Levittown

by David Kushner

  Undeterred, Newell led the mob to the backyard of a home just around the corner from the Myerses’ on Dogwood Drive. Hundreds of his followers marched down the street—so many that it became difficult for attendees to park. One gray-haired man asked a resident man named Snyder not attending the rally if he could park on his lot. “If you come in peace, all right,” the resident replied, “but any violence, and I’m going to call the police.”

  The gray-haired man snarled, “Do you mean to tell me you are denying me the right to park here?”

  Snyder eyeballed him defiantly. “You understand what I told you.”

  The gray-haired man turned to the mob. “Gang! Here is a goddamn nigger lover!”

  “Where?” someone yelled.

  “Where is the son of a bitch?” another cried.

  Snyder’s wife heard the commotion from inside her home and came running outside over the lawn. “I defy you to harm one hair on my husband’s head!” she shouted.

  “Let’s get rid of the big son of a bitch of a nigger lover!” the gray-haired man shouted. A group of teenage boys drove slowly up in a 1949 car. They had knives and guns, they said, and they’d be happy to help the mob. Eventually, the mob retreated, but then the Snyders’ phone rang. “Look here,” said the voice on the other end of the line, “if you know what is good for you, you want to watch your step because I am telling you we have crosses to burn on sympathizers’ lawns.”

  Mrs. Snyder hung up and called the police urgently for help. “What can we do to protect ourselves?”

  “Within your rights,” she was told by the police, “if anyone tries to harm you bodily, you can kill. But try not to go that far.”

  By now, over six hundred people filled the Levittown streets outside. The Betterment Committee had been working the crowd, passing around a petition to recruit members. “Protest from the citizens of the ____________ section of Levittown, Pennsylvania,” it read. “We, the citizens and home owners of Levittown, Pennsylvania, protest the mixing of Negroes in our previously all-white community. 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. In as much as having equal rights, the Negroes have an equal opportunity to build their own community of equal value and beauty without intermingling in our community. We therefore feel that we must keep our community closed to protect our own interests.”

  Dressed in dark slacks and a white, button-up shirt, with the sleeves rolled up his thick triceps, Newell got onstage. He was flanked by a crew-cut man in a long-sleeved, plaid shirt. Eldred Williams, the thin, scrawny sidekick with a cigarette dangling from his lips, lurked nearby. Men with crossed arms looked up, and a little girl sat on her father’s shoulders. Newell informed the crowd that they needed to get 51 percent of the Levittowners to sign the petition to get the Myerses out. The crowd cheered. But he urged them to not descend into “mob violence. We have to settle this by peaceful means.”

  Bentley, the former township zoning officer, urged the crowd “not to panic. Don’t put your house up for sale because of this. That is what they want.” The crowd burst into applause.

  Ruth Rolen, a black female reporter from the New Jersey Afro American, was trying in vain to interview the protesters. She roamed the lawn in a long dress clutching a notebook as a dog began to bark. Nearby, a disheveled man in an orange shirt said with a devilish smile, “Even dogs don’t like niggers, they can smell them too.” As an Associated Press photographer aimed his camera at the scene, the man in the orange shirt protested, “Don’t take our pictures with those niggers!”

  Observing the fracas, Newell spoke up again, urging the crowd for “no mob violence.” A few applauded, but one man barked back, “You sound like you are on the niggers’ side!”

  Newell stood firm, urging them not use the word nigger. He began to joke about the threats on his life that he had allegedly endured since taking his stand. “I was supposed to be dead tonight,” he said, eliciting laughs. But with just a bit of encouragement, he slipped back into his diatribe: “Why did Mr. Myers pick out our area? Is he a fool or does he think he’s better than any other colored person?” The crowd cheered as Newell became more invigorated. “We will try our best to give Mr. My-ers consideration, but are we to allow our happy community to go to pot?”

  More cheers, and cries of “No” met him back.

  “We must settle by law this situation in which one man did not have the decency and common courtesy to respect the rights of other men,” Newell said.

  As his speech came to a close, reporter Rolen pursued the mob as they made their way through the night to the Myerses’ neighborhood. They clapped and jeered as they cut through the streets. Some broke off toward Newell’s house, which became a makeshift headquarters, teeming with acolytes. As Rolen and her colleague tried to get inside, one of Newell’s followers shouted, “Don’t let them come in here!” But then, from the shadows, Newell emerged to usher them inside.

  Leaning back against the wall with his beefy arms crossed over his chest, Newell tried to explain himself. He had nothing against the Myers family personally, he said, and added that his mother lived next to a black family in Durham.

  “So why do you object to colored residents living here?” the reporter asked.

  Newell cracked a grin. “Would you like me to live in your neighborhood?”

  “Yes,”she replied.

  At that, Newell stammered, “Well, I can’t express myself very well I guess.”

  From behind him, a supporter chimed in on Newell’s behalf: “He doesn’t want them living here because of all the crime and violence that happens where colored people live.”

  “But isn’t the movement you’re leading here against colored people a type of resistance that encourages lawlessness?” Rolen said.

