Pioneers of Levittown:  Levittown represented a new innovation in affordable housing in the United States. As novel as the suburbs were, Levittown homes were available only to white families. On this page, you can learn about the family that built Levittown and the family that integrated it, as well as the struggles and consequences of integration.

The Most Perfectly Planned Community: Levittown is often described as The Picturesque Suburb, a haven for people to escape the toils of American life. However, there is a story that is seldom told–a story of racial tensions, violence, segregation, and oppression. This section presents a side-by-side comparison of Levittown as it was envisioned and its violent progression into a community fraught with hate.

Housing Policy: This section explores the origins of suburbia in post-WWII America and how government policies worked to create the “American Dream” as an exclusively white ideal. The legal policies that reinforced racism in American housing still shape housing demographics today.

Suburban Melting Pot? The suburban housing project post-WWII introduces a new era of systematic racism that extends into the housing market and persists today. These housing projects not only continued the practice of oppressing people of color but ushered in the new practice of capitalizing whiteness, while masquerading under the claim of being an “All-American melting pot”.