 1919, Eisenhower had seen firsthand the shabby condition of America’s roads as a young lieutenant on a military expedition, the First Transcontinental Motor Convoy, which set out to determine the feasability of moving army forces across the country in the event of an attack.[22] The lack of road maintenance nationwide caused the convoy to move at only six miles per hour, and convinced Eisenhower of the need to establish a federal program to oversee the construction of better roads. Americans now had not only the desire for a move to suburbia, but the means to do so as well. The suburban migration in the Philadelphia area was primarily undertaken by whites; black homeownership rates in the city were at thirty percent, among the highest rates in the country, because as blacks came, whites fled to the suburbs, selling their homes to incoming blacks.[23] Builders and government agencies alike were quick to recognize and respond to the need for housing, with the former group erecting 1.7 million new homes a year by 1950, increasing their output by nearly fifteen times since 1944, and the latter group, under the Federal Housing Administration and the GI Bill of Rights, helping to lessen or abolish down payments and offer low-interest mortgage rates.[24] If the availability of homes and the ease with which whites could buy them was what drew them to the suburbs, prohibitive racial covenants were a large factor in making them stay. Unfortunately for some Americans, suburban migration was not a possibility; the existence of racial covenants ensured that minorities would not have the same living opportunities as whites. As blacks began migrating to predominantly white areas, neighborhood improvement associations had formed to prevent their expansion. These organizations were prominent in cities across the country and included groups such as the Woodlawn Society of Chicago and the Gates Avenue Association in New York. Although these groups maintained that their goal was simply to ensure neighborhood security and maintain property values, their tactics told a different story; groups would buy vacant lots to prevent purchase by blacks, lobby city councils to implement zoning restrictions, and ultimately introduce restrictive covenants, agreements between property owners to refuse to sell or rent their property to blacks.[25] When J.D. Shelley and his wife, an African American couple, decided to buy a home in a St. Louis neighborhood that was prohibited to blacks and Asians, a neighbor took them to court in an attempt to take away their deed to the land. The Shelleys protested on the grounds that this was a violation of their fourteenth amendment right to equal protection under the law.[26] The court found that the covenant was a private agreement between the buyer and seller, and as such, could be privately discriminatory. The state’s job is to enforce covenants unless they are unconstitutional; because discrimination is not unconstitutional, racial covenants could exist, but were illegal if enforced by the state, as state-sanctioned discrimination is against the law.[27] Although racial covenants barring minority groups were deemed unconstitutional in the Shelley v. Kraemer case of 1948, the practice was ingrained in realtors and neighborhood developers for years afterward.[28] Real estate agents engaged in the practice of “racial steering,” avoiding showing homes in white neighborhoods to minority groups.[29] Indeed, the practice of prohibiting blacks from living in predominately white areas led to the downfall of the Levitt and Sons Corporation. Even the government was complicit in the policy; the FHA announced in 1949 that it would not insure mortgages to developers that allowed racial covenants, but did nothing to prevent the implementation of covenants in new developments, and still did not underwrite loans to minorities.[30] The agency had a history of racist policies; by the early 1940s, whites had encircled a black suburb of Detroit, “but neither they nor the whites could get FHA insurance because of the proximity of an ‘inharmonious’ racial group.” The FHA later granted insurance to only the white population of the community.[31] City officials across the country also engaged in racial zoning until at least the 1950s, requiring community developers to leave “buffer strips,” vacant parcels of land of a certain width between white and non-white neighborhoods.[32] One community that grew out of the post World War Two demand for housing was Levittown, Pennsylvania, a planned community constructed in the style of an assembly line, often seen as the precursor to modern-day suburban communities. Planned communities addressed the problem of inconsistent subdivision regulations by establishing uniformity in building styles, recreation areas, and other aspects of a community. Radburn, New Jersey, for example, was one such community, with its unique road system that separated pedestrians and cars and the introduction of the “superblock,” a larger version of a city block with cul-de-sacs allowing access to the inner part of the block.