About

Our American Studies class, Explorations of Race and Racism, recently read a book on the history of the postwar suburb Levittown, Pennsylvania. In addition to discussing the imagining and building of Levittown, the book detailed the life of the Myers family. Ben and Daisy Myers and their children were the first black family to settle in Levittown. Despite being in the North, thousands of Levittowners resisted their town’s integration and formed a mob that harassed and dehumanized the Myers family for over a year. This incident, along with the national trend of racial discrimination in housing loans and zoning laws, proved that not every American had a fair share of the post-WWII prosperity.

After doing some research online, we realized that the Myers’ story was not mentioned in the larger narrative about Levittown and postwar suburbia at all. We created this site specifically as a response and companion site to the State Museum of Pennsylvania’s site about Levittown (found here).