On August 17, 1957, a mob of white residents attacked and terrorized a Black family who bought a house in an all-white community in Bristol Township, Pennsylvania. As many as 500 white people converged outside the family’s home for the fifth night in an eight-day-long siege to enforce racial covenants in the planned “Levittown” community of 60,000 residents.

Levittowns were mass-produced suburban housing developments built by Levitt & Sons to address housing shortages faced by returning World War II veterans. To attract white homebuyers, the company committed to include strict racial covenants that expressly banned the sale of the homes to Black people.

White residents reacted angrily when a Black couple, William Myers Jr., a World War II veteran with a degree in electrical engineering from Hampton Institute, and his wife, Daisy Myers, an educator pursuing a master's degree from Temple University, purchased a Levittown home in a part of the development called Dogwood Hollow on August 11, 1957.

Word of the Black homebuyers in Dogwood Hollow spread rapidly, and by the evening of August 13, a hostile mob of 200 white people gathered outside the Myers’s new residence even before they moved in. The mob hurled a flurry of rocks at the Myers’s house, breaking windows and resulting in five arrests.

Hundreds of white residents launched a coordinated campaign to prevent the Myerses—and any other Black people—from moving into their all-white community. White homeowners formed the Levittown Betterment Association with the express purpose of opposing the Myers family’s attempt to move in and canvassed door-to-door, collecting thousands of signatures to keep the family out.

Mass meeting of white residents of Levittown / Temple Digital Library

Increasingly large crowds of as many as 500 people were assembled and dispatched to picket outside the Myers home for eight consecutive nights in an intimidation campaign that garnered national attention.

White residents sent numerous threatening letters to Mr. and Mrs. Myers, who bought their home through private resale. The couple declined an offer from a white purchaser to buy the house for $3,000 more than they had paid, telling interviewers they intended to live in the house they had purchased.

With the assistance of several supportive white neighbors, the Myers family moved into their home on August 19. Groups of white residents continued to protest and on the night of August 20, 1957, a stone thrown from the crowd struck and severely injured a local police officer. Nightly crowds around the Myers home tapered off, though the harassment did not end.

For weeks after the Myers family moved in, residents with adjoining yards flew Confederate flags, taunted Mr. Myers while he did yard work, and played loud music featuring derogatory lyrics. This menacing activity persisted until the Bucks County Court issued an injunction to prevent further harassment in late October 1957.

While many residents strongly opposed the Myers family moving into the community, some locals contributed funds to help repair damage to their home and organized a 24/7 citizen patrol to prevent violence and vandalism. William and Daisy Myers lived in their Levittown home for four years before relocating to York, Pennsylvania, in 1961.

In 1999, the Bristol Township Mayor formally apologized to Daisy Myers and awarded her with keys to the city in recognition of the torment she and her family endured.

William and Daisy Myers with their three children / Library of Congress