[33] A previous Levittown built in Long Island, New York in 1947 had provided 17,000 homes to returning G.I.s, and William Levitt, the developer, was eager to replicate this success. Levittown was designed to be the perfect community, from the organization of construction to the completed layout of the neighborhood and the inexpensive starting prices of the homes, “the reduction of the American dream to a practical and affordable reality.”[34] Levitt broke the construction process into twenty seven steps, employing unskilled, non-union workers, manufacturing his own nails, and arranging for lumber to arrive precut and laid out at intervals of precisely sixty feet.[35] The development was divided into forty neighborhoods, grouped to form “master blocks”, with each street name ending in either “Lane” or “Road”, as Levitt felt that “Street” would carry an undesirable urban connotation. Levitt had specific ideas about the social aspects of the community as well; he wanted to present to potential buyers a welcoming environment of friendly neighbors. To this end, he built elementary schools, baseball fields, and swimming pools within each master block to encourage association among parents.[36] To maintain the pristine landscaping of the neighborhood, he insisted that residents keep their lawns nicely mowed, - if they did not, a maintenance crew would be dispatched to the job for them, leaving homeowners to foot the bill - forbade homeowners to hang their laundry outside on Sundays and holidays, and only allowed flowers to be planted in backyards.[37] Among this litany of regulations, ostensibly compiled to ensure community members a satisfactory lifestyle in Levittown, was one item that was not unfamiliar to homebuyers in the 50s: a racial covenant, including a statement that read: “THE TENANT AGREES NOT TO PERMIT THE PREMISES TO BE USED OR OCCUPIED BY ANY PERSON OTHER THAN MEMBERS OF THE CAUCASIAN RACE.”[38] This stipulation was borne of the Levitt family’s own prejudices as well as William Levitt’s belief that such a rule conformed to the prevailing opinion of race that white Americans collectively shared. Abraham Levitt, the family’s patriarch, had been an avid reader of the German philosopher Ernst Haeckel, a deeply racist thinker who asserted that the caucasian race was superior to all others, and Levitt had impressed these views upon his children.[39] In the 1920’s, Levitt even went as far as to move his family from Brooklyn to Long Island when a black man moved into the neighborhood.[40] William carried these beliefs well into his adulthood, justifying them by stating that he was only bowing to popular opinion on the subject; on Levittown’s thirtieth anniversary, he would reflect, “I favored equal opportunity in housing, but I knew that I couldn’t impose my will on the people of the United States.”[41] He would alternatively claim disbelief in a possibility of peaceful coexistence between whites and blacks: “If we sell one house to a Negro family, then 90 to 95 percent of our white customers will not buy into the community.”[42] Levitt finally called the policy for what it was - a business decision - in an interview thirty years later, but stopped short of calling it racist, defending himself by arguing, “...I knew that if I declared for open housing, my worst enemies would be my colleagues in the building industry.”[43] The views on suburban integration of the Levittown residents themselves are unclear, as there was little reason for them to voice their opinion on the matter before the first black family moved in. The views available are those conferred upon the people of Levittown by observers, most of whom are of the impression that residents felt the presence of other races would tarnish the neighborhood’s reputation. “They are no longer the nomad apartment dwellers whose resentment of undesirables (by their own standards) moving into their urban street was mitigated by the knowledge that as soon as their leases expired, they could move to a new, more culturally homogeneous neighborhood” said a contemporary journal article, alluding to the fact that much of the population had come to Levittown to escape the more integrated cities.[44] Herbert Gans, who resided in the Levittown in Wllingboro, New Jersey, posited that fear of status deprivation among white homeowners was an impediment to integration, and was also a reason for the “white flight” that occurs as minority groups move into predominantly white neighborhoods.[45] Gans also conducted a survey, however, the results of which stated that only one percent of Levittown’s total population had moved from their previous communities because of “Racial change in the neighborhood” which would indicate that race was not a compelling factor as whites made their move to Levittown.[46] Before they moved in to Levittown, Bill and Daisy Myers’ decision to move to the north had followed a trajectory similar to many other African American families.
