War of Nerves: Racism in the 1950s

This barn roof was painted this way for nearly fifty years.

Equal Rights in America?

This story appeared in Time magazine, October 7, 1957. It was an era when African Americans were just beginning to demand equal rights. (During the same week President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered 3,000 U.S. Army paratroopers into action. Their job: protect nine black students who wished to attend the all-white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas.) 

 Three concepts will be introduced below. The Confederacy was the nation formed by eleven states which broke away from the U.S. in 1861. They fought the Civil War to protect and keep slavery. The “stars and bars” was a flag they carried during the fight. The KKK is the Ku Klux Klan, whose basic beliefs hold that whites should rule America and the races should remain separated. 

 

War of Nerves 

In the ranch-house suburb of Levittown, Pennsylvania (population 60,000), the empty house at 30 Darkleaf Lane came alive last week. From one roof peak flew an American flag, and from another—lighted by a spotlight at night—flew the stars and bars of the Confederacy. Each evening the house was now crowded with members of a new club, who worked hard at a strict bad-neighbor policy. With windows wide open they talked loudly over coffee, turned up their record players, sang songs, and directed all this racket at the house next door. The reason: William E. Myers, Jr. and his three small children had moved in. The Myerses are Negroes, the first to buy a home in the five- year-old Levittown community. 

Myers, a 34-year-old, $4800-a-year** refrigeration-equipment tester, moved into his pink, three-bedroom ranch house in August because his family had outgrown a two-bedroom cottage in a mostly-Negro area a mile away. But his coming to Levittown caused fears, anger, and rumors that he was the leader of a Negro invasion. For days ugly crowds grumbled outside his house, and finally threw stones through his picture window. Local police were reinforced by tough state troopers at the direction of Pennsylvania’s Governor George M. Leader. (“I am ashamed,” said Leader, “that this has happened in Pennsylvania.”)

After a cop was hit by a rock, state police drove off the crowd with swinging nightsticks. Further meetings by more than three people in the area around Myers’ house were banned. But since the crackdown, trouble-makers have come up with new methods of tormenting [harassing, bothering] Myers. They have taken turns each evening slamming a heavy mailbox door near his house, or stop their cars to yell and blow bugles. 

Not everyone in Levittown is against Myers. More than 1,000 people in the town signed a “Declaration of Conscience” to show how shocked they were by the violence and misbehavior of those who were trying to scare off Myers. Some people came by to mow Myers’ lawn, leave gifts or say hello. But even a few of these have paid the price for their friendliness. Next-door neighbor Lewis Wechsler has been openly friendly since Myers moved in; since then a cross has been burned during the night on Wechsler’s lawn and a painted “KKK” was splattered across one wall of his home. One woman who lives half a block away stopped one evening to chat with Myers. When she got home she found a sign on her lawn: NIGGER LOVER it said. 

Last week the police cracked down on the noisy neighbors. The owner of the home, William A. Hughes, who lives about 1 1/2 miles away, was taken to court. The judge ordered Hughes to bounce the loud “club” members from his house or face a fine. So Hughes agreed. The members finished their coffee, turned off the records and disappeared. At week’s end householder Myers waited nervously to see what would happen next. Said he: “I want to be the same as any other American; I want to be treated like anyone else. This is a war of nerves. But I’m not going to move.” 

**$4,800 per year in 1957, would have been considered very good pay.

 

Your work: 

(Answer on your own paper.  Write short paragraphs for #1 and #4.) 

1. Why do you think some of William Myers’ neighbors were so afraid of ONE black family living in Levittown? 

2. In what ways did people who hated Myers attempt to scare him? 

3. In what ways, if any, do you feel the following people showed courage? Answer for each of the choices below:  

    A) William Myers, Jr.  

    B) The white “club” members.

    C) Neighbors who showed friendship toward Myers.

 

4. What do you think would happen in your neighborhood if a person of a different race moved in? Would it make any difference?

Burned cross, farm field north of Cincinnati.
The author of this blog has NO idea
who would have stuck that campaign sign there.