Levittown

by David Kushner

  At the same time, he was also making grand statements about his community in Bowie, Maryland, which would be open in 1960. He hyped that he built without plaster walls and predicted a future of new and technologically advanced materials. “In twenty-five years,” he said, “people won’t know what the word plaster means.” And he derided so-called modern innovations favored by people like his brother, such as ovens built directly into walls. “I’ve got them in my [Levittown] houses because women want them,” he said, “but it’s ridiculous. Ovens ought to be down someplace near the floor and out of the way and out of sight. A woman bends over and puts something in and four hours later she bends over to take it out, so what’s so hard about that that the oven needs to be in the wall?”

  Levitt surrounded himself with his veteran executives, who were separated into philosophical camps called the realists and the idealists. Levitt fielded their pitches and concerns in his office and, as Gans put it, had an easy way of choosing which to back: the ones who “agreed with his own ideas.” In Levittown, New Jersey, there would be areas set aside for churches. He hired renowned architects to design the shopping center with parking for more than six thousand cars. Each neighborhood would have around fifteen hundred homes with a park, a school, a swimming pool, and a baseball field.

  Gone would be the days of communities with cookie-cutter homes, he promised. Instead, on the suggestion of his wife, Rhoda, he would have a mix of Cape Cods, ranchers, and colonials on the same block. The move to colonials was done “with a suddenness that almost took the breath away form his closest associates,” one reporter wrote. “After years of building the contemporary type of house, the firm of Levitt and Sons is turning back to the traditional.” As one of his execs put it, “Now Lewis Mumford can’t criticize us anymore.” In a press release, Levitt wrote, “We are ending once and for all the old bugaboo of uniformity.”

  As Bill Levitt was busy creating the fantasy of Levittown, New Jersey, reality was crashing in on Pennsylvania. On October 9, the same day the local paper celebrated the news of Levittown, New Jersey, a letter from Thomas McBride to the Bristol Township commissioners was made public through the press. In it, McBride was responding to an inquiry from the commissioners into why he had meddled by sending the state police back to Levittown.

  McBride wrote that he was “somewhat surprised” by the tone of the township commissioners’ letter given the extreme nature of the attacks. “I thought it to be of tremendous importance for this situation to be solved by local action,” he continued, “and that if it was so solved, you would take pride in the accomplishment. Nevertheless, it remains true that I cannot, even if I would avoid the obligation that falls upon me as the chief law-enforcement officer of the Commonwealth; nor, in assuming my burden, does the responsibility fall from you of living up to yours.” He concluded by writing, “I am convinced your police force did not do all that could have been expected.”

  McBride was not the only one who felt that way. On the heels of his letter, Sergeant Nuskey, the veteran Levittown police officer who had long been troubled by the police’s inaction, put himself—and his career—on the line for his beliefs. It happened when he, along with his other officers, was awarded a citation by the township for their heroic service in protecting the Myerses.

  But Nuskey returned the citation along with a letter of explanation: “I was not permitted to do my duty as my conscience dictated. I was ordered by my immediate superior not to take action. This was, to me, ignoring my responsibility. Although the board acted in good faith when it awarded the citation, I cannot accept it in good conscience. Therefore, I am taking a dignified step toward improving the department by returning it [the citation] to your charge.”

  Police Chief Stewart denied the allegation and found support from the township manager, Henry Rolfe, who said, “I do not consider the letters [from McBride and Nuskey] valid” because they contained “inaccurate information.” And Nuskey would pay the price. The following week, Stewart demoted him to the rank of patrolman for allegedly violating a township police regulation against releasing police matters to the press.

  Soon after, Sam Snipes, the Quaker attorney, heard his telephone ring. It was McBride, who invited Snipes to his home to discuss the Myerses’ situation. “Why haven’t you sought an injunction against the mob?” McBride asked. Snipes explained that the Myerses and their defenders lacked the resources, and the local police were as much a part of the problem. There was nothing they could do. McBride said, “I’ll seek an injunction on behalf of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.” If Levittown couldn’t solve the problem, the state would.

  Hughes, who had leased his house for use as the Confederate House, was arrested by the township for violating a zoning ordinance by allowing public gatherings in a residential area. But the charges would be dropped, he was told, if he told Eldred Williams and the forty other club dwellers to leave his home. Hughes took the deal. When he went to the house to deliver the news, the crowd inside was defiant.

  “This is nothing more than a police state!” someone shouted.

  “We’re the wrong color,” said another.

  Hughes was sympathetic. “The wishes of the property owners in this section have not been considered at all. This whole thing was a railroad job,” he said, but “this is the only way to keep me from going to jail.” The Confederate House was closed. Despite the mob’s claims that whites wouldn’t want to be neighbors with the Myerses, a white family from New York happily assumed the lease within days. “It’s a nice house,” said the new tenant. “The neighborhood has nice winding roads, lots of greenery—it’s very pleasant . . . We don’t give a darn if Negroes live next to it.”

