First African-American Family Moves into Levittown, PA – Is Greeted by Threats, Harassment & Cross Burnings
The family of Daisy and Bill Myers, African-Americans, moved into the all-white suburban development of Levittown, Pennsylvania, on this day, and were greeted with racist threats, harassment and cross-burnings.
Levittown was arguably the most famous suburban development in the 1950s, and set a model for similar developments in other cities. The developer, William J. Levitt, called it “the most perfectly planned community in America.” His “planning,” however, included race discrimination.
The Pennsylvania Levittown opened with 17,311 single-family affordable homes with yards. Levitt also built similar Levittowns in New York (on Long Island) and New Jersey. All were racially segregated. Levitt called it a “business decision.” Suburban developments such as the Levittowns were an important consequence of the prosperity of the 1950s. Families whose parents never owned their own home could now own their own.
The Myers family were represented by a white attorney, Samuel Snipes, and finally won acceptance in the community. Snipes was a Quaker and had been a conscientious objector during World War II. After the war he worked for the United Nations in Germany, helping to resettle people displaced by the war. He later told the author of a book on Levittown that he felt the family “had a right to live there.”
Congress passed the federal Fair Housing Act on April 11, 1968. Race discrimination in housing has persisted, however, and it is one reason why public schools in the U.S. are more racially segregated today than they were in 1954 when the Supreme Court ruled racially segregated schools unconstitutional.
Read: David Kushner, Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon and the Fight for Civil Rights in America’s Legendary Suburb (2009)
Learn more about housing discrimination under the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968
Read the 2019 Urban Institute report on “Fighting Housing Discrimination in 2019”
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here