Levittown

by David Kushner

  “Thirty pieces of silver!” someone shouted, in reference to Judas’ pawning of Jesus to the Romans, and another picked up the refrain: “Thirty pieces of silver!” Snipes did his best to ward them off, but they kept chanting the refrain. From out of the crowd came a cherry-red cigarette butt, which hit Snipes in the chest. More cigarette butts followed. Snipes tried to scan the faces, to imprint some record of these Levittowners in his mind. He caught a glimpse of Newell, hulking and flattopped. But that was all. Suddenly from out of the mob, a pack of teenagers stormed up to the Myers home and began hurling rocks. Six stones rained down on the home. Two of them crashed through panes in the Myerses’ picture window, littering their new home with broken glass.

  Cutting through the night came six police cars. Fifteen policemen poured onto the lawn carrying clubs. Feeling overwhelmed by the situation, Police Chief John Stewart had called the county sheriff, C. Leroy Murray, to come help. It was the first time in twenty-nine years a sheriff had been called in to restore order. But order wouldn’t come easily. As the police were putting forty-five-year-old Howard Bentcliff and his forty-four-year-old wife, Agnes, in the car, the woman began to rave, “Come on, let’s everybody get arrested! Let’s make a big thing out of this!”

  Three teenage boys, age fourteen to seventeen, also refused to leave. “Here is where the nigger lovers live,” one shouted, pointing to the Wechslers’ house.

  “These niggers must have good lawyers to have the cops protect them,” said another.

  “These cops are all nigger lovers!” screamed the third, as the police finally dragged the teenagers away to arrest them for disorderly conduct.

  Sheriff Murray grabbed his bullhorn and read the crowd the riot act, forbidding more than three people from gathering outside the Myerses’ home. But the leaders of the mob had already hatched a plan to keep the family out of their suburb for good. They would call on the hero who had made their community whites-only in the first place: Bill Levitt.

  Ten

  THE SECRET CASTLE

  INSIDE THE FORTY-THOUSAND-SQUARE-FOOT headquarters of Levitt & Sons near Levittown, Pennsylvania, Bill Levitt had a large oak desk with a telephone and an ashtray for his ever-present Camel cigarette. But when the Bristol Daily Courier reporter called on Wednesday morning, August 14, he didn’t reach the boss. Instead, a Levitt spokesperson fielded the inquiry about the sale of the home on 43 Deepgreen Lane: Had Bill Levitt, the famed builder who had refused to sell homes to African-Americans, finally relented?

  The Levitt & Sons representative assured the reporter that the sale was a “private transaction” that had no connection to the company. As far as the spokesperson knew, “there had been no cancellations of new home sales in Levittown.” The Levitt exhibit center was packed, as always, he noted, and open for business. The press weren’t the only ones having trouble getting Bill Levitt on the line. Representatives from the mob tried in vain to get ahold of the man they perceived to be their sympathetic leader. Bill Levitt was out of town, they were told.

  Levitt had reason to duck the spotlight. Word of the riot had lured reporters and news cameras from around the nation. Organizations in the area publicly decried the violence he had allowed to ensue. “The right to live where one chooses is a basic American tradition,” wrote the Bucks County Americans for Democratic Action in a statement. “Anyone who participates in mob rule in violence to oust a man and his family from his home is acting in an unlawful manner and against the democratic process. We believe there is a place in the community for the Myers family and that they should be treated as any other new resident of Levittown.”

  For years, Levitt’s party line had been that selling homes to African-Americans would cause the whites to move out, just as his family had done when a black district attorney had moved next door to them in Brooklyn. He failed to say why this would matter: Even if blacks replaced some whites, after all, the homes would still be filled. Why did he care about color?

  The Concord Park Civic Association, from the low-cost, integrated community of 139 homes near Levittown, challenged Levitt on this point. A Concord Park spokesperson said, “We live in homes much like those in Levittown . . . It is a fact that the value of our homes has not decreased but improvements by white and Negro homeowners have added to the value. The Bucks County Realty Board has established the value at one thousand dollars higher than when the homes were built.”

