Levittown
However, this utopia was not extended to all. The Levitts retained that Black families be refused homes, just one of the ways that Levitt and Sons stringently maintained control of their developments. Originally stated within Levittown leases that the buyer must not be and would not allow any home be “occupied by any other person other than members of the Caucasian race, ” this eventually was deemed unconstitutional, yet the status quo remained unchanged. Within just a few years, Levittown became the largest all-white community in the United States .
Accounts such as the ‘Levittown: A Living History’ documentary blatantly ignore the inequalities and oftentimes brutal exclusion these developments caused. Although such explicit anti-Black policies outlined in housing contracts were subsequently outlawed, William Levitt still rejected any non-white applications to his developments. This was eventually challenged when the NAACP filed a lawsuit against mortgage providers representing Black veterans who had been denied home applications. Thurgood Marshall himself represented these families in court, but the case was ultimately dismissed under the decision that preventing discrimination was not the duty of those agencies. Despite this, Black families managed to secure homes in Levittown when the original buyers decided to sell, though they subsequently received backlash and harassment by fellow residents of the neighborhoods. One Black family bought their Pennsylvania Levittown home in 1957 from the original homeowners. However, they “faced endless harassment as well as implicit and explicit threats of violence from other residents in the community, with little help from the local police to keep the mobs of angry racists from congregating outside their home day and night.
Stories like these highlight how, even when Black families managed to secure suburban housing, they endured continual onslaught from white community members that oftentimes extended to violence.