Lee Lorch - Stuyvesant Town

Stuyvesant Town

"I had become very aware of racism through the war; not just anti-Semitism, but the way the American army treated black soldiers. On the troop transport overseas, it was always the black company on board that had to clean the ship and do the dirty work, and I felt very uncomfortable with that', Lorch told an interviewer in 2007.

Some time after taking up his job at City College, he moved into Stuyvesant Town, a development owned by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company built with financial and legal support from New York City for war veterans. Outraged at the development's "No Negroes" policy, Lorch became a vice-chair of a tenant's committee formed to eliminate this discrimination. This had two-thirds support from the other tenants. City College, though conceding the excellence of his work, dismissed Lorch, refusing to give any reason. Lorch obtained a new position at Penn State University, but rather than give up his apartment he asked a black friend and his family to move into his dwelling as "guests", a move which circumvented the policy against accepting housing applications from blacks, but which also resulted in his being fired from Penn State, as reported in the New York Times on April 10, 1950. An editorial in the New York Times on April 11 recalled the suspicious nature of his dismissal from City College the previous year, and called upon Penn State to reconsider, to no avail.

"It's hard to imagine now, but there was no civil rights legislation back then. You could be fired without explanation. But how could you do anything else, in all good conscience?" said Lorch.