  But as he ducked the spotlight in the wake of the Myerses’ move, Bill Levitt remained firmly committed to his plan. As far as he was concerned, he had been standing up to opposition for decades about his whites-only policy; he had defied the orders of the Supreme Court, and he had become the country’s biggest builder. And he wasn’t going to mess with success now. In his mind, he was just giving the people what they wanted. In fact, at the same time that the Myerses were moving in, he was further expanding his exclusionary empire.

  With his domineering father, Abraham, and his meddlesome brother, Alfred, out of the company—and his son William Levitt Jr. and nephew Roy Sheldon now on board instead—Levitt focused on his plan to build more whites-only communities across America. He set his sights on Will-ingboro, New Jersey, just ten miles south of Levittown, Pennsylvania, across the Delaware River. By now, he had acquired more than 90 percent of the township. More than fifteen thousand homes could be squeezed on the tracts, he estimated. He also had his eye on purchasing the 2,230-acre, eighteenth-century plantation of the Belair Estate in Bowie, Maryland, just fifteen miles from Washington, D.C. The plan: to construct six thousand homes there. The estimated profit, as one paper reported: six million dollars.

  For Levitt, the combination of fortune and fame, the glory of having risen from nothing to become an iconic American tycoon, ballooned his enormous ego more than ever—and having just turned fifty, he obliterated any midlife crisis by living more lavishly and brazenly every day. He bragged that he despised exercise besides golf and relegated himself to reading only newspapers and magazines. He leased a sprawling apartment on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and, in his bow ties and pin-striped coats, became a fixture around New York City. He rode in a chauffeur-driven limousine, spending long nights drinking Rob Roys with society leaders at nightclubs such as El Morocco. He had his own table at the ritzy Colony restaurant. He would be the first one to tell everyone where to sit, then order himself a juicy steak and tell everyone else what he or she should be eating.

  He owned a mansion on Long Island where he indulged his every whim. A fan of fresh corn, he had a corn patch planted in his backyard. His butler would bring a hot, steaming ear of fresh corn out on a plate whenever it was in season. Long a supporter of Jewish causes, he and his wife, Rhoda, were known for their philanthropy in community groups around Long Island. Rhoda spent so much time at the local golf clubs that she became a leading player, with a 44 on the front nines.

  While Rhoda was busy leading a fund-raising tournament at the Glen Oaks Club, Bill would get into a private plane and head off for work or play. On one occasion, he flew a bunch of buddies down to Havana to party at the Yacht Club. On the way back in his corporate jet, he told the pilot they were making a pit stop in Nassau, Bahamas. With eighty dollars from his friends, he marched up to the craps table and kept playing until he had won twenty-five hundred dollars—enough to pay for an extended week’s vacation on the island for him and his group.

  Stateside, he’d jet down to Bucks County and head for Levittown, Pennsylvania, in the back of his limousine. The car would wind through the curvilinear streets, past the houses, and the stores at the Shop-O-Rama, past the Walt Disney School, and up into the sections of streets all beginning with letter R—River, Rustleleaf, and, finally, Red Cedar. In the midst of the ranch homes, the car would cut left up a hill into the woods on a private lane tucked away on three rolling acres. On the right rose ten-foot walls and a medieval-looking watchtower. The car stopped at a wide wooden gate, like a drawbridge and a moat. Behind the gate was a five-bedroom mansion and a kidney-sh
aped swimming pool. It was Levitt’s secret castle, the hub of his secret life.

  While his wife and two boys, William and James, lived in New York, Levitt had a second life here in Levittown, Pennsylvania, with a mistress: his secretary from Levittown, New York, Alice Kenny. The affair had gone on secretly for years, and the home, which he had bought while building Levittown around it, was just as secure. No one could see what was going on behind the towering walls. Few Levittowners knew their founder lived nearby upon a hill, just one mile north of the Myerses’ home on Deepgreen Lane.

