Report of the County Chairman

by James A. Michener

  Sane people assured me of these things, and I can honestly state that I never heard any other estimate of the area, except that in 1957 Levittown exploded in a vicious outburst of racial intolerance when a Negro family named Myers attempted to move into the Dogwood area, only to find itself embattled and the center of riots. At that time some of my up-county friends said approvingly, “Those Levittowners must be all right. Like everybody else they’re trying to protect their homes.” From these conflicting bits of evidence I decided that I knew nothing about this huge suburbia that had erupted in my backyard.

  I was therefore pleased when residents of the area called me on the telephone early in September to invite me to a Levittown political meeting. The instructions they gave were intricate, for the area has no over-all street plan, yet sensible, for all the streets in any one area begin with the same letter. I was to go to 69 Queen Anne Road in the Quincy Hollow District, where I would meet the couple who would feed me before the meeting. While I was looking for the address I noticed with approval the neat plantings of arborvitae and yew at the corners of the blocks, and the beautiful utilization of Pfitzer and Andorra juniper throughout. “This may be a slum,” I mused, “but it’s the best-kept one I ever saw.”

  The houses were neat and well cared for. Enough variation had been introduced to avoid monotony, and paint was everywhere in evidence. Driveways were trimmed and such automobiles as I saw tended to be new. Lawns were a special feature and I wondered who cut them, the husbands or the wives. Since it was just before dinner hour, there were many children playing across the broad yards and I thought: “I’ve been in a whole lot of suburbs that didn’t look this good.”

  I finally found the “Q” roads and pulled up before 69 Queen Anne Road and walked up the drive. The door was opened by a very pretty housewife in her twenties. “I’m Penny Young,” she said, “and this is my husband Reuben.” A tall, good-looking man came forward from the kitchen to introduce his son and daughter, and for the first time in the campaign I sat down in a Levittown house. It was commodious, well planned, with a clever upstairs and downstairs arrangement. It was, I discovered later, a Jubilee, which sold originally for $11,000. I was to find that whenever I went to a meeting in Levittown I was told, “We’re going to the Jeffersons’. They live in a Country Clubber.” This was like saying in the Navy, “Jefferson’s a commander.” That told you immediately what pay he got, what his prerogatives were, and where he stood in the social hierarchy. The titles in Levittown went from Ranchers ($9,000) through Jubilees ($11,700) and on up to Country Clubbers ($18,000—except those with air-conditioned finished attics, which were a lofty $20,000).

  “If the Reuben Youngs are typical Jubilees,” I thought, “Levittown has nothing to worry about.” Reuben worked as a sales engineer, while his pretty wife helped run the Levittown Players, where she was studying for a role in their next production, My Sister Eileen. Penny was from Richmond, Virginia, and very early in our acquaintanceship, which became close since I often used their house as headquarters, indicated some of the political tensions that existed in suburbia.

  “When Reuben said he was going to run for justice of the peace, I thought it was just another job,” she explained one night, “but as the time for voting approached, people used to call me on the telephone and say, ‘We don’t want you damned Jews taking over a decent county. Go home.’ You have no idea how terrible it was. On my way to the polls a carload of men drove past shouting, ‘We don’t want kike votes here.’ I was glad when Reuben lost. Then tempers subsided.”

  Mr. Young laughs about the affair. “It takes time for people who have lived in an area all their lives to accept newcomers. I remember when Levittown …” He stopped to explain. “You understand that although there is no Levittown, we continue to use the word. It’s as if it symbolized what might come to pass in the future. Anyway, when Levittown conducted a plebiscite to see whether Negroes should be allowed in the community or not it was specifically understood that Jews couldn’t vote. The conductors of the plebescite said, ‘Jews are no better than niggers. We know how they’d vote so their opinion doesn’t count.’ ” Young laughed at the memory.

  “Now everything’s so much better,” Penny said.