After experiencing the segregation of the south, Daisy Myers moved to New York City for graduate school and was overcome by the possibilities for blacks in the city; blacks sat in the fronts of buses, her classes were racially mixed.[47] Back in Virginia, the Myerses lived in Hampton, where Bill had attended college at the Hampton Institute, earning a degree in electricity. Realizing that he would not be permitted to enter into an electrical union in the south, and annoyed by the south’s segregation, Bill decided to move the family to his hometown of York, Pennsylvania for more work opportunity and freedom from racism.[48] Once they arrived in Pennsylvania, however, they realized that they had run into more trouble than they had bargained for. Their search for a house was difficult, as many of the homes they had wanted were in white neighborhoods subject to restrictive covenants, and once they did find a house, neighbors banged screen doors and tin pails to make the environment as unwelcoming as possible.[49] After a brief period in York, the family moved to Philadelphia, as Bill thought he would find better employment opportunity in the city.[50] Bill discovered, however, that he did not have many prospects for work, and as their family continued to grow, the Myerses were in need of more living space, so they decided to make the move to
Levittown.[51] Some groups within and outside of Levittown had been actively and sometimes successfully campaigning for equal rights for a few years before the Myers family moved in. Thurgood Marshall, a lawyer representing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) at the time, had unsuccessfully attempted to sue Levitt in the Philadelphia Circuit Court for his use of a racial covenant, and in a meeting with the NAACP Levitt declared that his company could “solve a housing problem or we can try to solve a racial problem. But we cannot combine the two.”[52] The NAACP and the American Jewish Congress had spoken out on behalf a Levittown, New York family faced with eviction after hosting an interracial playgroup for their children in 1950. After a group of 400 protestors stood in front of the family’s home, William Levitt finally backed down and allowed the family to stay.[53] When William Cotter, a black man, rented a Levittown home from a white family, Levitt took Cotter to court and had him evicted; sheriffs forcibly carried Cotter and his furnishings from his home as supporters sang “God Bless America” in the rain.[54] One angry neighbor wrote a letter to the editor of The Nation newspaper on Cotter’s behalf, going as far as to state that Cotter’s “religious and moral attitudes have been a source of inspiration in my troubled life.”[55] The Myers family similarly had the backing of an informal discussion group they participated in, the members of which were mostly Levittown residents. This group, along with the Bucks County Human Relations Council, wondered if the Myerses knew of a black family that wanted to move into Levittown, and when Bill responded that he and his wife were looking to move into town, plans were set forth to facilitate the move-in.[56] The Myers’ did not anticipate hostile reactions to their move; people of different races, such as Asians and Hispanics, already lived peacefully in Levittown, and a local newspaper had run several editorials favoring integration of the neighborhood before knowledge of the Myers’ move was publicly known.[57] The Human Relations Council of Bucks County had previously held meetings to explore the possibility of moving a black family into the neighborhood after several families had expressed interest, but these discussions all ended when the group pondered the implications of such a move - the anticipation of hostile community reactions scared other prospective black buyers away.[58] The Myers, however, were undeterred; they already had connections to the Levittown community since they had lived in the nearby Bloomsdale Gardens neighborhood. Daisy was a member of the Levittown League of Women Voters and carpooled with Levittown residents to courses at Temple University. The family also shopped at the Levittown Shop-a-rama. They reasoned that they had nothing to worry about, since they felt they were already integrated into the community in a sense, and proceeded with the purchase of the home, which they moved into on August 13, 1957.[59] Almost immediately after the family moved in, they realized that they had been wrong to believe they would be seamlessly incorporated into community life. A few hours after their arrival, they were greeted by a knock on the door from the mailman, who inquired if he might speak to the homeowner. When Daisy responded that she was the owner, “the look on his face was one of fright - as if he had seen a ghost.”[60] The same afternoon, the Levittown Times carried a brief article on the Myers family, the editors undoubtedly alerted to the arrival by the mailman: “The first Negro family to buy a Levittown house moved into the Dogwood Hollow Section this morning.”