Levittown

by David Kushner

  At times, Bill Levitt seemed to be coming around. His son William Levitt Jr., who had come to work with the company in 1957 after graduating from Wharton Business School, was pleased to hear his father say as much to NAACP leaders when discussing the incident in Levittown, Pennsylvania. “It’s unfortunate that this happened there,” Bill Levitt said, “but you folks are going to be pretty happy soon because we’re going to open our doors” to blacks.

  After his self-congratulatory article appeared in Good Housekeeping magazine, Levitt decided to answer his critics in the boldest possible way: with a press conference in June 1958 officially announcing the charter of his latest master-planned community, Levittown, New Jersey. There was just one problem. His closest associates were desperately pleading for him not to make a public statement. The delicate plans to integrate Levittown, New Jersey, were being orchestrated by Javits and McCrary, and they, along with others close to Levitt, feared what might happen when Levitt took the microphone. Surely he would be questioned on the integration, and they worried about how the legendarily brash titan would reply. “There’s a great danger in having a press conference,” said his son William. “He’ll be severely questioned about matters better left not spoken about. He’s going to dig a hole for himself.”

  But Levitt insisted, and as always he got his way. On June 5, 1958, as the ruling in the Myerses’ case still pended, and with Javits, McCrary, and William Jr. watching, reporters packed a conference room in Washington, D.C., to hear William Levitt’s speech. William Levitt Jr. observed the intensity of the crowd. He watched as his father regaled the media with news of the new town near Camden and Trenton, New Jersey: built on four thousand acres, fifteen thousand homes ranging from $11,490 to $13,990, and just ten dollars closing costs.

  Levitt’s Barnumesque razzle-dazzle was in full display; he’d mass-produce as many as one hundred new homes a week. Mortgages would come, once again, from the Federal Housing Administration. Evoking the fairy-tale legend of his Depression-era roots, he promised to overcome any economic challenges along the way.

  As the time came for questions, Javits and the others braced themselves. It didn’t take long for the inevitable to happen. “Would the new community be segregated racially?” a reporter asked.

  Bill Levitt looked out into the crowd for a moment, then said, “Our policy on that is unchanged. The two other Levittowns are white communities.” And so, he promised, this one would be too.

  Why did my father do it? William Levitt Jr. asked himself. He had his suspicions. Levitt’s son had taken it upon himself to do his own due diligence on the viability of building a new Levittown in this area. He had hired an economist to prepare a report that he could show his father—and the findings weren’t good. Willingboro, the location, was beyond the scope of the Philadelphia suburbs, and the demand for so much low-cost housing wasn’t there.

  William Levitt Jr. suspected that this news only further motivated his father to proceed. He was out to prove everyone wrong—and still harbored fears that selling to blacks would reduce his chances of selling to whites. “I think it was an aberration from his usual intelligence,” William Jr. said. “Somehow in this conference he got upset and reacted badly. I think it was just a strange human reaction, he really knew better.”

  The fallout from the press conference was immediate, and dramatic. To his son’s chagrin, his father had dug himself not just any hole, but the deepest one of his life. “I’d never seen him make a major mistake before or since,” William Levitt Jr. said. It was a “crisis that he created.”

  After the talks with and promises to the NAACP, Levitt’s closest advisers—Javits and McCrary—felt blindsided, embarrassed, and betrayed. McCrary resigned the account. “His major allies deserted him,” said William Jr. “He was left without any allies at all on these issues, because anybody who’d been involved with him knew that he had double-crossed them.”

  After more than a decade of brazenly challenging the laws and the rights of black Americans, Levitt was no longer getting a free pass. The executive secretary of the NAACP telegrammed New Jersey governor Robert Meyner expressing outrage over “this flouting” of New Jersey law. Levitt, who had long been active and philanthropic with Jewish groups, was even abandoned by them; a joint statement from prominent Jewish organizations denounced Levitt for his “desecration of democracy and the basic ideals of the Judaic heritage.” A prominent reverend who’d founded the Catholic Interracial Council urged the New Jersey governor to “do something about it” because, he said, “the front line of the racial problem in the United States” is in these communities. The American Civil Liberties Union joined the protest saying, “Mr. Levitt is not only promoting bigotry, he is proposing to create an entire township dedicated to the principle of segregation.”