  When dinner was served I got the feeling that here was a family that had consciously sought the good life in suburbia and had found it. The children were healthy. The parents had established fast friendships with their neighbors. The air was clean and the lawns were neat. Not a single rumor I had heard about Levittown was true, and everything I had hoped to find here was present: the happiness of people who were living better than they used to.

  After dinner the politicians of the area gathered, hard-headed young men who were determined to do what they could to help elect Jack Kennedy President. Some were Catholic, some were Jewish, but most were ordinary Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Some were union members and some were not. Most were Democrats, but a few were Republicans who wanted to see a change. And when they were gathered, hell broke loose and I realized that I was in over my head, for I had been summoned to Levittown by the dissidents who had been unable to find a place within the regular Democratic party.

  Milton Berkes, an extremely clever young man with the quickest mind I encountered in the area, gave the problem simply: “In 1952, when Levittown was just an idea, a lot of us saw an opportunity to make Bucks County a vital cog in the new Democratic party that we knew would arise. The Fairless Steel operation brought in a lot of bright young laboring people who already knew politics. Then, when the communities started to form, some 70,000 citizens piled in from outside areas, and the future of the Democratic party seemed assured. But what happened?”

  The explanation that followed came from so many diverse voices and in such bitter tones that I will not endeavor to specify who said what. The story was this: “In 1955 we worked like demons to overthrow the Republican party in Bucks County, and thanks to Coroner Ferris, who was on his way to jail, we elected two Democratic supervisors, which automatically made Johnny Welsh chairman. We thought, ‘With Welsh in command, for the first time in history we’ll build a powerful party.’ But our dream was very short-lived.”

  It is difficult to describe what happened next. Levittowners give this as the true version: “We found that our votes were wanted but nothing more. The regular Democratic party, centered in the upper end of the county, was pathologically afraid of anyone from Levittown. It was suspicious of Jews. And it despised labor. Time after time we pleaded with the regular party for patronage, some kind of power, some kind of recognition. But we were rebuffed and got nowhere.”

  Here I must interrupt to say that as soon as I heard these complaints I thought: “Good heavens! I’m back in Hawaii!” Every ugly situation that had shattered the Democratic party in the islands was operating to achieve the same result in Bucks County, and I often felt as if my work in Hawaii had been an indoctrination course for a similar fight in Bucks County. Later I was to find that the same forces operated in suburbias all across the land, and that my experience was in no way unusual. Nevertheless, I took the protests directly to Johnny Welsh, the uncrowned head of the party. He listened and replied: “What they say happened is true, but the reasons they give are altogether wrong. They stormed into our county from Philadelphia and decided that we older men who had kept the party together for three decades when there was really very little hope were a bunch of dopes. They wanted to be Democrats, sure, but they wanted to start right at the top. They were never willing to labor in the vineyards.”

  Later, when in an effort to heal the wounds between the rural areas and suburbia I chided the latter members with being unwilling to labor in the vineyards, the Levittowners exploded: “Johnny Welsh always uses that phrase. But do you know what he means by it? When you labor in his vineyard you’re supposed to kowtow to everything he wants. You’re supposed to work in the dark. And you’re supposed to get neither patronage nor position while doing it.”

  To this charge Welsh rep
lied: “Let them earn their patronage and position by four or five years of honest work. In my day the apprenticeship period was ten years before you opened your trap. They want to step right in at the head of the class.”

  A Levittowner responded with more foresight than he knew: “Republicans fear the southern end of the county just as much as the Democrats. Last election the smart young Republicans from Levittown ganged together and put across one of their leaders, Ed Boyer, as county commissioner, and now he’s chairman of the commissioners. The old-line Republicans hate this and sooner or later they’ll try to knock his ears off, because they hate Levittowners almost as much as they do Democrats.”

  A special complaint of the Levittowners was that the regular organization, most of it reared in central and upper sections of the county, refused to work with labor. Said Russ Thompson, then president of Local 4889 of the Steelworkers Union, “The regular Democrats are notorious for their anti-labor animus. We simply can’t get a hearing with them.”