[61] The article’s inclusion of the neighborhood section is crucial; it seemed to serve as an invitation to Levittowners to gather in front of the Myers’ home and make their feelings on the perceived infiltration of their neighborhood known. A mob numbering about four hundred residents had gathered by nightfall; fearful for the safety of their children, the Myers’ returned to their previous home in Bloomsdale Gardens for the night.[62] During the first week, the mob was belligerent, openly defying police orders to disperse, throwing rocks that shattered the Myers’ picture window and left one police officer with a concussion.[63] Angry rioters stormed a meeting of the Bristol Township Board of Commissioners demanding that the Myers be forced out of Levittown, with one man arguing “The family that moved into Dogwood Hollow caused the riot, not us.”[64] A total of seven people were arrested within the week, and while the mobs still loitered after the Myers returned to their home on August 19, Daisy believed that things had at last calmed down.[65] Within a few days of the move-in, the group opposing Levittown’s integration had organized into the Levittown Betterment Committee, with the goal of getting the Myers’ out of Levittown “in a legal and peaceful manner.”[66] The group harassed the family by driving past their home yelling insults and started a petition in which they claimed “As moral, religious, and law-abiding citizens, we feel that we are unprejudiced and undiscriminating in our wish to keep our community a closed community.” John Piechowski, a committee leader who would later be arrested for his part in the anti-Myers campaign, wondered “The Prohibition was passed by Congress, and repealed, so why can’t the Civil Rights bill also be repealed?”[67] Statements such as these did not result in any direct action, and the majority of Levittowners believed that cooler heads would eventually prevail, but things took a turn for the worse in early September. On the morning of the fifth, the Weschler family awoke to the smell of cross burning on their lawn.[68] The previous day, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas had been integrated by the force of the National Guard, and had captured the attention of the nation. After this incident, Daisy Myers noted that events in Levittown took a more sinister turn; in addition to the cross burning at the Weschler’s home, four milk bottles filled with gasoline had been discovered in shrubbery surrounding several neighbors’ houses, and another cross had been burned at a the home of another Levittown family the Weschlers were close with.[69] The Betterment Committee purchased a vacant lot adjacent to the Myers’ backyard and turned the home into a clubhouse, naming it the Dogwood Hollow Social Club. Gatherings of as many as 20 to 30 people met at the clubhouse each night, proudly displaying the Confederate flag and blasting “Old Black Joe” and “Old Man River” from a window on a continuous loop.[70] Eldred Williams, another committee member who would face trial for his actions, would walk a black dog on the edge of the Myers’ property taunting the family with his calls to the dog: “Here nigger, come here, you nigger.”[71] The actions of the tormentors went unchecked for some time largely because of police inaction. From the day the Myers’ moved in, the local police had been tasked with guarding their home, but were of little use in quelling the mob, instead acting as traffic directors, listening to the threats, but doing nothing.[72] The state attorney general, Thomas McBride, eventually called for the state police to keep a constant watch on both the Myers’ and Weschler’s homes; when the cross was burned in the Weschler’s yard, Weschler found it odd that he had to call the police since, after all, “the state police were supposed to be maintaining a 24 hour watch at the corner of Dogwood and Daffodil Lanes, in full view of my lawn and its flaming cross.”[73] One police officer was awarded a citation for his work in Levittown, but returned it to the police chief with this explanation: “I was not permitted to do my duty as my conscience dictated.” This officer was promptly demoted to the position of patrolman.[74] The Myers’ also lacked any semblance of unified support on their behalf. As the family moved into Levittown, new neighbors sent over meals and toys for the children, and when the police failed to maintain their 24 hour watch, a group of friends watched over their home in shifts.[75] They had the support of individuals, but civic organizations lent their names to the cause, and nothing else. The Friends Service Association, American Jewish Congress, Americans for Democratic Action, and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, among others, all issued statements condemning the mob’s actions and voicing support for the Myers’, but stopped short of doing anything concrete; they “were willing to do almost anything for us as long as it cost them little.”[76] There may have been plausible reasons for the lack of support; since the family had arrived in summer, many church leaders, who could have played a significant part in encouraging community goodwill toward the Myers, were on vacation. Quaker groups had led lectures on the desirability of equal housing opportunity, but a lack of funding made it difficult for them to reach a great audience.