I
recently reviewed The Color of Law: A
Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, by Richard
Rothstein. Our government’s involvement in making and keeping America
segregated was news to me, so I decided to explore the topic further.
Mr. Rothstein cited Robert C.
Weaver’s The Negro Ghetto, which was
published in 1948. Thanks to the library’s Inter Library Loan program, I was
able to get a copy of the book. The copy I read was reissued with a new preface
in 1967 but was not rewritten or amended, so, with the exception of the new
preface, the book is as it was written nearly 70 years ago. Mr. Weaver would
become the first black cabinet member and the first secretary of Housing and
Urban Development in 1966, but that was all in the future when his book was
published. Mr. Weaver was closer to the events of World War II than Mr.
Rothstein, and he, unlike Mr. Rothstein, tells of several successful integrated
housing developments that were built for wartime workers. These were
exceptions, of course, but they were built. Mr. Weaver goes into the history of
enforced segregation in the north, and settles on racial covenants (which the
Supreme Court ruled were unenforceable in 1948, but continued on as a
requirement for FHA or VA financing) as a major culprit. One thing I really
admired about this book is Mr. Weaver came up with some practical suggestions
for successful integration. One is occupancy standards that bar excessive
roomers, require owners and occupants to observe and assist in the enforcement
of all ordinances and codes, pledge observance of neighborhood standards of
maintenance, discourage departures from established architectural design, and
provide for participation in neighborhood associations for the preservation of
community standards. These, he says, will allow integration while maintaining
existing standards. He admits this will make it difficult for some with lower
incomes, but he recommends not buying or renting property beyond our means,
which is good advice for people of all races.
Mr.
Weaver also proposed mass production methods of construction as a means both to
build more units in a shorter period of time and bring down costs. Mr. Weaver
was writing during a massive housing shortage (the country had been at war
nearly four years—from 1941 to 1945, and there was a shortage of everything; my
parents said they had plenty of money but nothing to spend it on—cars were in
such short supply that dealers expected bribes to let go of one at full price).
Evidently many conventional builders were resisting mass production.
But as Mr.
Weaver was writing this book, Levittown was popping up in what had been a
potato farm in Nassau county on Long Island. It was meant to be the answer to
what the returning veteran needed. As it would turn out, VA would only issue
loans if racial covenants were part of deal, Supreme Court or no Supreme Court,
so Mr. Weaver turned out to be half right. Mass production did speed up
production (Levittown houses were produced at the rate of twelve per day) and
lower the cost of housing (to just under $7,000), but mass production and occupancy
standards did not end segregation.
On a
personal note, I looked at a Levittown house in the 1970s. It was the basic
“Cape” model that had been built with an expansion attic that had not been
expanded. The 750 square-foot house was four rooms and a bath on a concrete
slab with a one-car carport. The rooms were a living room, a kitchen, and two
bedrooms. It was not much larger than the apartment I was renting. (In fact, it
would almost qualify as a tiny house today). There were no sewers—each home had
a cesspool under the front yard (though I’ve read that sewer lines were
installed in the 1970s). In short, it may have been a step up from rental
housing for a returning vet, but it was not a giant step. (For a decidedly
unromantic look at the postwar housing building boom, see John Keats’ 1956
book, The Crack in the Picture Window.)
Picking
up chronologically from where Robert C. Weaver left off is Edward Humes’ Over Here: How the G.I. Bill Transformed the
American Dream, a generally positive view of the G.I. Bill, which improved
the lives of many returning veterans. The book discusses how colleges were a
tad standoffish about accepting the hoi polloi returning from the war but wound
being generally impressed with how goal-oriented most returning veterans were.
The book addresses the problems blacks and women had making use of their
benefits. It’s amazing how patronizing benefits counselors were toward the
“little ladies” who’d been sewing up soldiers, flying as test pilots, etc., and
unfortunately, many benefits counselors did their best to talk black veterans
out of college. One black soldier, who grew up middle class (his father passed as
white for many years) was flat told his counselor would “recommend against” his
attending college (he’d already been admitted). This man knew his rights and
got by his counselor, but we have to wonder how many didn’t.
