Levittown by David Kushner

Author:David Kushner
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2009-03-14T04:00:00+00:00

Outside the Wechslers’ window, the mob forming in plain view of the police told a different story of America. Ordinarily, the Levittowners would be home tonight watching Dragnet or The Lone Ranger. This evening, James Newell and his cronies at the Levittown Betterment Committee had called another meeting at six P.M., but it wouldn’t be at the VFW. After the negative attention, the commander of the Department of Pennsylvania VFW announced that they were investigating the matter. “I personally and officially denounced association of our organization’s name with this matter, regret its occurrence, and forbid any such meetings at the Levittown post, or at any other VFW post,” he said.

Undeterred, Newell led the mob to the backyard of a home just around the corner from the Myerses’ on Dogwood Drive. Hundreds of his followers marched down the street—so many that it became difficult for attendees to park. One gray-haired man asked a resident man named Snyder not attending the rally if he could park on his lot. “If you come in peace, all right,” the resident replied, “but any violence, and I’m going to call the police.”

The gray-haired man snarled, “Do you mean to tell me you are denying me the right to park here?”

Snyder eyeballed him defiantly. “You understand what I told you.”

The gray-haired man turned to the mob. “Gang! Here is a goddamn nigger lover!”

“Where?” someone yelled.

“Where is the son of a bitch?” another cried.

Snyder’s wife heard the commotion from inside her home and came running outside over the lawn. “I defy you to harm one hair on my husband’s head!” she shouted.

“Let’s get rid of the big son of a bitch of a nigger lover!” the gray-haired man shouted. A group of teenage boys drove slowly up in a 1949 car. They had knives and guns, they said, and they’d be happy to help the mob. Eventually, the mob retreated, but then the Snyders’ phone rang. “Look here,” said the voice on the other end of the line, “if you know what is good for you, you want to watch your step because I am telling you we have crosses to burn on sympathizers’ lawns.”

Mrs. Snyder hung up and called the police urgently for help. “What can we do to protect ourselves?”

“Within your rights,” she was told by the police, “if anyone tries to harm you bodily, you can kill. But try not to go that far.”

By now, over six hundred people filled the Levittown streets outside. The Betterment Committee had been working the crowd, passing around a petition to recruit members. “Protest from the citizens of the ____________ section of Levittown, Pennsylvania,” it read. “We, the citizens and home owners of Levittown, Pennsylvania, protest the mixing of Negroes in our previously all-white community. As moral, religious and law-abiding citizens, we feel that we are unprejudiced and undiscriminating in our wish to keep our community a closed community. In as much as having equal rights, the Negroes have an equal opportunity to build their own community of equal value and beauty without intermingling in our community.

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