Levittown: Segregation and the American Dream
Levittown: A Symbol of Post-War America
The Levitts and McCarthy joined forces in promoting Levittown as a more American, capitalist alternative to public housing solutions. McCarthy posed with washing machines to be placed in Levittown homes and praised Levittown as a model of the American way. Bill Levitt himself once said, “No man who owns his own home and lot can be a Communist; he has too much to do.” Later, Levitt vilified those who questioned his segregationist policies as communists. It wasn’t only segregationists who used the charge of Communism to their advantage. U.S. writer Pearl Buck once compared the architectural and racial uniformity of Levittown as reminiscent of the conformity of Communist China.
The construction and growth of Levittown was a godsend for many houseless families, but it was also a battleground for divisive conceptions of race and political differences in the United States. Journalist David Kushner, the author of a book about the Myers experience, wrote of that less-told story of Levittown’s history, “It epitomizes how systematically people can be shut out of a dream—and yet how heroically they can take it back.”
A Systemic Problem of Segregation
Sadly, the experiences of the Myers in Levittown were not unique but were echoed in houses, apartments, and streets across the nation. How was segregation still such a real, persevering, and violent part of communities long after residential segregation laws had been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1917?
During the Great Depression, President Roosevelt launched a federal agency called the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC), meant to protect struggling homeowners from losing their homes. The HOLC later implemented a system of rating neighborhoods with letter grades to help more systematically discern property values. While racially homogenous and primarily white neighborhoods generally received higher grades, the agency deemed those neighborhoods housing minorities or, “an undesirable element,” in the official language, with its lowest ratings. Later, the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) continued to use those HOLC standards when issuing mortgages.
As historian Jackson has written, “For perhaps the first time, the federal government embraced the discriminatory attitudes of the marketplace. Previously, prejudices were personalized and individualized; FHA exhorted segregation and enshrined it as public policy.”
The Impact of Redlining
The rating system eventually contributed to reinforcing segregation as real estate agents and landlords steered white buyers to white communities and African Americans to poorer developments. The system also enforced the perception that the entry of racial minorities into a community resulted in a drop in property values.
As one neighbor of the Myers family told Life magazine during the standoff, “He’s [William Myers] probably a nice guy, but every time I look at him, I see $2,000 drop off the value of my house.” While federal policies encouraged home ownership as a way to reinforce the capitalist spirit of the nation and real estate marketing celebrated home ownership as the key ingredient to an ideal domestic existence, government bureaucrats, real estate agents, and landlords all implemented policies that helped exclude a large portion of American society from realizing that dream.