  Community leaders, including a prominent senator in New Jersey and the New York–based chair of the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing, called on the Federal Housing Administration to cut off Levitt’s mortgages once and for all. The FHA commissioner said that if the New Jersey agency that enforced antidiscrimination laws determined that Levitt was breaking the law, then the FHA would reexamine its loans. The attorney general of New Jersey and the director of the State Division Against Discrimination began an investigation. And the state Assembly warned Levitt that discrimination would not be allowed in his community.

  Levitt was under siege, and it was completely of his own doing. Though he had played a revolutionary role in providing homes for World War II veterans and popularizing the mass-produced suburban communities, the dark side of Levitt’s perfect plan was finally seeping through. After decades of blindly praising him, people began to question why and how his exclusionary practice had even taken place.

  “There is no question that Levitt’s contemplated action violates the spirit if not the letter of the New Jersey housing and civil rights laws,” one reporter wrote. “What is puzzling to us is the failure of state officials to carry out the specific provisions of the anti-discrimination laws when it was evident that these laws had been deliberately violated.” But as the fight wore on, change began to occur. After Levitt’s announcement, the New Jersey State Division Against Discrimination got the Veterans Administration to “withhold loan approvals from builders practicing discrimination because of race, creed, or color.”

  Now when Bill Levitt arrived at his model homes, he found groups of Quakers picketing outside. One night in July, 250 people crammed into a meeting room to establish the New Jersey Committee Against Discrimination in Housing, with a mission to “help preserve the advances in human rights so painfully won over recent years.” As the group gathered, they watched a woman take the stage to share her experience with bias in Levittown: Daisy Myers. Daisy was still awaiting a final ruling in the case against the Levittown 7—which the judge, as with many rulings, was taking months to resolve—but she didn’t hesitate to take up the fight. She was an activist now, and she would speak out against Levitt’s racist plan. This “gives a go-ahead to the biggest race haters,” she said.

  On August 14, 1958, nearly one year to the date that the Myerses moved into their little pink house, Judge Satterthwaite handed down his final ruling against the leaders of the Levittown mob: guilty. Newell, Williams, Bentcliff, and the others were guilty of unlawful conduct toward the Myerses and of an attempted violation of the rights of them “and other peaceable residents of the area,” the judge said. “Their unity of action, even though not spelled out in an express verbal or written understanding, constituted an unlawful conspiracy. Similar observations apply to those who engaged in the insidious and horror-inspiring secret machinations or burning of crosses, implied threats of KKK intervention, and malicious defacing of property by vile and opprobrious posters and paint daubing in the general Levittown area.”

  The harassment of the Myerses was forbidden by law. Back on Deep-green Lane, the Myerses and Wechslers rejoiced in the news, which quickly spread across the town and the region. The me
ssage was clear, as one paper put it: “Bitter racial prejudice is not confined to the Southern States. Those who take the law into their own hands in Bucks County are warned in advance by the Court that they can expect to pay consequences of their unlawful acts.”

  While the “war of nerves” against the mob had been won, one last battle was remaining in New Jersey. Two black veterans, William R. James and Franklin D. Todd, sued Levitt after being denied the right to buy a house in the New Jersey development. “The complainants argue that since the Federal Housing Administration has agreed to guarantee mortgage payments for the Levittown development, that the project is bound by the anti-discrimination law,” the New York Times reported. “The builder maintains it is not covered by the law, which it says applies only to quasi public or public housing.”