  To all such complaints a highly placed Democrat at county headquarters snapped, “I haven’t leveled with you, Michener. The simple fact is that Levittown is filled with communists. The F.B.I. keeps track of quite a few agitators down there and at the first start of trouble, in they go to concentration camps. That’s what we’re really fighting.” When I asked for particulars my informant said, “Don’t you know that some of the very people you’ve been talking with are the ones who helped niggers move into Dogwood? And named their school the J. Robert Oppenheimer School? You have no idea how far such people will go. But you do know what they did to Johnny Welsh in 1959. Such men stop at nothing.”

  I asked Milt Berkes what had happened in the 1959 election and he said, “After we pleaded with Welsh for representation equal to our voting strength and after we got nowhere, we had to challenge him. He ignored us. So even though he was senior county commissioner and head of the party, we said, ‘Welsh, we’re going to throw you out of office.’ He laughed at us as if we were children, so we went to work. We got out an enormous vote, all instructed to cut Johnny Welsh off the ticket. I suppose you know what happened.”

  “I know he’s not county commissioner any longer,” I said.

  “You bet he isn’t,” Berkes said. “He never knew what hit him. When the votes were counted everybody on the ticket had done well but little Johnny. He was cut to shreds and was even voted out of the county chairmanship. For three years we warned him, but he wouldn’t listen, so we had to show him where the votes were.”

  The most surprising thing about the painful Bucks County split was that everyone from the southern end of the county still wanted Johnny Welsh to be head of the party. Everyone admitted he was the best-informed and most honest commissioner the county had ever had. Bob Saunders, who had participated in the revolt, told me, “If we had a free choice tomorrow, we’d still want Welsh as our leader. But he would have to operate democratically.” Reuben Young was emphatic: “Welsh is the instinctive leader of the party, but he’s got to reform.” During the campaign I made a dozen overtures to both sides, to see if my independent committee could be the mediating force, but instead of healing old wounds, I succeeded only in tearing open old scars. The men of suburbia wrote in protest to Washington: “Michener is a stooge personally selected by Johnny Welsh and he will help the regulars lead us to defeat.” Icy John Welsh said, “Jim, you’re being used by a group of men who don’t give a damn about John Kennedy.” Insofar as healing the savage breach that tore my party apart was concerned, I accomplished nothing.

  But like many previous men caught in similar situations, I consoled myself with the fact that my major job was not to heal political wounds but to help elect a President, and it was reassuring to find that on this common ground I could talk to the two warring factions. This election was extraordinary in that across the nation it was the Democrats who were supposed to be riven apart and the Republicans who were the close-knit team; yet in the actual fighting, it was the Democrats who mysteriously coalesced into a brilliantly led unit, while the Republicans seemed constantly to be coming apart at the seams. I am not sure I understand how this was accomplished, but in my area it was done in part because the warriors of both sides were willing to prosecute the national election intelligently, even though in local matters each was trying to knife the other. I would scarcely have believed such schizoid action possible if I had not participated in it.

  Thus in Levittown we had a very strong Kennedy-Johnson unit backed by the regular Democratic party and staffed by a fine young politician who took leave without pay from the Pennsylvania Railroad so that he could round up the vote. Chuck McGrath was able, witty, dedicated, and a mortal enemy of the other faction, the dissident Democrats, that is. It was a privilege to work with him and I suspect he has a bright future in the party.

  At the same time, and only a block away, we had a very strong unit housed in a trailer parked on a lot beside the theater. It was staffed by Jack Ford, a shrewd, hard-working young labor leader who had taken leave without pay from the steel plant so that he could fight Republicans eight hours a day and the regular Democratic party the other sixteen. Throughout Levittown these two units worked side by side to produce a huge vote for Kennedy, but if the split had not been so irrevocable, I suspect the vote would have been larger; and if it is not soon mended, I believe the party in Bucks County is doomed to be in the minority for many years to come. Certainly, the Democrats would be foolhardy to go into the 1964 Presidential race with what amounts to two Democratic parties functioning in a key county. On the other hand, whereas such splits are usually fatal to the Republicans, nothing seems able to kill off the Democrats, so perhaps our rough-house, vital, brawling old party will stagger up to 1964 just as split as ever and just as powerful.

