A Place for All: Three Stories of Integration in Pennsylvania

Posted by on Sep 12, 2022 in | Comments Off on A Place for All: Three Stories of Integration in Pennsylvania The American Civil Rights Movement focused public attention on segregation in the South and the laws and practices that kept Southern Blacks disenfranchised. By the late 1950s places such as Montgomery, Alabama; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Greensboro, North Carolina, had become household names in the battle to dismantle the racial caste system of “Jim Crow.” But discrimination based on race, much...
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Breaking Down Barriers

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Breaking Down Barriers In the summer of 1957, William and Daisy Myers and their three children moved from their house near Philadelphia to the post-World War II development of Levittown, some twenty miles northeast of the city. Like millions of American families in the 1950s, they were seeking the highly touted amenities of suburban living (see “Picture Window Par­adise: Welcome to Levittown!” by Curtis...
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Picture Window Paradise – Welcome to Levittown

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Picture Window Paradise – Welcome to Levittown “To the outsider, Levittown, Pennsylvania, seems like a vast mirage, a city of 4,000 spanking new ranch homes where a short year ago were acres of corn and wheat … ” Ladies Home Journal, March 1953   On Monday, June 23, 1952, John and Philomena Dougherty packed up their belongings, and with their two daughters in tow, drove from a government housing project in northeast...
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