| I was flipping through the Nation & World section of the Wisconsin State Journal a couple of Sundays ago and came across a little Associated Press blurb titled "60 Candles on Levittown's Cake." I wasn't invited to the party but my family and I should have been about five decades ago. The end of the very short piece read, "It was October 1947 when developer William Jaird Levitt opened the first of what became 17,544 Cape Cod and ranch houses rising from potato fields 40 miles east of New York City, handing post-World War II GIs the keys to their American Dream." The article failed to mention that the glorious opportunity to own a home and all the perks that came with it was only available to White Americans. Black people were not given incentives to own property that would increase in value and build individual, community and national wealth over time. Black people had only ceased being considered property less than 100 years earlier, so the notion of Black people being property owners was alien to say the least. Black people were prohibited from living in Levittown while thousands of doors to the American Dream were open. If you were White. Restrictive covenants defined who could and who could not live in Levittown, and Black people were on the "could not" list. It didn't matter if the family was headed by a highly decorated military person who risked life and limb in service to their country. The person's character or past rental history or personal references didn't weigh into the equation if you were Black. Skin color determined whether you were "worthy" to live in Levittown. And Levittown was not unique in this regard. Prior to the 1968 Fair Housing Act housing discrimination was "legal" throughout the country. As a child growing up in housing projects on the Lower East Side of New York City in the '50s and '60s, I was not aware of the term "restrictive covenant." But I experienced the effects first-hand and I didn't have to look to the first Levittown "community" in Long Island. I only had to look at Stuyvesant Town that was literally a stone's throw from the Jacob Riis Housing Projects. In fact, my projects were a so-called "separate but equal" response to Stuyvesant Town. From a distance they might be thought to resemble each other. Tall buildings made of brown brick. But that's where the similarities ended. Stuyvesant Town was nicely and thoughtfully landscaped. Winding paths connected voluptuous gardens, other amenities and the actual apartments. A high-end grocery store was right on 14th Street on what appeared to be the Stuyvesant Town property. It carried brands of food that were not found in the local corner grocery stores or large chains like Safeway and A&P. I occasionally went shopping there with my mother to buy some costly item for a special occasion. There were no signs in the entryway that told me not to enter, but I felt and knew that I was not welcome there. Stuyvesant Town was a joint venture between the City of New York and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. If you ever searched for a definition of institutional racism, search no more. I just gave it to you. The residents of Stuyvesant town had daily newspapers, fresh-baked pastry and juice delivered to their apartment doors in the early morning hours -- usually by people whose skin had different hues than the people who lived there. I know. My father and I delivered newspapers there on Sunday mornings. A couple of my friends delivered daily papers there and feasted on pastry and juice in one of the stairwells when their deliveries were done. Stealing pastry, juice or anything else is flat-out wrong, but friends told me that the stolen donuts tasted extra sweet when eaten under those conditions. It appeared as though Stuyvesant Town was a place that was designed for people to live as opposed to my projects that seemed more like a place to house or warehouse people. Why else would garbage incinerators be located directly outside the doors of the "A" apartments? Why else were the projects devoid of flowers? Why else would the grounds be comprised almost entirely of concrete with the exception of small plots of grass clearly posted "Keep Off the Grass"? My guess is that the projects were considered good enough for "those people" and I was and am one of them. And here's the trick: "Those people" had a few things in common. We were all poor. We had all come from somewhere else to access the opportunities of big-city America. Some of my neighbors were from Eastern European countries. Many did not speak English. Some were from China. About half were Black people primarily from the Southern United States with a smattering of people from the Caribbean. Several of my neighbors were from Puerto Rico. It was an interesting mix of people. We thought we were all on our way to some place else. The projects were not intended to be our final destination. And this was true for my White neighbors. I looked around one day and they were all gone. I couldn't figure out where they had gone or how they got there. Their parents worked hard to get ahead. My parents worked hard to get ahead. Many of the fathers had served in the military during war time. My father had served in the military during war time. We all considered the housing projects to be a temporary stop along the way to owning a little house in the suburbs with a garage, a small fenced yard and the legitimate belief that we could actually own an even bigger and better house someday. Then that mysterious place in the road swelled up like a concrete wave. My family and those who looked like mine remained on one side. We somehow knew that we were not likely to go any further. To my way of thinking, the junction in the road where temporary becomes permanent is a very dangerous intersection and it's very difficult to change course once that place is reached. But our fairer-skinned former-neighbors managed to escape. Maybe they moved to Levittown. |
| Simple Things/Lang Kenneth Haynes Liberty and justice for some |
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