The Levittown developments occupy a space in American culture as an icon of suburban life away from overcrowded cities. The Levitt family, a father and two sons, gained wealth and renown for building low-cost single-family homes for veterans returning from World War II. Though they were descended from a rabbi, they had not resisted the custom to exclude certain ethnicities and races. In early suburban developments, they excluded Jews; in Levittown, they excluded blacks. First hiding behind federal mortgage and insurance programs and later in defiance of changes in federal policy, the Levitts continued to refuse to rent or sell to black families. After years of protests by some residents, the NAACP, and others, a Jewish family secretly arranged to sell the house next door to them to a black family. The sale set off a lawsuit challenging the restrictive covenants that had forbidden such a transaction. Kushner relies on memoirs, transcripts, interviews, and newspaper accounts to bring to life the 1957 legal challenge to discriminatory housing practices and the individuals whose lives were affected. --Vanessa Bush
Review
"Kushner skillfully pieces together a shameful chronicle of racial discrimination during the American postwar economic boom. ...The Levittown fracas, he demonstrates, was a crucial moment in the overall [Civil Rights] struggle. A remarkable story fashioned into a dramatic narrative." –Kirkus“A riveting account of two families -- one African-American, the other white and Jewish -- who worked together in the summer of 1957 against tremendous odds to begin the inevitable integration of America's first suburbs. Kushner builds a strong case against the creators of such exclusionary communities.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“In Levittown, a vigorous and often surprising narrative, David Kushner journeys into the racially charged heart of what newspapers once trumpeted as ‘the most perfectly planned community in America.’ The core of Mr. Kushner’s story focuses on the campaign to desegregate Levittown, Pa., in 1957. He deftly spliced together the experiences of two families at the center of what became a terrifying ordeal.” —Wall Street Journal
“A propulsive, deft page-turner…Kushner achieves cinematic immediacy in reconstructing the events, focusing on the entwined experiences of Levitt and the two families, and the backdrop of Levittown in a moment when suburbanites chose between everyday evil and their better angels.” —Time Out Chicago
“In 1957, the event immediately recognized as a watershed moment in civil rights was the attempted integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Ark... But, in 1957, there was also Levittown. The equally harrowing story of how one black family tried to break the color line in that suburb outside of Philadelphia had all the elements of Little Rock, yet it's largely been forgotten by history. In Levittown, David Kushner rectifies that with a spare, brisk but always indignant account of another watershed moment that, while overshadowed by Little Rock and other events, was in many ways more consequential.” —Los Angeles Times
“[An] absorbing study of racial politics in America’s model postwar suburb… Written as a sort of novelistic narrative history, Levittown traces the stories of two sets of disparate protagonists, couples drawn to Levittown as part of ‘the greatest internal migration the country had seen since the western expansion of the 1800s.’ …Kushner relates [the drama] with judicious economy and an eye for the effective image” —Bookforum“Kushner relies on memoirs, transcripts, interviews, and newspaper accounts to bring to life the 1957 legal challenge to discriminatory housing practices and the individuals whose lives were affected.” —Booklist
“In an entertaining round-robin format, Kushner relays each party’s story in the leadup to a combustible summer when the integration of America’s most famous suburb cause the downfall of a titan and transformed the nation.” —Publishers Weekly
“Kushner has gathered a mass of material, organized it effectively, and tells a gripping story. After reading it, Americans will understand how suburbs became so white in the first place and what two families -- one black, one white -- did to remedy the situation.” -- James Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me and Sundown Towns
“A gripping, beautifully-written history of a hot summer in one town where so many threads of postwar American history came together–suburbanization, segregation, the civil rights movement, McCarthyism. A real page-turner.” –Stephanie Coontz, author of The Way We Never Were and Marriage, a History
Review
"In "Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America's Legendary Suburb," David Kushner rectifies that with a spare, brisk but always indignant account of another watershed moment that, while overshadowed by Little Rock and other events, was in many ways more consequential."--Erin Aubry Kaplan, Los Angeles Times.
A vigorous and often surprising narrative...Kushner deftly splices together the experiences of two families at the center of what became a terrifying ordeal.
"In 1957, the event immediately recognized as a watershed moment in civil rights was the attempted integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Ark...But, in 1957, there was also Levittown. The equally harrowing story of how one black family tried to break the color line in that suburb outside of Philadelphia had all the elements of Little Rock, yet it's largely been forgotten by history. In 'Levittown,' David Kushner rectifies that with a spare, brisk but always indignant account of another watershed moment that, while overshadowed by Little Rock and other events, was in many ways more consequential." -- LOS ANGELES TIMES
Review
"A dramatic social history." -- USA TODAY "Kushner skillfully pieces together a shameful chronicle of racial discrimination during the American postwar economic boom. A remarkable story fashioned into a dramatic narrative." -- KIRKUS REVIEWS
Review
"A riveting account of two families -- one African-American, the other white and Jewish -- who worked together in the summer of 1957 against tremendous odds to begin the inevitable integration of America's first suburbs. Kushner builds a strong case against the creators of such exclusionary communities."
