PHILADELPHIA - Daisy Myers vividly remembers the rocks through the windows, the taunts and name-calling and cross-burnings and the day-and-night blaring of "Old Black Joe" that greeted her arrival as a member of the first African-American family in Levittown, Pa., 40 years ago.
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LONG ISLAND, New York After William “Bill” Levitt fought alongside Black soldiers as a Navy lieutenant in World War II, he returned home to pioneer the American suburb. In contrast to the nominal racial integration of the Navy, however, Blacks were banned from living in Levitt’s ticky-tacky neighborhoods.
With Jewish roots in Austria and Russia, the Levitt family did for houses what Henry Ford did for automobiles. To build Levittown on Long Island, their first successful suburb, Levitt & Sons deployed a high-tech 26-step process. The firm’s methods and policies were imitated in thousands of suburbs all over the country.