Racial integration was enforced by mob violence while police looked away.

Evidence

Later that night, ten rifle shots were fired through their kitchen door. Under the watch of the police, the crowds demonstrated for a month until the house was dynamited. The police officially noticed nothing. None of the firebombers or vigilantes were arrested, let alone prosecuted, even though they were known to the authorities. In 1957, the Myers obtained a private mortgage from a Black philanthropist and bought a house in the development Levittown, Pennsylvania. A few days after moving in with their children, the harassment started. A mob of 600 people attacked the house with rocks after a mail carrier went about announcing that a Black family had moved into the neighborhood. White neighbors set up a clubhouse next door to the Myers and subjected them to incessant harassment including prominently displaying of the Confederate flag and KKK symbols, blaring music, and burning crosses. Rocks continued to be thrown, smashing windows in the Myers’ home. The police were unwilling or unable to stop the terrorism. Eventually, after four years of this treatment, the Myers moved back to their African American neighborhood. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 479

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete historical warrant for Rothstein’s claim that residential segregation was state-tolerated terrorism; parallels Aziz’s Racial Muslim account of racial boundaries policed by violence. — connects to: Private violence enforced segregation while the state declined to intervene.; Racialized minorities in white communities may integrate but never congregate without provoking violence; Perceived Black labor competition directly triggered white mob violence — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 447 (+3 more)
• ADDENDUM: Feeds the cross-cultural ‘moral panic over who belongs’ theme: vigilante enforcement of neighborhood purity as identity policing.

Broader Connections

• White mob violence met Black families who moved into white neighborhoods. #exemplifies (0.95)
• Racialized neighborhood boundaries are violently enforced against Black and brown bodies #exemplifies (0.95) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 490
• Racialized minorities in white communities may integrate but never congregate without provoking violence #corroborates (0.90)
• Perceived Black labor competition directly triggered white mob violence #expands (0.90) — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 447
• Black progress and ambition, not Black presence, triggered white vigilante violence #expands (0.85) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 390