  As Daisy, Bill Myers, and their kids drove slowly into Dogwood Hollow in their blue-and-white Mercury the morning after the incident at their new home, the neighborhood seemed eerily quiet. It felt almost as if the events of the previous day had not happened. The family felt weary, having been up late the night before in their old home in Bloomsdale, replaying the scene. Daisy lay in bed awake asking herself questions she couldn’t yet answer.

  She wondered, “What toll would this take on Bill? Would he be able to hold on to his job? Are we different from the average family that moved to Levittown? Are we immune to the yearning for a little suburban home with green grass and flowers all around? Do we love our children less than they do? Are we sick and tired of ghettos? Do we have the right to choose a neighborhood or do the neighbors have a right to choose us? Have they come to tell us where we shall or shall not live? Aren’t we human? What hope could we have that their distorted values would change? And, was it our responsibility to bring about the conversion? . . . Will this be the children’s first memory of their new home?”

  As they pulled into the driveway of their new home, evidence from the prior night’s mob was impossible to ignore. Trash and cigarette butts littered the lawn, and the beautiful picture window at the front had jagged holes. Fear and anger shot through the Myerses when they saw the shattered window. What had they done to deserve this? Daisy thought, Why had this been done to an average American family? We are average, despite the fact that our skin is black.

  Someone had tried to repair the front window, but the damage had been done. When Daisy and Bill opened the door, they saw a rock in the middle of the living room, surrounded by more glass. Daisy recalled a passage from the Bible: “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” Looking at the stone on her floor, she couldn’t believe how something so small could be so foreboding. “The rock, weighing less than an ounce,” as Daisy put it, “carried tons of hatred with it.”

  But they were determined not to let the hatred wear them down. While Bill kept the children away from the broken glass, Daisy began to sweep up the floor. Bill and the kids tended to the painting in the back, slapping fresh coats of paint on the walls. Daisy cooked up a hot breakfast, and they sat down to eat. But no sooner had they started to eat when the phone began to ring. They heard from family and friends and strangers, who were now getting word of the riot through the news and radio reports.

  “I’m ashamed of my race,” said a woman calling from across the state.

  Daisy thanked her for her support and hung up. Then the phone rang again. This time, it was man from Yuma, Arizona. “You may be sure that many of us are with you in your struggle against ignorant prejudice,” he said. “Stick this out as long as you can, for it is brave people like you who are showing the world that all men are created equal.”

  The Myerses even got a call from a man at the local oil company, who pledged to help get them whatever they needed and bemoaned that the few hundred people in the mob had sullied the reputation of Levittown.

  The moment Daisy hung up the phone, the doorbell rang. Bill approached the door cautiously. When he opened it, he was relieved to see his neighbors: the Wechslers. They had come with representatives of the Friends Service Association, who were there to help them throughout the day. And they quickly needed all the help they could get. Reporters began to call and show up wanting statements. Scared for their lives, the Myerses had been sleeping in their old home in Bloomsdale, and everyone wanted to know when they would be staying at their new home in Levittown. “My hot water and heating system isn’t hooked up yet,” Bill told a reporter, and he also said he had an oil tank that needed to be repaired. “As soon as that’s complete I expect to move in,” for good, Bill said. But he included a caveat: “If I feel there is some danger involved, I may have to reconsider.”

  Lew lent his support. “They have a right to live the same as any other Americans,” he told a reporter from the New York Times. “The violence last night was horrible. I hope it ends.” Just as the Myerses were feeling themselves drawn into the center of action, Bea and Lew now felt themselves in the midst of a struggle again. But this was different from their years fighting for causes in the shadow of McCarthyism. They were on the front lines themselves.