  As the months passed and Levitt buckled down for his fight in court, the waves of change continued to rise against him. On May 21, 1959, the House Law and Order Committee met in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a hearing on a fair-housing bill. The AFL-CIO human rights committee representative called a surprise witness, Daisy Myers, “a case in point in housing discrimination,” he said. Daisy took to the stand and called for action to protect families like hers from such persecution in the future. “Had the housing measure been on the books” when she had moved to Levittown, she said, “I believe there never would have been trouble.”

  Two months later, the Appellate Division of the Superior Court in New Jersey handed down its decision—upholding the law against Levitt’s plan. State law barred discrimination in “all housing financed in whole or in part by a loan whether or not secured by mortgage, the repayment of which is guaranteed by the Federal government or any agency thereof.” Astonishingly, Levitt still refused to back down. He held out hope that the state’s highest court—the Supreme Court—would rule in his favor. It didn’t. On February 9, 1960, the state Supreme Court ruled unanimously that African-Americans would be permitted to buy homes in Levittown, New Jersey. But Levitt remained defiant, and his lawyer promised to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. This, he said, “raises serious questions about constitutional law.”

  For decades, Levitt had leaned on his stature to, as his PR once said, disobey the law and ignore red tape. He had become a symbol for what was now a staggering migration to suburbia, whose population had grown from 31.1 million in 1941 to 60.1 million by this time in 1960. The landscape across America had changed. Trees had been taken down to make room for houses, highways, hotels, car dealerships, and the country’s favorite invention: shopping centers. In 1945, there had been only eight shopping centers in the entire country; by 1960 there were 3,840. But the most stunning statistic of all was how, from 1934 through 1960, less than 2 percent of the $120 billion in new housing underwritten by the U.S. government went to minorities.

  Ultimately, Levitt’s role in the transformation of America could not save him from the changes in civil rights. One day in March 1960, he called a number of township officials and clergy to his office. Soon after, on Sunday, March 27, the ministers read a statement from Levitt to their congregants: “Sooner or later present New Jersey law or some other law will be upheld and enforced no matter how present litigation turns out and Negro families will move into Levittown.”

  While Levitt tried to save face in the public eye, he was still pursuing a legal victory in this case by taking his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The next June, however, the Court, which refused to hear Levitt’s appeal, made it official. Levittown would be integrated once and for all. The New Jersey Division Against Discrimination issued a formal order to William J. Levitt “to cease and desist from discrimination, receive from the two Negro families and report back within 45 days on what progress has been made in processing the applications.” One of the black veterans, Willie R. James, eagerly sat down and wrote a letter, at last, requesting an application to live in Levittown. “I plan to buy a house and move into Levittown as fast as I possibly can,” he said. “I have never had any hesitancy about moving there.”

  It was a picture-perfect day on Deepgreen Lane. Toddlers played in kid-die pools. Children sold lemonade from a stand. Nick and Katy Wechsler were playing around inside their home with their dog Biff, when Lew came in. Long ago when they’d decided to move to Levittown, he’d made the children two promises: they would get a dog, and he’d take them to see Jackie Robinson. Now it was time to fulfill the second promise.

  By standing up for their rights, and for each other, the Myerses and Wechslers—two families from different worlds—showed the power that neighbors can conjure up when they choose to come together. The Myerses, who never expected or wanted to be leading a political struggle, discovered that the personal is the political, that they could lead by example. The Wechslers, who came to Levittown after a lifetime of struggles to change the world, learned that they too could make a difference after all. Sometimes the greatest strength can’t be found on one’s own, the two families realized. The power comes when ordinary people join to take an extraordinary stand. And it was a power available to all.

  They would soon learn how far word of their actions had traveled. One day months after the ordeal, Bill and Daisy were invited by a Philadelphia reverend to a special dinner. These sort of invitations were becoming more common as the two were elevated to the roles of heroes. Some would take to calling Daisy “the Rosa Parks of the North.” Bill and Daisy got into the same blue-and-white Mercury that they had once packed so eagerly to move to their new home in Levittown and headed out of Dogwood Hollow. They passed the Wechslers, passed the site of the burning cross. They passed what had been the Confederate House, where their tormenters had tried to drive them out.

