Integrating Levittown

Kushner's Book Tells Of The Racism One Black Couple Endured In The Pa. Suburb

Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America's Legendary Suburb

By David Kushner

Walker & Co. / 256 pages / $26

More than a half-century before our current disaster in the housing market, the United States confronted a very different sort of housing crisis. During the Great Depression of the 1930s and the economic boom of World War II, few private homes had been constructed. With demobilization after World War II, vast numbers of military veterans and their families, flush with cash and G.I. Bill-backed mortgages, were desperate for housing. A generation was ready to move, but a severe housing shortage initially thwarted their desires.

Enter suburbia builders such as the Levitt brothers, Bill and Alfred. Applying mass-production techniques to home construction, they revolutionized housing in America by creating quickly built and relatively inexpensive houses in model communities named for their family on Long Island, N.Y., and in Pennsylvania. In so doing, the Levitts became famous as the nation's largest builders.

With home construction exploding, suburbia - with its promise of tranquillity, space and safety - became a reality for tens of millions.

"The opening of Levittown triggered the greatest migration in modern American history," observes journalist David Kushner in his latest book. "Levittown would become synonymous not just with the prosperity and hope of the 1950s, but the enduring vision of the suburbs that would draw families for decades."

Kushner's concern, however, is neither suburbia in general nor Levittown in particular, both of which have attracted considerable scholarly attention over the years. Rather, he focuses on the experiences of two families, one black, one white, to draw attention to one overriding feature of suburban life: its all-white character. In the postwar years, builders such as the Levitts declared their communities off-limits to African-Americans. Their developments' all-white character, they insisted, would attract working- and middle-class residents who appreciated racial homogeneity and sustained property values.

In highlighting racial discrimination in postwar housing, Kushner is covering familiar ground. But his storytelling techniques capture a drama that is often lacking in academic studies.