[77] A Levittown Citizen’s Committee did eventually form to counter the actions of the Betterment group, but its leader, Reverend Raymond Harwick, professed to know nothing about racism, and declared that the group’s stance on integration was neutral. He letter conducted an investigation into the Myers’ backgrounds to determine their suitability for life in Levittown, subjecting them to the humiliation of questioning regarding their purchase of the home, and concluded to Daisy Myers that they were “clean as whistles.”[78] Rumors surrounding the move-in began to circulate from the beginning. The Myers’ neighbor and friend Lewis Weschler recalled hearing one mob member telling the crowd that “the NAACP bought the house for the nigger as a test case,” and other community members related that they had heard “the Reds were behind it, that the Jews were behind it...”.[79] Rumors of communist backing would have been especially resonant to Levittowners; Joseph McCarthy, the Senator who hounded supposed communists in the early 1950s, had visited Levittown in 1948 as a member of the Senate’s Joint Committee Study and Investigation of Housing to show support for Levitt’s development and racist policy and spoke of the relationship between public housing and communism.[80] Fear of communist influence was pervasive on a nationwide level at the time, and the racist crowd in Levittown, aware of this fact, could have shrewdly capitalized on the public’s shared fear to rally support for the anti-Myers cause. The residents’ justifications for their racism were as irrational as the rumors they spread about the Myers’ move-in. The components of their racism can generally be broken into three categories: fear of a loss in property values, fear of intermarriage, and resentment caused by the threat of equal socioeconomic standing between blacks and whites. One woman asserted that property values would go down immediately if blacks moved to Levittown in any number, although statistics have shown that property values actually increase upon the arrival of black families into an all-white neighborhood, and if a loss in property values was to occur, it would have been at the hands of white residents who engaged in panic selling.[81] At the time her memoir was written in 1960, Daisy Myers pointed out that there were four other black families in Levittown and property values had remained stable.[82] Fear of intermarriage between blacks and whites was also common, with one concerned mother stating “If children are raised together, they’re not going to think anything of marrying each other.” This same woman also expressed that she did not wish her children to associate with blacks - which, using her aforementioned logic, would certainly rule out the possibility of intermarriage.[83] Fear of status deprivation also loomed large; in general, this fear is “the greatest barrier to effective integration” and it certainly was the case in Levittown, where people were alarmed by the fact that a black family could afford the same things as them. One man pointed out that “Myers had a beautiful home [in Bloomsdale Gardens] that he could’ve stayed in.”[84] Despite the residents’ fears and harassment, the Myers were able to live relatively peacefully in Levittown, with only a couple isolated incidents of racism from bitter residents after taking eight mob members to court. None served any jail time for their actions, merely paying fines for their crimes.[85] The Myers family later moved back to York in a move that was not racially motivated; they simply wanted to be closer to their jobs. Levitt eventually abandoned the racial covenant in 1968, the day after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, but defended his use of racial covenants until the end of his life.[86] Today, the percentage of blacks living in Levittown is only one percent, and where the total population reached a high of 75,071 in 1970, it was a mere 53,966 in 2000. Additionally, the reputation of Levittown today is unattractive; the presence of a large elderly population has given the area a retirement community-like atmosphere.[87] The Myers’ experience is one example of how blacks could not escape the problem of housing in the Philadelphia area; the racism spread from the cities to the suburbs, and leaves a legacy in Levittown today, as evidenced by the low black population there. Even after racial covenants were outlawed, their enforcement could still be privately practiced, making purchase of a home difficult for blacks Racist fears of neighborhood integration in Levittown were unwarranted, as property values did not go down, and blacks did not move to Levittown in any great number. The lack of black presence in the community indicates that the anti-Myers element of the neighborhood was able to win a victory for racism in the long-term through their harassment of the family. The forces of community support on behalf of the Myers’ could not overpower the opposition, and the police’s passivity allowed the racists to take control of the situation.