In an entertaining round-robin format, Kushner relays each party's story in the leadup to a combustible summer when the integration of America's most famous suburb cause the downfall of a titan and transformed the nation.
"A riveting account of two families -- one African-American, the other white and Jewish -- who worked together in the summer of 1957 against tremendous odds to begin the inevitable integration of America's first suburbs. Kushner builds a strong case against the creators of such exclusionary communities." - MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE
Book Description
"A propulsive, deft page-turner...Kushner achieves cinematic immediacy in reconstructing the events, focusing on the entwined experiences of Levitt and the two families, and the backdrop of Levittown in a moment when suburbanites chose between everyday evil and their better angels." --TIME OUT CHICAGO
From the Back Cover
"A gripping, beautifully-written history of a hot summer in one town where so many threads of postwar American history came together-suburbanization, segregation, the civil rights movement, McCarthyism. A real page-turner."--Stephanie Coontz, author, The Way We Never Were and Marriage, a History. "Kushner has gathered a mass of material, organized it effectively, and tells a gripping story. After reading it, Americans will understand how suburbs became so white in the first place and what two families --one black, one white -- did to remedy the situation.""-- James Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me and Sundown Towns.
"In 1957, Bev and Lew Wechsler, activists and residents of Levittown, PA, welcomed Daisy and Bill Myers and their children to move next door. The Myers thus became the first black family to reside in Levittown, built and maintained as an explicitly "whites only" suburb. Rolling Stone contributing editor Kushner (Masters of Doom) frames the Myers's story within the rise of self-assured entrepreneur developer Bill Levitt, who built wildly successful postwar suburbs and was an unrepentant defender of racially exclusive policies. Kushner also limns the contemporary civil rights struggle but focuses on the immediate fallout of the Myers's move into Levittown: nonstop protests, near-riots, and threats from appalled residents backed by out-of-town white supremacists, which were countered by the Wechslers and other forward-thinking residents with support from local Quaker and human rights groups. Though the Myers family prevailed in the courts, and Levitt's communities would be officially integrated by 1960, the tension of that summer is still palpable in this gripping account. Timing gives this publication an additional layer of historic intrigue: in November 2008, voters in Bucks County, PA, home to Levittown, selected Barack Obama for President by an 8.5 percent margin. Recommended for all public libraries and essential for regional collections."--Library Journal.
"In an entertaining round-robin format, Kushner relays each party's story in the leadup to a combustible summer when the integration of America's most famous suburb cause the downfall of a titan and transformed the nation." --Publishers Weekly.
About the Author
David Kushner is the author of Masters of Doom and Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids. A contributing editor at Rolling Stone and Wired, he has also been published in the New York Times, New York, Entertainment Weekly, Parade, Salon, and the Village Voice. He does commentary for NPR, and teaches journalism at New Y ork U niversity. Kushner lives not far from Levittown in New Jersey.
From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Jonathan Yardley World War II had scarcely ended before the New York-based real-estate development firm of Levitt & Sons -- Abraham was the father, William and Alfred the sons -- saw the future and moved immediately to seize it. Hundreds of thousands of veterans were returning from Europe and the Pacific, the housing shortage was dire, and the lure of the suburbs called to middle-class Americans more strongly than ever before. So the Levitts bought up 3,500 acres of potato farmland at Island Trees on Long Island and, according to David Kushner, "hatched their ambitious plan: to mass-produce the American dream for the common people, the veterans coming home from the war." The result, of course, was Levittown, the first of four towns -- the others were in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Puerto Rico -- that the Levitts built between 1946 and 1965. The houses, designed by Alfred Levitt, were bare bones -- "two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a bathroom," total square footage 750 -- but they seemed like mansions to people who had been living in cramped city apartments or worse, and they sold as fast as the Levitts could build them. Sold, that is, to whites. With the complicity of the Federal Housing Administration, which approved racially discriminatory lending practices commonly known as redlining, the Levitts practiced self-interested discrimination. Bill Levitt, the salesman in the family and spokesman for it, put it bluntly: "The plain fact is that most whites prefer not to live in mixed communities. This attitude may be wrong morally, and someday it may change. I hope it will. But as matters now stand, it is unfair to charge an individual for creating this attitude or saddle him with the sole responsibility for correcting it. The responsibility is society's. So far society has not been willing to cope with it. Until it does, it is not reasonable to expect that any one builder should or could undertake to absorb the entire risk and burden of conducting such a vast social experiment." That attitude was scarcely