Any longtime resident could lead you to the other sites where the men of Levittown found muscular, good-paying work %26#151; Vulcanized Rubber and Plastics; Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M); Thiokol, a defense contractor; the big General Motors plant across the river in Trenton. They worked their shifts and came home to their young families and their little patches of green. Many had moved here from the cramped neighborhoods of Philadelphia%26#8217;s blue-collar %26#8220;river wards%26#8221; or from coal country in upstate Pennsylvania.You could call the Levittown experience the American dream, but that does not get to what was best about it: its concrete, earthbound specificity. The union wage. The house you could purchase in the mid-1950s for $8,990, with a down payment of $100. The elementary schools that Levitt %26#38; Sons put right in the neighborhoods, so that no young child would have to ride a bus. The Olympic-size public pools and the Levittown Shop-a-Rama, with its department stores and soda fountains and its parking for 6,000 cars.Last month, as the epic struggle for the Democratic presidential nomination between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton reached Pennsylvania, I came to watch it through the prism of Levittown %26#151; its past and present. The dream is vanishing in the same specific ways it came to life. The young men of the community no longer follow their fathers into the mill, because the work force at U.S. Steel has dwindled to fewer than 100. A Spanish-owned company now occupies part of the site, where it makes wind turbines. The old 3M plant has become something called the Bristol Commerce Center, and most of the other manufacturers are long gone. The town%26#8217;s main intersection, Five Points, is dotted with check-cashing agencies and pawnshops. The original Shop-a-Rama was leveled.I was focused primarily on Levittown%26#8217;s response to Obama. Here, after all, was a place that needed a big change, a new dream, which for many voters Obama %26#151; with his mixed race, international background, inspiring life story and his soaring rhetoric %26#151; represents. But Levittown, while largely Democratic, is composed of many white, working-class %26#8220;Reagan Democrats,%26#8221; exactly the part of the electorate that has been least receptive to him %26#151; even before the controversy over the incendiary remarks by Obama%26#8217;s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.And on matters of race Levittown has a particularly shameful history. It was billed as %26#8220;the most perfectly planned community in America,%26#8221; and part of the plan was for it to be whites-only: 5,500 acres, stretching across three Pennsylvania townships and one borough, closed off to blacks. The first development of mass-produced homes by Levitt %26#38; Sons, Levittown, N.Y., on Long Island, which dates from 1947, had the same exclusionary policies. William Levitt weakly insisted that he would love to sell houses to black families but had %26#8220;come to know that if we sell one house to a Negro family, then 90 to 95 percent of our white customers will not buy into the community. That is their attitude, not ours.%26#8221;In 1957, when a black family, the Myers, finally did move into Levittown, Pa., after buying from an original owner, their home was besieged for several nights by a mob that numbered in the hundreds. Rocks were hurled through the windows. In seeking a court order to stop the harassment, Daisy Myers referred to %26#8220;annoying practices,%26#8221; which included parades of cars rolling by her home as the occupants sang %26#8220;Old Black Joe%26#8221; and %26#8220;Dixie.%26#8221;That was a half-century ago. Still, by the numbers, Levittown is not much changed. According to the last U.S. Census, just 2 percent of its 54,000 residents are African-American; about an equal percentage are Hispanic. The town%26#8217;s white population includes many second- and even third-generation residents. Could Obama connect here? When his impassioned volunteers came around, would people open their screen doors and talk to them? And if Levittown seemed to prefer Hillary Clinton, did that make it a place that remained wary of blacks %26#151; or one that, for whatever economic or cultural reasons, was just not attuned to his message?At 6 p.m. on a weekday evening in mid-March, about 15 people crowded into a small conference room at Obama%26#8217;s Levittown headquarters. A half-dozen more spilled over into an adjoining area, where they stood near a whiteboard on which someone had written the oft-quoted %26#151; and oft-mocked %26#151; line from one of Obama%26#8217;s speeches: %26#8220;We are the ones we have been waiting for.%26#8221; Meetings of Obama volunteers begin with what his professional field organizers call %26#8220;relationship building.%26#8221; Everyone talks about what brought them together and what they have in common, which, of course, is Obama. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next Page %26#x00bb;Michael Sokolove, a contributing writer for the magazine, worked for years as a reporter in Philadelphia. His latest book, �Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women�s Sports,� will be published in June.
Tags: amp, family, innes, longtime, pool, profession, rth
Copyright © 2008 Family News Home. All Rights Reserved.