On the shelf: Levittown by David Kushner

by Meg E. Cox

I wonder how often movements fail because their participants fear the very thing they're seeking.

It wasn't as though nobody opposed the segregation of Levittown, Pennsylvania, during the 1950s. The area's Human Relations Council had made integration a top priority. Its members busily met together to discuss strategy; they looked for an opportunity to confront William Levitt, the town's builder; they enlisted the support of a celebrity author. They also organized workshops and sponsored meetings, invited civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy to speak and supported an NAACP lawsuit against lenders doing business in segregated communities.

Nothing changed. Levittown continued as the all-white community it was built to be.

Now and then an African-American family would contact the Human Relations Council and express interest in moving to Levittown. "But it wouldn't take long for the sense of futility to spread," writes David Kushner in Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America's Legendary Suburb:

"Where will the house come from?" someone would say. "Where will they buy?" another wanted to know. "Who will the neighbors be? How will they react?"

The discouraged potential buyers would back away, and the council would resume its discussion about integration.

The solution was obvious. Someone in Levittown would have to become the next-door neighbor of the new black family. Levittown resident Lew Wechsler said as much to the group. But no one stepped up, not even Wechsler and his wife, Bea. "They had real violence to fear," says Kushner. "There was no telling what their neighbors were capable of doing."

A writer for the group's newsletter captured perfectly the dilemma of a movement that fears the change it seeks:

We must be realistic and recognize, good friends, that the more effective we are, at least in the first instance, the more opposition may arise. Our existence thus far has been fairly serene perhaps because our accomplishments are so few. No one of us can say how well we will be able to stand up when the heat is on.

Soon an opportunity presented itself. Daisy and Bill Myers wanted to buy a home, and the Wechslers' next-door neighbor needed to sell, so the Wechslers helped to arrange for the Myerses to buy the house and move in. The ensuing struggle with those who opposed the Myerses' presence was painful for both families and many others in the community, but it subsided within a year; the families and their supporters had ended the rigid segregation of Levittown.

The fruit of Levittown's struggle lasted much longer—and grew far beyond that contested block on Deepgreen Lane. Like the civil rights battles in the South, the dispute exposed the ugliness of white racism, helping to change public opinion enough to enable the passage of the Fair Housing Act ten years later.