William J. Levitt Quotes
We can solve a housing problem or we can try to solve a racial problem. But we cannot combine the two.
Shortly after WWII, he became the largest builder in the United States. See {634380} for more depth on his view about segregated housing.
William J. Levitt, 1907-1994, Home Builder and founder of Levittown, Explanation of why his housing projects were not integrated
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On the day of the March on Washington the Congress of Racial Equality asked Levitt if he would change his policies on discrimination against Negroes. This quotation, perhaps more than any, other illustrates why legal discrimination was so pernicious. Any builder who tried to break down the housing color barrier would pay an economic penalty and the moral issue became economic. In trying to change America’s attitude on race the people who is the way would then be punished economically. This is why both the black-and-white leadership who wanted desegregation realized that it had to be done by legislation, and not by a process of education and persuasion. In housing a persuaded convert could not act alone without severe penalty. Even after housing discrimination was made illegal, the builders who desegregated suffered somewhat for many years because so many people found ways to evade the law, and government officials at all levels were reluctant to enforce the law.
FHA, in contrast to this administrator’s statement, was a major factor in increasing and maintaining housing discrimination in America. See {637259}, {637269} and {637260} for FHA official manuals which contradict Foley’s denial. He justified the inconsistency by pointing to the words “per se”. The agency never literally told FHA staff to discriminate he claimed. However, most people reading the two examples given above, would get the message that FHA was opposed to inter-racial, non-segregated housing.
Perhaps there is no more dramatic quotation illustrating MacArthur’s arrogance where his own views and decisions should obviously prevail regardless of the policies of his superiors and his commander-in-chief. The army had been officially integrated by President Truman, The reality was that the general honestly believed that he had no superiors among the military, that civilians should not control the military, and in any event that the President—Truman—was not fit to be Commander-in-Chief.
The highway was planned to go through a poor neighborhood which had a high percentage of Black residents—all of whom would have to find other housing and move to make room for the highway. If the government plans a highway through a wealthy area, the cost to condemn and pay for the land will be much greater than if a poor neighborhood is acquired. For urban highways, the poor almost always bear a disproportionate share of the inconvenience while the major benefit inures to the wealthy and middle class. Abbot had been a labor organizer and a professional artist before he entered politics. The graphic is of his famous poster which by itself stopped the plans to build the highway very quickly.
The racial inequality did cause a Black revolution in the 1960s. The arrival and influence of Martin Luther King, at the time Black revolution might have turned violent, and the willingness of a substantial number of whites to implement the Civil Rights revolution functioned as a safety valve so that there was substantial reform towards much more racial equality.
The case was Shelley v. Kraemer where the Supreme Court outlawed discriminatory restrictive covenants A restrictive covenant was a condition that was written into the deed on a piece of property. Even if the owner of the home did not want to discriminate, the previous owners who wrote the restrictive covenant into the deed (or his relatives and heirs) could sue and invalidate the sale. In many cases, insurance would not sell title insurance or banks would not give mortgages for a Black or a Jew where there was a covenant in the deed, even if the covenant was more than 100 years old. Homeowner associations would also enforce the covenants which were originally written into all the deeds of the development. Once the supreme court ruled that restrictive covenants were unconstitutional, no court would enforce any of these lawsuits. It was one of the fastest steps forward in the history of Civil Rights since the day after the court decision racists could no longer enforce the covenants that were in tens of millions of deeds in America.
He maintained these policies even after President Eisenhower’s January 1954 speech calling for people who were displaced as the result of urban renewal projects to be provided with Federal assistance in housing regardless of race. It is not known whether Sherman Adams shared Cole’s position with the President. Adams himself was forced to resign in a corruption scandal.
He was the first FHA administrator to make statements saying that non-discriminatory housing services should be available to the American people. At the time the Southern states had laws allowing and protecting legal segregation especially in housing. The Southern field staff interpreted his instruction to be sure that both blacks and whites had access to FHA services, but they used the “separate but equal” doctrine: Provide services to both races but always in segregated housing projects. This was typical of the kinds of problems that motivated the Civil Rights Acts offered by President Kennedy in 1963 and passed by President Johnson in 1964. See {637272} for a similar Mason statement.
At the time, racial discrimination was so rampant in America that when one of the units of Pepsi Cola, under the leadership of Walter Mack, hired Emmons to sell to Black communities, the Black residents of Northern communities were so unused to seeing Blacks in a “white collar” job, that they were treated as celebrities. Emmons and a few other black salesmen had incredible results yet despite that, the practice did not grow at the time as there were too many white executives who were so prejudiced that the practice was not increased after Mack retired. This short quotation paints a good picture of the nature of racial job discrimination in the North prior to WWII.
The first sentence is inscribed on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC. The last two sentences are rarely quoted.
Like so many of his other predictions about America, he saw that the evil of racism and slavery was bound to cause the nation to implode. And this was decades before the Civil War, but the problem was inescapable to a critical observer like de Tocqueville.
Johnson was the first Black man who won the heavyweight championship at a time when racism in America was rampant. Many whites referred to Jeffries as “The Great White Hope” who would take the champion back for the whites. He didn’t and was beaten badly.
In 1862 the president requested a $600,000 congressional appropriation to finance a pilot program for Negroes freed by the Civil War to emigrate to Africa. He met with a delegation of Black leaders:
Sumner would later become a Senator. However over a century before Brown v. Board of Education finally outlawed segregated schools, Sumner made one of the basic legal arguments that was involved in the case.