  Newell stared down at her and replied, “This is different.” Then he went back to join the crowd outside. Down the block by the Myerses’ home, he found the state troopers waiting. The troopers did not interfere with the protest, despite that they admitted to a reporter that the crowd was unlawfully assembling after being read the riot act. As Captain Ver-becken explained, they were willing to look the other way: “As long as it stays orderly, there is little we will do about keeping them away.”

  As Newell worked his way through the crowd, Verbecken beckoned him into his car and asked, “Are you the spokesperson for this organization?”

  “We are all spokesmen,” Newell said, “but I was asked by neighbors to speak for them, and they are all my friends, so I took over the job.”

  “Well, what’s the purpose of this congregation?”

  “Protesting the moving of this colored family into this neighborhood.”

  “Well, don’t you think you are barking up the wrong tree? If you have any complaint, report it to the police, and don’t take the law in your own hands.”

  “We always tell people we don’t want any violence.”

  Verbecken eyed him, as the crowd noisily milled outside the car windows. “How can you control violence when you have got a group of persons with an ax to grind as large as this?” he said dubiously. “Did you tell them this the other night when the windows were broken?”

  “We always tell them we don’t want any violence,” Newell repeated, then left.

  Outside, the jingling bell of an ice cream truck cut through the night. With so much action, the driver had filled his truck with treats. As his truck came down the block, the mob lined up to buy Popsicles and chocolate-dipped cones, kids clamoring for money from their parents. A cop rushed over to break up the crowd. It was against a township ordinance, he said, to sound the ice-cream-truck bell after eight P.M.

  “This is America!” the crowd began to angrily chant. “This is America!

  The ice cream truck’s jingle was turned off. But the ice cream continued to sell. That night, the ice cream man said, his business was a “landslide.” Soon, the marching mob resumed its course, circ
ling around and around the Myerses’ home. The person leading the march was a seven-year-old boy.

  At six P.M. on Saturday, August 17, the Wechslers could see a crowd forming again down the road on Dogwood Drive—just down from the Myerses, who were still away. Now someone put a park bench on a lawn, so the mob could have somewhere to sit as they jeered. A rumor had swelled that the Myerses were moving in that night. Newell made the rounds with Eldred Williams at his side.

  Despite the police order not to congregate, the mob felt they could be as defiant as Levitt and insisted they would stand their ground. More than three hundred people—men in shorts, women with strollers, teenagers on bikes—crowded behind the house, spilling out onto a nearby field, waiting for the meeting to begin. It was being delayed, however, Newell told them, until they had one more necessary ingredient: an American flag. A half hour later, someone showed up with the flag, which was hung on the side of the house.

  Newell lowered his head in prayer as he said, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever.”

  The crowd replied, “Amen!”

  One by one speakers took the stage, which had now been outfitted with a microphone. One man began by making overtures to the Myerses, showing faint signs of sympathy. But the crowd booed and jeered, inspiring Newell to take the stage. Newell beamed from the attention. He had put on a suit jacket and one of his favorite ties, an extrawide number doodled with putting greens and golf clubs. Newell called for order. There was no need for violence against the Myerses, he said, the crowd were dedicated instead to finding “peaceful and legal means” of getting them to leave. Negroes wouldn’t be happy in Levittown, he added. They were just trying to help them by not having them here.

  The crowd cheered, but then Newell caught something in the corner of his eye: the sheriff’s car approaching, along with a dozen police. Sheriff Murray took the stage amid catcalls and boos as he read a statement: “Mob rule has never succeeded in attaining any goal. Use good judgment and return to your homes peacefully before serious consequences result.”

  As the crowd booed, Newell grabbed the microphone and read the first amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

  Before long, six hundred mob members gathered back at the Myerses’ house, and the police moved in to get them. When one man resisted, a policeman charged, grabbing him in a headlock as a state trooper rushed in and struck the man with his club. As chaos broke out, a photographer closed in to capture the moment, but a police club smashed him in the face.

  Every Saturday, the Levittown Times ran a column by the thirty-two-year-old Reverend Ray Linford Harwick of the Evangelical and Reformed Church of the Reformation in Levittown, Pennsylvania. Harwick was one of the first clergy in the community and was an upstanding husband and father, and his column, called “The Pastor Speaks,” was well read. Sam Snipes, the Quaker attorney who had helped the Myerses early on, described Harwick as leading “a very fine liberal church that stands up for every good cause.”

  On Saturday, August 17, Harwick’s column exhibited his usual blend of folksy and earnest style. He wrote that he sympathized with those who found the Bible’s language stilted and daunting and comforted them by allaying the pressure to master more than that which they were able. “As a sailor can learn to sail the ocean without knowing all its mysteries,” he wrote, “so you and I can learn enough truth to live well without knowing all there is to know about God.”

