The Negroes in America are trying to do in sixty years what the Jews in the world have not wholly accomplished in six hundred years. As a Jew I have no room in my mind or heart for racial prejudice.

But…I have come to know that if we sell one house to a Negro family, then ninety to ninety-five percent of our white customers will not buy into the community. That is their attitude, not ours…

As a company our position is simply this:

We can solve a housing problem, or we can try to solve a racial problem, but we cannot combine the two.

WILLIAM LEVITT – NEW YORK TIMES, AUGUST 25, 1957

In 1947, William Levitt and Sons sold the first homes in massive suburban developments called Levittown. The first 25 leases stated simply that the homes could not “be used or occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race.”

White ethnic families who lived in Brooklyn neighborhoods like East New York and Brownsville sold their homes at a discounted price to real estate operators and sometimes moved in the middle of the night in response to small influxes of black families.

This phenomenon became known as “white flight.”