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[1] The secondary sources dealing with suburban growth are Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: the Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Douglas S. Massey, “From Credit Denial to Predatory Lending: the Challenge of Sustaining Minority Homeownership,” in Segregation: The Rising Costs for America (New York, NY: Routledge, 2008): 39-80. Barbara M. Kelly, Expanding the American Dream: Building and Rebuilding Levittown (New York: State University of New York Press, 1993). Sources dealing with the history of civil rights in Philadelphia include James Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided: Race and Politics in the City of Brotherly Love. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); Mark Newman, The Civil Rights Movement (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004); W.E.B. DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007). Works focusing on the growth of the Interstate Highway System include Owen D. Gutfreund, Twentieth Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Logan Thomas Snyder, “The Creation of America’s Interstate Highway System,” American History 41, no. 2 (June 2006): 32-39. Works concerning the planning of Levittown include David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Villard Books, 1993); Curtis Miner, “Picture Window Paradise: Welcome to Levittown,” Pennsylvania Heritage 28, no. 2 (2002): 12-21. Other works about the Levittown community include Herbert J. Gans, The Levittowners; Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967); David Kushner, Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America's Legendary Suburb (New York: Walker & Co, 2009). Journal articles dealing with these topics include Marvin Bressler, “The Myers’ Case: An Instance of Successful Racial Invasion,” Social Problems 8, no. 2 (Autumn 1960): 126-142; Robert A. Thompson, “Social Dynamics in Demographic Trends and the Housing of Minority Groups,” The Phylon Quarterly 19, no. 1 (1958): 31-43; Alexander F. Miller, “Levittown U.S.A.,” The Phylon Quarterly 19, no. 1 (1958): 108-112; Joshua Ruff, “For Sale: The American Dream,” American History 42, no. 5 (2007): 42-49. Other sources include Richard Lacayo, “William Levitt.” Time, (December 7, 1998): 148-150; David Schulyer, “Reflections on Levittown at Fifty,” Pennsylvania History 70, no. 1 (2003):101-109; Chad M. Kimmel, “Revisiting Levittown: Changes Within a Postwar Planned Community,” Proteus 18, no. 2 (2001): 89-96.
[2] Newman, 34.
[3] Newman, 38.
[4] Wolfinger, 186.
[5] Wolfinger, 185.
[6] Gans, 174; Jackson, 290.
[7] DuBois, 7.
[8] DuBois, 15.
[9] DuBois 16-17.
[10] DuBois, 19.
[11] DuBois, 21.
[12] Wolfinger, 12-13.
[13] Wolfinger, 20.
[14] Wolfinger, 206-207.
[15] Halberstam, 134. The crisis was so major that 250 used trolley cars were sold as homes in Chicago and it was estimated that upwards of 50,000 veterans were living in Army Quonset huts.
[16] Lacayo, 148.
[17] Wolfinger, 179.
[18] Wolfinger, 180.
[19] Gutfreund, 42, 55.
[20] Gutfreund, 44.
[21] Gutfreund, 55.
[22] Snyder, 32.
[23] Wolfinger,180. In some cases, whites were so desperate to get out of the city that they sold their homes for up to 25 percent less than their market value.
