White neighbors terrorized Black families until they fled white neighborhoods.
Evidence
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: Connects directly to the earlier spatial racecraft claims (ch 53, 70) about segregation for Muslims mirroring tools honed on Black families. — connects to: Residential steering and move-in violence afflict both Blacks and Muslims today.; White exclusionary neighborhoods remain segregated without formal Jim Crow laws — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 510; White neighbors surveilled a black family newly arrived on their street — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 1273 (+9 more)
- ADDENDUM: Rothstein’s Levittown account supports the ‘Grafting & Growth’ infrastructure essay’s thread about how exclusion is engineered into the built environment of neighborhoods.
Broader Connections
- White neighbors harassed Black homebuyers in racially integrated 1970s Mississippi.
#corroborates(0.93) - White neighbors surveilled a black family newly arrived on their street
#exemplifies(0.92) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 1273 - Black homeowners in white neighborhoods live in fear of being killed with impunity
#expands(0.88) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 1269 - White people’s power to decide Black life’s conditions fueled everyday resentment and fear.
#expands(0.78) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1006 - Post-enslavement black people faced total inescapable white supremacy
#expands(0.72)