Trouble in Levittown

Levittown, Pennsylvania August 1957

Bill and Daisy Myers moved into a pink Levittowner Type 2 model home at 43 Deepgreen Lane in the Dogwood Hollow section of Levittown in Bristol Township.

The Myers were young, college educated and the parents of three small children. Their move would not have been unusual, except that they were black and Levittown was for whites only.

“We were not out to break the color line to make a point. The main purpose for buying that house was that we needed a third bedroom because we had just had a little girl. We were not political exhibitionists. Even today, I would not think of going out and marching or protesting. We were quiet, family people,” said Daisy Myers, 83, a retired elementary school principal who lives in York, south-central Pennsylvania. Bill Myers died in 1987.

That day — Aug. 13, 1957 — alarms were set off by the mailman who, learning that the Myers had bought the house, went down Deepgreen Lane shouting, “It's happened! [blacks] have moved into Levittown!”

The mailman did not use the word “blacks.”

At first, knots of housewives gathered across the street. Daisy Myers saw them spit and curse. By nightfall, some 300 people milled about the house. They threw rocks and smashed windows.

Crowds came nightly. There were daily death threats. Eight crosses were burned, one of them on the lawn of next-door neighbors Lew and Bea Wechsler, who had defended the Myers' right to live in Levittown.

The Levittown Betterment Committee was formed specifically to force the Myers out, peacefully if possible. If peace didn't work, other “options” would be considered, the group's leader ominously warned.

The Ku Klux Klan created a Klavern in Levittown. The Klan's chief recruiter kept applications in his family Bible at his Levittown home.

Bristol Township Police Chief John R. Stewart claimed he was doing what he could for the Myers, though privately he called Bill Myers a communist, according to Daisy Myers.

Stewart demoted one of his sergeants when the officer complained publicly that the chief had ordered the police to direct the rubberneckers through the neighborhood, and nothing more.

Large bottles filled with gasoline and topped with cotton wicks were discovered in bushes near the bedroom of the Myers' youngest child, Lynda, who was 2 months old.

The family fled their home three times within the first two weeks.

“It was frightening, but it was our home and we had a right to live there,” Daisy Myers recalled.

Gov. George Leader, fed up with Stewart's inaction, sent the state police to restore order, protect the Myers and prosecute harassers.

The Myers moved to York in 1961. Bristol Township publicly apologized in 1999.

“We could never really put Levittown behind us,” Daisy Myers said. “It was like a deep wound that healed. But like a wound, there are aftereffects. There is always something that triggers a memory. Has 50 years gone by? So quick,” she said.

She holds no grudges.

“We knew most of the people in Levittown were good but were probably too frightened to say anything,” she said. “The troublemakers were just a handful.”

Occasionally, when she speaks publicly, Daisy Myers quotes a statistic from the 2000 census.

Eighty-six percent of white Americans live in suburban neighborhoods where less than 1 percent of the population is black. Today, Levittown's population is 3 percent black.

“Well, that's some progress,” she said.

Daisy D Myers, "Sticks n Stones: The Myers Family in Levvittown"