  One by one, the chips began to fall. On Thursday, October 17, after more than two months of investigations, Howard Bentcliff was working at his job as an auto-service-station attendant on the Pennsylvania Turnpike when he saw police cars arrive. The officers told him he was under arrest for malicious mischief in the harassment of the Myerses in Levittown. Five days later, the police arrested Eldred Williams, along with Bentcliff, for burning the cross on the lawn of Peter Von Blum the previous month. They were both held and then released on $500 bail for grand jury action. The following day, October 23, a temporary injunction was granted against the group, including Williams; Bentcliff and his wife, Agnes; John R. Bentley; John T. Piechowski; Mary Brabazon; and the chairperson of the Levittown Betterment Association, James Newell.

  The five-and-one-half-page complaint by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania stated that the defendants had “entered into an unlawful, malicious and evil conspiracy . . . to force the said Myers family to leave Levittown; to harass, annoy, intimidate, silence and deprive of their rights to peaceable enjoyment of their property residents of Levittown who did not participate in the conspiracy or in any act designed to force the said Myers family to leave Levittown; to deprive the said Myers family and other residents of Levittown of their rights to personal security and equal protection of the laws; to interfere with and prevent law enforcement officers from performing their duties with the intent to deny the aforesaid residents of Levittown of the equal protection of the laws . . . said conspiracy and said purposes being in violation of the Constitution of the United States and the Federal Civil Rights Act.”

  It barred them from:

  A. Burning or causing to be burned fiery crosses.

  B. Trespassing and affixing to property of others or littering the streets with inflammatory posters, scurrilous pictures, leaflets and other printed matter.

  C. Harassing or annoying residents of Levittown by organizing, instigating or participating in motorcades, loud slamming of mail boxes and setting off firecrackers.

  D. Placing or causing to be placed in Levittown bombs or explosives of any kind whatsoever.

  E. In any manner threatening or intimidating any individual or in any manner threatening the destruction of property.

  F. Taking any acts of any kind whatever which seek by force, vi
olence or intimidation to compel removal or withdrawal of the Myerses from Levittown.

  Upon the issuing of the complaint, McBride said, “We cannot tolerate for a single minute these attempts to stir up racial hatred in defiance of our state and federal laws and constitutions.” The message was clear. William Levitt and his followers had defied the laws for over a decade now to keep their utopian suburb whites-only. Since Levitt wouldn’t change its policy, the state would step in.

  A hearing in the case of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Williams et al. was scheduled for December 9, 1957, in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, the county seat of Bucks County, twenty miles away. The state would seek a permanent injunction against the leaders of the mob, dubbed the Levittown 7. The battle had begun on Deepgreen Lane, but the fate of America’s suburb would be decided in court.

  Seventeen

  THE STAND

  THE SNOW WAS falling hard on December 5, as up to eight inches accumulated in Levittown, Pennsylvania. But that didn’t stop someone from trudging through the slush to knock on the Wechslers’ door.

  Bea opened it to find Sergeant Adrian McCarr of the local police towering over her. “I have a subpoena for Katy Wechsler,” he said, handing her the document.

  Bea eyed the paper addressed to her daughter. “We Command You,” it read, “that all and every business, pretext and excuse set aside, you be and appear before our Judge, at Doylestown . . .”

  Bea looked up at McCarr and snapped, “For Katy! She’s fourteen years old! If anyone in this house is to be subpoenaed, it will be me or Lew, we are the adults here.” Katy was one of forty-three people subpoenaed for the hearing, and Bea suspected why her daughter had been called. It was the red-baiting again. McBride and the others were simply afraid to have Bea and Lew, with their Communist backgrounds, take the stand. It was yet another snub, and worse, the state had the gall to put their daughter in the spotlight instead. Bea told McCarr to hit the road. Katy wasn’t going anywhere.

  The deputy attorney general called a few days later to admonish Bea about her “responsibility” to make her daughter testify. But Bea was having none of it. “If you need a Wechsler to take the stand, then it will have to be me or Lew,” she said again. “Our children have withstood enough. They’re not going to be cross-examined by an attorney representing Klansmen.” Bea hung up, and that was that. The state backed down, but no Wechslers were called.

  Lew, nevertheless, decided to show up the first day of the hearing at the Court of Common Pleas of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He found Daisy there as well. She would testify on behalf of her family. They arrived at the courthouse to find a chaotic scene. Reporters and onlookers crowded the door. Daisy dreaded seeing the mob up close after their months of tormenting her. Visions of the long, sleepless nights flashed before her—the feeling of being under siege by the group, the fear, the anxiety; Bill, chain-smoking and desperate.

  After so many months, members of the mob had ceased to be human, Daisy thought. She had only taken a few steps into the hall when she saw them. There was the hulking Newell alongside the scrawny, skittish Williams and the others. Newell had an arrogant air as he tried in vain to keep a distance between himself and the others. They averted their eyes upon seeing Daisy. And something inside Daisy shifted. These people were not monsters after all. They were quite the opposite, she thought, “trapped mice seeking the nearest hole in which to hide.”

  As Attorney General McBride, who was conducting the trial for the state, came into the hall, one of the defendants went up to him and demanded to know if the court was going to pay him for the day of work he was missing because of the trial. “If I were you,” McBride replied, “I’d be worrying whether or not I was going to jail.”