  When they arrived at the dinner, they were greeted by many well-wishers. But the reverend politely pushed his way through the crowd and said he had someone special he’d like the Myerses to meet. Bill and Daisy followed him as a warm twenty-eight-year-old man with a mustache stood there to greet them: Martin Luther King. “It’s so nice to meet you,” Daisy said.

  Dr. King smiled, but deferred. “No, it’s so nice to meet you.” He knew all about the Myerses’ fight in Levittown and was happy to be thanking them.

  Bill recounted this story as they drove with the Wechslers one day to see Jackie Robinson. They pulled up to a building in Camden, New Jersey. Nick and Katy looked out the car windows and were confused when they didn’t see a baseball stadium. They thought they were coming to see Robinson in person. We are, Lew explained, as they headed inside. It was a special meeting of the NAACP, and Robinson, the national membership chairman, was the featured speaker. After the speech, Bill led Lew and the kids backstage. Nick anxiously clutched a new baseball, which he hoped to have signed. As Robinson approached, Nick nervously said, “You’re my hero, Mr. Robinson, it’s so incredible to meet you.”

  Robinson looked the boy in the eye, just as Martin Luther King had when he’d met the Myerses. “I’m thrilled to meet you, Nick,” he said with a smile. “I know what you and your family did to help the Myerses, and I’m proud of you.”

  He took Nick’s ball and signed it.

  Promise complete.

  EPILOGUE

  ON NOVEMBER 20, 1962, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 11063, which banned racial discrimination in homes built, purchased, or financed with federal assistance. But it didn’t stop William Levitt from making one last try to save his whites-only dream.

  Despite the losses and opposition he faced in his three Levittowns—New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey—Levitt challenged President Kennedy’s antidiscrimination order by refusing to sell homes to blacks in the community he had built in Bowie, Maryland. The fracas began after a Levitt salesperson wouldn’t sell a home to a thirty-two-year-old economist with the U.S. Government’s Bureau of the Budget because he was black. Bill Levitt had always contended that he could either fight for civil rights or be a builder. He had said that by opening his communities to blacks, his competitors would discrimina
te and leave him in the lurch. Levitt’s defense was that he was simply abiding by local customs.

  A series of protests followed in the fall of 1963. A government physicist and vice president of the Congress of Racial Equality told the protesters that Levitt is “the biggest builder of suburban housing and has the most noxious record on racial discrimination in the country.” But Levitt had found a loophole—arguing that his financing was secured prior to Kennedy’s order. The Federal Housing Administration agreed. Levitt’s Maryland community would remain whites-only.

  But after years of his fights, Levitt began to contradict himself too. In 1966 on the heels of a housing discrimination ban proposed by President Lyndon Johnson, Levitt pledged his support for the measure. “We are for it one hundred percent,” he told a House Judiciary subcommittee. “Any home builder who chooses to operate on an open-occupancy basis, where it is not customary or required by law, runs the grave risk of losing business to his competitor who chooses to discriminate. That, in a nutshell, is why we follow our present policy in Maryland.” Once again, what he said and did were different—and after his testimony, he continued to turn blacks away in Bowie and at a seven-hundred-unit housing development near Dulles Airport in Virginia.

  As the pressure built, Levitt no longer had his family to turn to for support—if they would even support him at all. His father, Abe, died in 1962, and his mother followed in 1965. The next year, his brother, Alfred, also passed away. Levitt was devastated and decided to no longer hang on to the past—he’d rather cash in. In February 1968, he sold his company to the International Telephone & Telegraph Corporation for ninety-two million dollars. Levitt pocketed sixty-two million dollars in ITT stock, but at a price—he agreed not to build in the United States for ten years and, more painfully, relinquished the Levitt name. “That never stopped bothering him,” his accountant later told Newsday.