[24] Miner, 14; Halberstam 134.
[25] Massey, 55-56.
[26] Great American Court Cases, 1st ed. (Detroit: Gale Group, 1999), s.v. “Shelley v. Kraemer.”
[27] Landmark Decisions of the United States Supreme Court, 1st ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2003), s.v. “Shelley v. Kraemer.”
[28] Newman, 49.
[29] Kushner, 49.
[30] Jackson, 208; Ruff, 48.
[31] Jackson, 208-209.
[32] Thompson, 36.
[33] Chang-Moo Lee and Barbara Stabin-Nesmith, “The Continuing Value of a Planned Community: Radburn in the Evolution of Suburban Development,” Journal of Urban Design, 6, no. 2 (June 2001): 152.
[34] Kelly, 44.
[35] Ruff, 46; Schulyer, 102; Halberstam 136;
[36] Miner, 16.
[37] Kushner, 10.
[38] Kushner, 43.
[39] Kushner, 3.
[40] Halberstam, 137.
[41] Irvin Molotsky, “Levittown 30 Years Later,” New York Times, October 2, 1977.
[42] Schulyer, 106.
[43] Molotsky, “Levittown 30 Years Later.”
[44] Miller, 109.
[45] Gans, 174.
[46] Gans, 33.
[47] Daisy Myers, Sticks ‘N Stones, (York, Pa: York County Heritage Trust, 2005), 11-13.
[48] Myers, 14.
[49] Myers, 17.
[50] Myers, 19.
[51] Kushner, 78.
[52] Lewis Weschler, The First Stone: a Memoir of the Racial Integration of Levittown, Pennsylvania (Chicago: Grounds for Growth Press, 2004): 15; Ruff, 48.
[53] Kushner, 64-65.
[54] Kushner, 66.
[55] Letter to the Editor, The Nation, July 18, 1953.
[56] Myers, 23-24.
[57] Weschler, 13; Myers, 25.
[58] Weschler, 15.
[59] Myers, 3-4.
[60] Myers, 5.
[61] Levittown Times, “First Negro Family Moves Into Levittown,” August 13, 1957.
[62] Kushner, 92.
[63] David B. Bittan, “Ordeal in Levittown,” Look, August 19, 1958.
[64] “Negro Family Insists It Will Move Into Levittown Home Despite Crowds,” Delaware Valley Advance, August 15, 1957.
[65] Myers, 29, 67.
[66] Kushner, 105.
[67] Kushner, 112, 106.
[68] Weschler, 61.
[69] Myers, 67-68; “Fiery Cross, Gas-filled Bottles Found Near Myers’ Levitt Home,” Delaware Valley Advance, September 12, 1957.
[70] Bittan, 86.
[71] Weschler, 65. Weschler recalls that Bill Myers’ response to this taunting was to use an army bayonet to weed his lawn of dandelions “with tremendous intensity. It seemed to me that some of his tormentors must have gotten the message, that he was a powder keg ready to explode at the proper spark.”
[72] Myers, 29.
[73] Weschler, 61.
[74] Myers, 76.
[75] Myers, 6, 67.
[76] Myers, 63.
[77] Bressler, 128-129.
[78] Myers, 54-55.
[79] Weschler, 4; Lester Becker and Lee Bobker, “Crisis in Levittown,” Academic Film Archive of North America, MPEG4 file, http://www.archive.org/details/crisis_in_levittown_1957 (accessed September 20, 2009).
[80] Kushner, 44-45.
[81] “Crisis in Levittown”; Gans, 174
[82] Myers, 96.
[83] Lester Beecker and Lee Bobker, “Crisis in Levittown.”
[84] Gans, 173; Lester Becker and Lee Bobker, “Crisis in Levittown.”
[85] Kushner, 188.
[86] Molotsky, “Levittown Thiry Years Later.”
[87] Kimmel, 95.