William J. Levitt Quotes
The Negro is the same as any other minority group he is clannish and tends to select neighbors who are of the same background and race. Unless other builders opened housing to all, I could not afford the decline in sales that would result if Negroes enjoyed equal access to my houses.
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.
William J. Levitt, 1907-1994, Home Builder and founder of Levittown, Statement, August 28, 1963
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Shortly after WWII, he became the largest builder in the United States. See {634380} for more depth on his view about segregated housing.
“FHA” was the Federal Housing Administration. This federal agency de facto controlled the vast majority of the mortgage loans in America. The agency, under the control of racists, redlined black neighborhoods from obtaining mortgages and even worse discouraged mortgage loans even in affluent white areas if it was an affluent Negro family that wanted to buy a house there. {637259} and {637260} are quotations which are examples of FHA racist policies.
Booth was the younger son of a very prominent Northern family of actors. His older brother was considered the greatest American actor, and the rest of the family were abolitionists and vehement Union supporters. They found young John’s views reprehensible.
Wilson has been accused of being one of the most racist Presidents since Reconstruction. Even before he was a Governor and a President and presumably had to cater to Southern racist members of Congress, he was a committed racist. Prior to his Presidency, the Federal Government had been making steady progress in hiring African Americans. Under Wilson there was a wholesale firing of a large proportion of them. Some apologists argue that his League of Nations and other major aspirations required the votes and cooperation of Southern Senators who insisted that many of the blacks be terminated. At the same time, the KKK was near the zenith of its membership and political power and was an intimidating force. Wilson’s home state of New Jersey not only had a large KKK membership but there were lynching of Blacks in his own state and when Governor and President he never asked for any anti-lynching legislation.
This quote illustrates the Southern segregationist view in the Jim Crow South.
When passed, the Social Security Act did not cover domestic or agricultural workers. But these were the two occupations that between employed over half of all African Americans. The Black labor leaders like A. Phillip Randolph, supported the Act as their union membership was covered. The Congress, although controlled by the Democrats had the albatross of the "Solid South" which would obstruct anything that would strengthen the Negro. The strategy the President Roosevelt and his new dealers adopted was to institutionalize Social Security for the majority of American workers and then bring in the occupations and groups that had originally been excluded. And this is what they did however, enforcement of Social Security coverage with individual domestic workers was still a problem in the 21st century.
Following the lead of Arkansas, many southern schools were closed by order of the Governor when they received a court order to desegregate. Southern education was the poorest in the nation and the Southern students not able to go to school made the situation worse. Governor Almond changing his position realized that the cost of defying the Constitution and the courts was the ignorance of the students of the state, and became a major force persuading the state to integrate their schools. He is remembered for his leadership of desegregation and most people have forgotten that at the beginning of his term as governor he was as bad as most of the other Southern segregationist politicians.
Slogan used to protest the injustice of segregation in the nation’s capital:
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.
Incredibly enough, after the Civil War and emancipation, most Virginia leaders opposed any form of rights for Blacks with one of the major reasons being that they were ignorant and uneducated. It was actually a crime to teach even a free Black to read.
Warren a Republican from California who knew Palmer for years, stood up, put his arm around Palmer and told him, “Kyle, you and I will always be friends” and walked out.
Jessie Helms was his young assistant who drafted this race baiting ad. There are two vicious but subtle aspects to this kind of attach ads. First, not that the ad does not address the problem of white men working along side of blacks. It only refers to wives and daughter. This interracial sex innuendo played on and increased the fear of whites that Blacks would commonly rape white women. The second nasty aspect of the ad is the specific attack on the opponent. Instead of saying that he favored desegregation, the phrase “mingling of the races” was used which implied that Graham was in favor of biracial intermarriage and children—again another sex innuendo. When integration of the workforce finally occurred in the South, there was no increase in Black men sexually assaulting white women. There has been a substantial increase in racial intermarriage however as racial bigotry has diminished in America.
This painting depicted a young black girl walking to school surrounded by 4 U. S. Marshalls protecting her from the crowd of white racists trying to prevent her from attending an elementary school under court order. The vicious race hatred that school integration revealed was the national problem that was then surfacing. The graphic is the illustration that appeared in Look with that name.
There was rampant segregation and discrimination in housing throughout the country and not only in the South. However, the doctrine then was this was for the states to control. However, the Federal Agency that was established to sell mortgage insurance to enable more Americans to buy homes, was also overtly discriminating.
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. He was not able to change the agency’s equal opportunity performance because the Southern states had laws allowing and protecting legal segregation especially in housing. The Southern staff interpreted his position 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 {637271} for a similar Mason statement.
This was art of the Nixon "Southern Strategy" to alienate the white supremacists and racists from the Democratic Party with Civil Rights legislation and rhetoric, and get most of them to become Republicans. But as Phillips observed, when Negroes began voting in significant numbers in the South the party switching really accelerated.
The first sentence is inscribed on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC. The last two sentences are rarely quoted.