The
main reason the G.I. Bill was at times less beneficial to black veterans was
one of its most powerful sponsors, Representative John Elliot Rankin, of
Tupelo, Mississippi demanded and got local control of the administration of the
program. Mr. Humes describes Rankin as a racist and a thug, but a thug with
power. (He successfully fought the passage of an anti-lynching law in 1948.) As
a result, local administrators in the south simply refused to allow the VA to
insure loans to black veterans. Of 3,000 VA loans issued to veterans in
Mississippi, two went to black veterans.
Black
veterans may have fought for freedom overseas, but that didn’t mean they were
going to enjoy those freedoms when they returned to their homes in the
south.
Mr.
Humes mentions Levittown had racial covenants but does not confirm Mr.
Rothstein’s assertion that Levittown’s covenants were required by the Veterans
Administration.
The
book is a good read and many of the stories Mr. Humes includes are told by
those whose lives were changed by the G.I. Bill.
I came
across A City Divided: The Racial
Landscape of Kansas City, 1900-1960, by Sherry Lamb Schirmer at an estate
sale. The book was published by the University of Missouri Press and is heavily
footnoted. The book covers racial issues in Kansas City during the first sixty
years of the last century. Much of the book is old history to those of us
who’ve lived here for a while, but I found the last chapter, which covers 1950
to 1958, especially interesting.
It
seems whenever eating establishments or department stores justified
segregation, it was never the store owners or management who objected to black
customers, it was always there were “bigoted customers” who would object to
integration. Finally, blacks decided to take action and boycotted downtown
department stores during the holidays in 1958. Many white customers stayed
away, and the department stores felt the impact. The bottom line is the only
color that really matters in the end is green.
And on
the green front, Ms. Schirmer tells a story I’d never heard about how some
white people profited from the white flight prompted by integration. Fred
Curls, a black Realtor, went into white neighborhoods telling homeowners
there that he had just sold a home in the neighborhood to a black man, and if
he could help them by selling their homes, please give him a call because he
had plenty of black customers who would love to buy their homes. Eventually,
they’d call, he’d sell their house (he really did have a list of black buyers),
and to get it financed (remember, FHA and VA generally would not guarantee
loans to black people), he’d call a group of white investors who would finance
the loans at 25% interest. For reference, the loan on my parents’ home, which
they built in 1958, was 5%. Everybody made out like a bandit except the white
sellers.
I
picked up Lucy Moore’s Anything Goes: A
Biography of the Roaring Twenties at Half Price Books. The book is a
sometimes entertaining look at the 1920’s. There is a chapter on the Ku Klux
Klan’s emergence during the decade which sounds a lot like the far right’s
resurgence today. As an aside, I don’t have a position on the removal of
Confederate statues and other Civil War memorabilia, but it’s important to
remember many of the statues being protested today were erected at the
time of the Klan’s resurgence as a reminder to blacks, Jews, immigrants and
(especially) Catholics to toe the line—or else.
Unfortunately,
this book is more of a first draft of what could have been a very good book. If
a person’s going to write about an era, you’d expect that person would have
more familiarity with that era, or at least their publisher would have a
fact checker with that familiarity. A few annoying examples: “Middletown” is
often referenced but never explained as the subject of a book by Robert and
Helen Lynd. Franklin
Roosevelt’s term began in 1933, not 1932. Frederick Lewis Allen, who wrote the
definitive social histories Only
Yesterday and Since Yesterday
about the 1920s and 1930s, respectively, loses his middle name. Both J. Edgar
Hoover and A. Mitchell Palmer lose their first initials. H. L. Mencken becomes
Henry. Both the “Know-Nothings” and the great Mississippi flood of 1927 are
attributed to the “Southwest.” (Ms. Moore was educated in both the U.S. and
Great Britain, where she now resides; perhaps her education skipped over
geography.) O.K., all the preceding might be minor, but a major clunker is
encountered when Ms. Moore states (on page 157) that Florida was “made newly
habitable by air conditioning and refrigeration.” Personally, I question whether
Florida has ever been habitable, but the people who moved there in the 1920s
certainly did not have air conditioning available to them in their homes. And
Ms. Moore and her publishers should have known better.
That
said, the book is an OK read, but if you’re in school and writing a paper on
the 1920’s, by all means check a second source before using this one as a
reference.
© 2017 Larry Roth
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