September 21, 1927
On September 21, 1927, the New York Amsterdam News featured a full-page ad encouraging “Colored Home Seekers” to view homes at Merrick Gardens in Springfield, Long Island. The advertisement promoted the virtues of home ownership: “The tax payer always gets more consideration than a rent payer” and “Would you not rather leave one of these homes to your children than the rent receipts now piling up on you?” (click to view PDF of ad). The ad is part of the hidden history of African Americans in suburbia. For more on this topic, see the New York Public Library’s “Black Suburbia: From Levittown to Ferguson” exhibit; Andrew Wiese’s Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century; and Walter Greason’s The Path to Freedom: Black Families in New Jersey.