Levittown Opens as America's First Suburb With Explicit Whites-Only Policy

Levittown, regarded as America’s first modern planned suburb, opens on Long Island to accommodate returning World War II veterans with “Clause 25” in housing agreements explicitly forbidding homes “from being used or occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race.” The leases state: “No dwelling shall be used or occupied by members of other than the Caucasian race, but the employment and maintenance of other than Caucasian domestic servants shall be permitted.” Developer William Levitt follows Federal Housing Administration guidelines, which provide mortgage insurance while encouraging restrictions barring African-Americans and people of Puerto-Rican origin from homeownership.

Even after the Supreme Court rules in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) that racially restrictive covenants are unenforceable, Levitt drops explicit contract restrictions but maintains the unwritten whites-only policy, continuing to prevent racial integration. Levitt justifies this stating, “We can solve a housing problem, or we can try to solve a racial problem. But we cannot combine the two.” He claims that selling “one house to a Negro family” would mean “90 or 95 percent of our white customers will not buy into the community.” FHA continues to insure loans only to whites wanting to buy homes in Levittown.

Of the 17,447 homes built in Levittown, not a single one is sold to a Black family during the initial development. This federal-private partnership in mass suburbanization creates the template for post-war white wealth accumulation through subsidized homeownership while systematically excluding African Americans from this wealth-building opportunity. As of 2017, only 1.19 percent of Levittown’s 51,800 residents are African American, demonstrating the lasting legacy of federally-sanctioned segregation in shaping American residential patterns.