  Of all my experiences during the campaign, and some that I have yet to describe were pleasant indeed, I appreciated most the opportunities I had to get acquainted with the people of Levittown. I found them alert, good-natured, intelligent and politically aware. Most of the ones I met were Republicans and I often thought, “One of the worst things about being a Democrat is that so many of your political enemies are such delightful people.” It was when I heard some of their political beliefs that I realized how deep the chasm was between us.

  I spent a good deal of time campaigning in Levittown and many hours thinking about suburbia on my way to and from it. None of the myths about Levittown, of course, were true. I have rarely known a better group of citizens nor one with which I would be more willingly associated. They represent one of the strongest reservoirs in our society and I wish there were a hundred Levittowns across the country instead of only three major ones in Long Island, Bucks County, and New Jersey. I myself would be most happy to live in one, and if in older life I found it necessary to sell the home I now occupy, I would think first of a good Levittown. I don’t want the genteel section of some tired old city or the rural chauvinism of some house in which George Washington may have rested. I want the midsummer fires of a Levittown, for here live the people with vitality.

  If I wanted to select one couple to represent the new spirit of suburbia I would choose the Jack Wards, who live in a neat Rancher ($9,500 new, two bedrooms, unfinished attic). Jack had been a big six-foot-two character in uniform during World War II on liberty in New Orleans when “I see this gorgeous hunk of womanhood walking past, nearly six feet tall, what a shape and flaming red hair. Right then I said, ‘That’s for me.’ ” He forgot all other objectives and won this striking Polish girl from Philadelphia. They now have four children, including twin daughters and a son who is a near genius. The whole family attends the Unitarian Church, which is a story by itself.

  Mrs. Ward says, “I was raised a devout Philadelphia Catholic, as prejudiced against every other religion as I could be. My father owned a small business and hated labor unions. Our family fear was the encroachment of Negro families. And then I met this big free-and-easy guy. We courted pretty solidly and he said, ‘I want you t
o meet my family.’ So he took me to see them and they were delightful. A big Lithuanian family with wonderful spirit. Then on about the fifth visit Jack’s mother said something about loving Jewish cooking. And on the next visit his aunt said something about Jewish holidays, and I stopped dead and asked Jack, ‘Are you Jewish?’ and he said, ‘What else?’ And I was terrified. When I told my parents I said, ‘I’ve fallen in love with a Jewish boy,’ and what they told me I won’t repeat. But Jack’s parents were telling him the same thing, so one day we two tall people, a Lithuanian Jew and a Polish red-headed Catholic said, ‘This is for the birds,’ and we became Unitarians.”

  Jack Ward had inherited even more prejudices than his wife, for he was from a little town in the Deep South, but when the Myers family of Negroes moved into Levittown and hideous hatreds erupted all over the city, the first man to mount midnight watch to protect the Myers home was Jack Ward. For some weeks he imperiled his social position, and his political as well, but he slugged it out and gained in stature by doing so.

  When he moved into Levittown he landed in an area that was 70 percent Republican, but by force of his shaggy-dog personality and acid honesty he became a principal factor in making the area 73 percent Democratic and the most powerful precinct in the county. Politics has become his principal interest. In order to provide him time for electioneering, his wife supplements his salesman’s income by working for the Army at Fort Dix, twenty-two miles away.

  Of her new life in Levittown, Mrs. Ward says, “Before we came here we were paying $91.50 rent for a dingy, dirty Baltimore row house. Here we pay $88, and much of it is for equity in what amounts to our own house. We have beautiful surroundings, a peach tree in our back yard, a swimming pool only a few blocks away. Our children are outdoors all the time on fine playgrounds. Our son plays on an organized ball team, and as a family we are living rather than just existing. When we talk Levittowners into becoming Democrats we talk from the heart, because we’ve found the good life.”