  The witnesses and the audience crammed into the small, stuffy courtroom as the judge, the Honorable Edwin H. Satterthwaite, took his seat on the stand. “Ready to proceed in the case of Commonwealth versus Williams and others?” he said.

  “Ready for the Commonwealth,” McBride replied.

  “Gentlemen, will you please prepare for trial.” Satterthwaite said. “Let’s get under way.”

  One by one, the court called the names of the defendants, who rose from their seats in the crowd. They watched as the first witness made her way to the stand: Daisy Myers. “Mrs. Myers,” McBride said, “since some of the defendants are seated in the back of the courtroom, it will be important that what you say should be heard by them. Please keep your voice up in answer to the questions that are asked.”

  In her slight Southern accent, Daisy recounted the story of her family’s move to Levittown: her college background, her plans, the harassment, the mobs, the treatment of their visiting white friends. She told how she saw Bentcliff writing down the license-plate numbers of her friends and how he took to calling them hateful names. “They called [them] ‘nigger lovers’ and all types of disrespectful things,” Daisy said.

  This comment caused Newell’s defense lawyer, H. Lyle Houpt, to rise from his seat. “I object to these statements at this time, because there is no showing any of the defendants were present at that time.”

  The judge wasn’t having any of it. “Objection overruled.”

  But Houpt could not be restrained. Again and again he made his objections, as Newell sat nearby. At one point, he cross-examined Daisy about the notes she was referring to during her testimony, but was cut short again: “Your objection is overruled.”

  Daisy felt more than ready to face the defendants down. As she was describing the time Williams roamed her property line with the dog he called Nigger, McBride interrupted. “Will you stand, Mr. Williams?” he asked. Williams stood. With the press and crowd watching, Daisy found herself in the same position as Emmett Till’s grandfather, who had courageously pointed out the white man who’d murdered his grandson. Williams stood. “Is this the gentlemen of whom you speak?” McBride asked.

  Daisy stared at the small man. “That is.”

  Daisy went on, explaining how Williams also led motorcades of racists in front of her house. In addition, while Newell had made public efforts to distance himself from the militant side of the mob, Daisy knew otherwise, and testified to having seen him enter the Confederate House, where Williams reigned. “Just a moment,” McBride interrupted. “Mr. Newell, would you stand up?” The lumbering North Carolinian stood. “Is that the Mr. Newell to whom you refer?”

  “That’s the Mr. Newell,” Daisy replied.

  But as courageous as it was to face down and single out these men, Daisy would soon have to endure the worst indecency of all: being questioned by two members of the mob. Williams and Bentcliff had both chosen to defend themselves in court and were given their turn to cross-examine her. As McBride concluded his questioning, Williams rose to face Daisy. “You stated that I was the leader of these motorcades?” Williams said.

  Yes, she said, he was there “with the Confederate flag on one side of the automobile and some other flag on the other side, which I failed to bring out in the other testimony.”

  “I went to that home every day?” Williams continued.

  “You were there every day.”

  After Williams haplessly concluded his questioning, which only served to implicate himself more, Bentcliff took his turn. “How did you know I was taking license numbers?” he asked Daisy.

  “[You had a] pad, pencil, and wrote something down,” Daisy replied.

  “You could see that from your house?”

  “Sure I could.”

  “You could see the car parked outside, and the man writing down something on a pad?”

  “I saw you drive up, because I thought it was somebody coming to visit.”

  “And you can see from there he is writing?”

  “Look right down and you can.”

  Bentcliff was dubious. “I can’t see from my house into a car that somebody is writing.”

  “I don’t know your house.”

  “Situated the same,” Bentcliff said.

  “Now,
Mr. Bentcliff,” the judge interrupted, “I warned you once. I won’t warn you again. Don’t interrupt while the witness is still talking.”

  Daisy didn’t waver for the rest of her testimony. Finally McBride came back to the stand to ask her a few final questions about the mob. “Were there often times in which there was a Confederate flag flying on automobiles?”

  “Oh, yes, every day,” Daisy said.

  “Any of them have an American flag along with the Confederate flag?”

  “I didn’t see one.”

  The state’s first witness was done.

  One by one the witnesses took the stand following Daisy Myers’s testimony, and it became clear that while the trial was against the Levittown 7, others were coming under scrutiny: the police and the various officials, all the way up to William Levitt, who had brazenly ignored the laws. “I thought when I bought the home there was—what would you say?—an understanding,” said defendant Mary Brabazon. “Of course it wasn’t on paper that it would be an all-white community.”

  “And that was your understanding when you purchased your home?” McBride asked.

  “That is right.”

  “Now, when the Myers family moved into Levittown, did you consider that was contrary to your understanding?”

  “We were quite shocked.”

  The ensuing riot had become integrated into the daily lives of Levittown residents, she explained. Brabazon testified that the proliferation of Confederate flags around town was a sign of their popularity.

  “What was the purpose of the Confederate flag?” McBride asked.

  “I think it was just like a fad,” she said, “because all the people were buying them at the Levittown Shopping Center.”

  “When did this fad start? After the Myers family moved in or before?”