When I was a little boy growing up in Forest City, I lived near the “big city” of Levittown.  Built in the late 1940s by William Levitt (who named the town in New York and its sister in Pennsylvania after himself), it was to be the new home for the returning military veterans of World War II. You see, Levittown was promising them affordable housing- with no down payment required.

Bill Levitt developed the first modern assembly line method to build houses.  15000 unionized workers were divvied up into separate crews, letting him build 36 houses a day, each ticky-tacky identical home (Cape Cods) with its two bedrooms and unfinished attic, was erected on an identical 60 by 100 foot plot.  (The homes could be bought for $ 7K or monthly payments of $ 60, all 17,447 of them.

And, then, you could have your new home- as long as you were White.

This wasn’t a gentleman’s agreement, like the one blocking Jews from the famous resorts of New York.  (That prejudice led to the development of the Borscht Belt in the Catskills, where Jews could freely enjoy the country side.)

Nope.  The standard lease (with an option to buy the home) clearly stated in CAPITAL LETTERS that no house could ‘BE USED OR OCCUPIED BY ANY PERSON OTHER THAN MEMBERS OF THE CAUCASIAN RACE’.

Back then, the US Federal Housing Administration policy stipulated that ”suitable restrictive covenants” could be written to preclude ”inharmonious racial or nationality groups” in housing.

Of course, the United States Supreme Court held in 1948 that such provisions were contrary to public policy and unenforceable as law.  But, that didn’t stop Levitt from his discriminatory practices.   This was so pronounced that 50 years later, Levittown is still Lily White (97.37% so, making Seattle and Portland [the two whitest cities in America] look fully integrated).

(One should note that less than 10% of Long Island is composed of Black folks. Nassau County is the most segregated suburban county in the USA.  So, as a general rule, Long Island is not very integrated.  Wyandanch, an “open housing” community in Suffolk County is one place where many Blacks have found their homes.)

White mobs threw rocks to protest the first Blacks moving into Levittown (PA) in 1957.  (That community began construction some 5 years after the one in NY, in 1952.)   And, that family (Daisy and Bill Myers) was saved by Samuel Snipes, a Quaker lawyer who had just graduated from Temple University only 4 years earlier.

Snipes was a conscientious objector in World War II, and worked for the UN after the war, settling refugees.

Snipes died New Year’s Eve (2018)  at the ripe old age of 99.  And, while his legal efforts helped the Myers family,  like Levittown NY, only 4% of the homes in Levittown PA are occupied by Blacks.

[Sigh.]

I had originally written this to coincide with the Martin Luther King posts (14 and 15 January 2019).  My moving things around to accommodate other thoughts without remembering the full specifics of this post attenuated its context.  For that, I’m sorry.  But, maybe it’s better like this- to continue our recognition that civil rights is not a battle that has been one and is over- but ongoing.

 

ERROR:  THE ORIGINAL POST USED THE WRONG DATE FOR LAWYER SNIPES DEATH.  THAT DATE WAS THE DATE OF THE OBITUARY, NOT THE DATE OF HIS DEATH.  WE ARE SORRY FOR THE WRONG INFORMATION.