Levittown

Social Life

Because ownership was initially available only to veterans, Levittown was socially and economically stratified. The owners were primarily young men in their twenties, many of whom worked at nearby defense plants and were newly married with small children.

The houses were erected on aging farmlands in a small rural area. With no preexisting society, the social life of the community was unlike that of neighborhoods in larger cities or rural towns and villages in the United States, where the residents were people of varied ages, incomes, and positions. The Levittown residents built small social groups, based on shared interests. They established schools and houses of worship, around which they built a social community centered on home and family. Soon after the completion of the subdivision, several women formed a cooperative day care center. Later, school and religious groups formed sports teams, scout troops, and other child-centered activities. Adults gained political experience through their work in the PTA or on local school boards.

Major Issues

Initially, the community was concerned with two major issues: the restrictive covenant and the annual school budget. The covenant was a common practice in U.S. suburbs of the 1940s, and its racial restriction was written into terms of the Federal Housing Administration's funding legislation. Along with more trivial issues, such as restrictions on fencing and clothes lines, the covenant denied residence to minority groups, which primarily affected African Americans. Although the covenant was lifted in 1972, few African Americans are residents of Levittown even today.

Levittown's early school battles earned the residents a reputation as “red-baiters” and anti-education. More careful analysis has shown that the disputes were as much economic as social. Two groups battled: upwardly mobile residents whose Levittown homes were stepping stones to more affluent communities and working-class residents whose disposable income was heavily invested in their homes. The attitudes of the two groups toward education were different and resulted in a culture clash over the school budgets. Because the number of school-age children was so high and the availability of a commercial tax base so low, budget battles were inevitable.

...