  Back in his home in Levittown, however, Harwick had spent the week learning truths of his own. On the morning of the fifteenth, just after coming home from vacation with his family, Harwick got a call from the president of the Lower Bucks County Council of Churches about the Myers incident. Harwick was stunned. As liberal as he had been, he had never preached about civil rights or had to consider such outcomes in his community or parish. The first thing he did was to get down on his knees and pray. Then he went over to the Myerses’ house to help.

  Harwick hurried between the Myerses’ home and the meetings of the Betterment Committee, trying to bridge the chasm—but to no avail. And he saw things beyond his imagination. The preaching of hate by the mob. The defiance of Newell and Williams. The assertion that they would throw out the Myerses using “peaceful and legal” means. At one meeting, Harwick and a few other clergy appealed to the mob, only to see the angry, scowling faces rush at them and threaten one clergyman with violence.

  Harwick volunteered to become chairperson of the newly formed Citizens Committee for Levittown—a group designed to keep the Levittown Betterment Committee at bay. The town was dividing, and he knew which side he was on. When a local reporter asked him to make his first statement for the group, Harwick said, “Many people and many additional religious and civic organizations share our feeling against violence. The Citizens Committee for Levittown has formed so that all decent and law-abiding citizens and groups may make themselves heard in their community and around the world.” Harwick told another reporter, “This is no longer a local situation. The eyes of the world are on us.”

  Other religious groups throughout Levittown joined the cause. The Lower Bucks County Council of Churches released a “Statement Concerning Fair Housing Practices” urging each resident to “do his utmost to welcome all new people into our area and do everything in his power to make all newcomers feel accepted.” The Jewish Community Council of Lower Bucks County issued its own stand, “knowing that an upright man is a blessing to his community and that the color of a vessel gives us no clue to its contents.”

  The same group, along with the Council of Churches, the William Penn Center, and Levittown Civic Association, and the Friends Service Association put out their own opposition in a “Declaration of Conscience,” which read, “We regret the violence, mob gatherings, and other unfortunate actions directed as a protest against the arrival of the William Myers family to our community. We know that many Levittown residents feel as we do that the maintenance of human decency, law and order and religious morality are of primary importance to the well-being of our community. The events of the past few days have thrust our Levittown into such prominence that we now find ourselves responsible to our state, our nation, and to our world at large for the achievement of a solution worthy of us Americans. Demonstrations of racial and religious bigotry have no place in our community, and we know that further developments in Levittown will keep faith with the wholesome democratic traditions of our lives.”

  One paper praised the “admirable and Christian sentiment” expressed by the Myerses’ next-door neighbors, who said, “They have a right to live the same as other Americans.” Lew Wechsler couldn’t help but laugh: “I, a Jew, have expressed these ‘Christian’ sentiments!”

  On Sunday morning, August 18, after the weekend of riots, Harwick and his fellow clergy across Levittown took to their pulpits to urge peace. At the Hope Lutheran Church, one reverend devoted his entire sermon to the conflict. “I regret exceedingly that a group of Levittown citizens have used violence in an attempt to settle the dispute over the William Myers family’s residence in Levittown,” he said. “It constitutes a violation of God’s will and cannot call forth his blessing upon our community.” Others urged members to “become a center of calmness and peace in your own neighborhood . . . and indicate by your words and actions, at any mention of violence to property or person, that this is not the way.”

  But the message was lost on the Betterment Committee. That morning Newell issued a statement of his own that read, “The Levittown Betterment Com
mittee . . . has gained strength and intends to stand upon its constitutional right and the right to free and peaceful assembly. We denounce the action of C. Leroy Murray, sheriff. We wish to announce openly to Sheriff Murray that we are calling another meeting this week. We want all Levittowners to join us in decrying the only real violence today: the brutal clubbing of one of the citizens of Levittown by the Pennsylvania State Police. Another protest meeting is planned. We want a peaceful, orderly and uninterrupted meeting. The purpose of the organization is that of restoring our entire white community.”

  It didn’t take long for Harwick to discover the price that came with speaking out. That night after his church service, his phone rang at home. Harwick’s wife answered. “This is the KKK calling,” the person said, then hung up.

  The phone rang again. “This is the white citizens council calling,” this one explained, and hung up.

  The next call came: “Nigger lovers!” The line went dead.

  Harwick did his best to engage those who would remain on the line. They spoke of their fear of losing the value of their homes, the ones they had worked so hard to buy and maintain. Harwick strained to convince them otherwise, but it was to no avail. The minute he hung up, the phone would ring again.

  “Hello?”

  “How many children did you say you had, Reverend? Is it three?” Then the line went dead.

  Less than a mile away, Daisy and Bill sat on the edge of their bed at their old home in Bloomsdale Gardens. They had driven back from their trip to Harrisburg and York and left their boys temporarily with Bill’s parents, taking only baby Lynda and their necessary belongings with them. Nothing was left in this old home of theirs but their bed and a few boxes. Despite the presence of the state troopers, they knew that the tensions in Levittown were escalating. They couldn’t help but fear what might happen when they stayed at Deepgreen Lane for good. “Do you think it’s safe to sleep there now?” Bill said.