unusual at the time, but the huge success and national prominence of the Levitts made them especially vulnerable to criticism as the civil-rights movement began to coalesce, all the more so since, for all of Bill Levitt's lofty claim that "as a Jew, I have no room in my mind or heart for racial prejudice," he fiercely fought to preserve his whites-only policy even as opinion began to swing against him. Nothing harmed him more than the case of Daisy and Bill Myers, an attractive black couple who wanted to buy a house in the Pennsylvania Levittown for their growing family. Bill was a low-keyed veteran who "tended to be amiable," while Daisy "was considerably more headstrong," but both believed they had as much right as anyone else to live in this hugely popular new development, and in the summer of 1957 they bought a house there. They did so with the help of two Levittown residents, Bea and Lew Wechsler, "die-hard activists [who] had risked everything -- their jobs, their security, even their lives -- for the sake of social causes," indeed had been members of the National Student League, "a Communist-led, student-run organization that had risen from the ashes of the Depression." They seem to have been more than a touch naive, but they had strong beliefs and were unafraid to act on them. When a neighbor was unable to sell his house and badly needed to do so, he indicated a willingness to sell to blacks; the Wechslers immediately went looking for prospective buyers, and found the Myerses. The house at 43 Deepgreen Lane was just what they wanted: "three bedrooms, central air-conditioning, even a new washing machine and dryer," Levittown houses having gotten a bit more luxurious in the decade since the first ones were built. The price was $12,150, "and the Myerses would just have to come up with a $2,000 down payment" thanks to Bill's eligibility for a GI Bill loan. They made the deal, and prepared to move in by mid-August, in time to get their two sons settled before the opening of school. They and the Wechslers knew that if they tried to buy directly from the Levitts they would be turned down, but this was a private transaction presumably beyond the company's control. What they didn't know was that many residents of Levittown were as strongly opposed to admitting blacks to the community as was Bill Levitt. They had scarcely moved in when the mailman came to the door. He asked to "speak with the owner of the house." When Daisy replied, "I am the owner," he hastily handed her a letter and then began "going door-to-door down the street alerting the neighbors. 'It happened!' he told them. 'Niggers have moved into Levittown!' " It was the first of innumerable times that this expletive greeted the Myerses. What followed was a protracted period of tension punctuated by frequent small riots and near-riots. Led by a "hulking flattopped man" named James E. Newell Jr., "a thirty-year-old electrician from Durham, North Carolina, who lived around the corner on Daffodil Lane," and his "sidekick, an unemployed forty-eight-year-old named Eldred Williams," a small but noisy and openly racist group of Levittowners made life so miserable for the Myerses that they took their children out of town. Police protection was half-hearted at best; "the local police . . . sat by and watched the harassment . . . for weeks." The Ku Klux Klan arrived on the scene and found eager supporters. Crosses were burned, epithets were painted on the Wechslers' house, and an empty house at nearby 30 Darkleaf Lane was rented to new neighbors, who turned the place into a kind of clubhouse: "The Myerses and Wechslers recognized in horror the familiar faces of their tormenters, including Newell, and even the mailman who had started the riot after he'd delivered the first letter to Daisy Myers on that August day. Outside, the caretaker of the house, Eldred Williams, walked his black dog up and down the yard. He had renamed the pet in honor of this day. 'Here, Nigger,' he called to the dog, 'come here you, Nigger.' The neighbors had arrived." They called the place "the Confederate House," and "called themselves the Dogwood Hollow Social Club." Other neighbors, by contrast, came to the Myerses' aid: "local community groups including the Quakers, the William Penn Center, the American Jewish Congress, and the neighboring communities of Bryn Gweled and Concord Park organized a 24-7 citizen patrol," and "white couples arrived to babysit the [Myers] children or lend a hand cleaning up." The Myerses "took pains to point out how this awful standoff brought out the best in Levittown as well as the worst." Still, it remained a standoff until the Pennsylvania attorney general, Thomas McBride, entered the scene. He issued a formal complaint against the Confederate House group, charging that it 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." Eventually, several members of the group were found guilty of harassment and forbidden to continue it. The Myerses were able to live in comparative calm, but "Daisy and Bill often felt on edge," and in June 1961 they moved back to York, Pa., where they had lived before buying the Levittown house. Outside Levittown and the immediate area the case has long been forgotten, but it was an important manifestation of northern racism and deserves its place in American history. For that reason it is useful to have Levittown, but it is not a very good book. Kushner's prose is marginally competent journalese at best, soft and sloppy at worst. A firm editorial hand would have been helpful, but there is no evidence of one. That's a pity, because it's unlikely that anyone else will come along to tell the Myerses' story in such detail.
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