  That day, Nick and Katy played with Stephen and William Myers in their backyard, trying to have a normal summer afternoon. Suddenly, they saw the strangest sight. Someone was throwing pears, one after another, at them from his lawn: The big fat bully who had helped them build their fort had now declared his standing on the side of the mob.

  As the Myerses and Wechslers hurried the kids inside, they watched in horror as the mob outside began to grow again despite orders from the police not to congregate. Even the Circus Days event at the Shop-O-Rama and the dance for “subteeners” at the Levittown Indian Creek Pool couldn’t keep the crowds away: teenage girls with long, white legs in dark blue shorts and plaid, sleeveless shirts. Teenage boys in cuffed blue jeans with greased-back dark hair. Pregnant women. Women with babies. Stoic men with crossed arms. They all surveyed the scene.

  The stream of motorcycles and cars, many of which now brandished Confederate flags, was constant. By three thirty P.M., more than a thousand cars had come by 43 Deepgreen Lane to gawk. The Bristol Township policemen tried in vain to hold them back. They dispatched two police officers to block off each of the three points of entry to the neighborhood to anyone but residents. But they were no match for the crowd.

  By seven P.M., the cars with Confederate flags were back caravanning around the homes. The Myerses had had enough. One-half hour later, Daisy and Bill gathered up the children and headed for their car, accompanied by a police escort. As they left the house, the rowdy crowd fell quiet. When faced with the Myerses directly, this real family, these real people, not just some abstract entities, the crowd’s demeanor changed. They were weak. Without a sound, they watched the Mercury drive away.

  Once the Myerses were gone, however, a newfound energy emboldened the crowd. With twenty police officers now watching, the mob headed up to the Myerses’ lawn. “We spent a lot of money on our homes,” yelled one man. “They’ll be worth nothing!”

  “This is why I moved out of Philadelphia,” another concurred.

  People’s minds raced with conspiracy theories, that the Myerses had been set up by the NAACP. “Whoever persuaded them to move here naturally picked a model Negro family,” one woman said. “It’s the families that will follow that worry me.”

  The police threatened to give parking tickets to anyone out front and would direct the crowd off the lawn—only to see them come back on as soon as the officers backed away. Before long, they gave up the cat-and-mouse game for good. The Wechslers watched out their window with horror as the police, who were supposedly there to protect them, let the crowd form unabated. To their astonishment, near nine P.M., the bulk of the police officers got into their cars and drove away.

  One mile away at the Bristol Township Building in Levittown, the weekly commissioners’ meeting was under way. Among the group was Hal Lefcourt, an early Levittowner, one of the first to move in, so original that he had earned the nickname Mr. Levittown. Few burst with town pride more than him. Raised poor in Newark, New Jersey, Lefcourt was thrown out of the marines for his severe stutter, but scraped enough money together to be one of the first five families to move into the community.

  Lefcourt often recalled b
eing greeted by William and Alfred Levitt upon his arrival with the first settlers in town. “We’re happy you’re here,” they told him, “you’re going to love it here.” He relished those early days. He became active in politics, getting elected as a commissioner. He was known as the voice of the community, the PR guy for the town. “There has never been an American Dream in America but Levittown,” he would say.

  As a member of the Bristol Township Board of Commissioners, he met with the group every week. But this was no ordinary meeting night. At ten P.M., the door burst open. Lefcourt looked out in shock on the angry faces of the mob. He had never seen anything like it in town before. They jammed into the room, dozens of them, hooting and hollering and demanding that the commission take action against the Myerses’ move. “Do something!” they shouted. “Do something!”

  One man came forward and decried the police’s efforts to force people from protesting around the Myerses’ home on Deepgreen Lane. “Disturbing the peace is one thing,” he said angrily, “and talking is something else. Remember there’s freedom of speech here!” The mob hollered behind him in support. “My wife is foreign-born,” the man continued, “and she says the police here are worse than the Nazis in Germany!” The crowd shouted again in support.