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| The Rev. Junius F. Carter, Jr. (Detail from "NAACP Million Dollar Campaign" (2021). Benjamin Lawson Hooks Papers images. 648.) |
As reporting on the segregation policy of the Levitt Corporation became more widely known,[1] members of Black Episcopal Churches in the Diocese began to raise serious concerns about Bishop Banyard’s planned collaboration[2] with Levitt for a new Episcopal Church in Levittown, NJ. Among them was the leadership of St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church, Elizabeth, including the Rev. Junius F. Carter, Jr.[3] The Rev. Carter wrote to Banyard on June 16, 1958, noting recent press coverage of Levitt’s anti-Black policy, and expressing his and his congregation’s concerns over the issue. He specifically states that the church might find it hard to justify participating in the funding of what he says “would undoubtedly be a segregated church” for an overtly all-white development. Carter assumes that the diocese “cannot help but take a stand against this kind of flagrant and deliberate discrimination.” Banyard would respond,[4] seeking to allay Carter’s concerns, but would not in fact ultimately “take a stand against this kind of… discrimination.” The letter shows that the leadership of the diocese were well aware of the problems with the Levitt scheme. Carter’s letter[5] is presented in full below, along with the newspaper article[6] he forwarded to Banyard.
Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey
[1] E.g. Tom Barrett, “N.J. Levittown Started; Negro Exclusion Stands,” New York Herald Tribune, June 8, 1958. Reporting also appeared in the New York Times.
[2] Including Banyard’s staff soliciting a donation of land from Levitt, and the announced plan to fund the building of what would be, at least de facto, an exclusively white church through a pressure campaign on all the churches (including the Black churches) of the Diocese to donate. See Gerald R. Minchin, “Presentation of Mission Program to the Diocesan Convention,” in The Journal of the 172nd Annual Convention of the Church in the Diocese of New Jersey Held in the Crypt of Trinity Cathedral, Trenton, Tuesday and Wednesday May 8th and 9th, 1956; 146.
[3] Carter was a highly respected priest in the diocese and later went on to become the first Black priest made a Canon of the Cathedral. See Laurence Fish, “Honorary Canons,” first published June 2, 2009; republished at https://dioceseofnj.org/archives/articles/2009lfcanons/.
[4] “Alfred L. Banyard to Junius F. Carter, Jr.” June 18, 1958. MSS held at Diocese of New Jersey archives, Trenton, NJ (See also Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, "Banyard Disputes Concerns Over Collaboration with Openly Racist Levitt Corporation: A Letter to The Rev. Carter, on June 18, 1958," DNJRJR [August 10, 2026]: https://dionj-racialjusticereview.blogspot.com/2026/08/banyard-disputes-concerns-over.html.
[5] “Junius F. Carter, Jr. to Alfred L. Banyard,” June 16, 1958. Courtesy of the Diocese of New Jersey. MSS held at Diocese of New Jersey archives, Trenton, NJ.
[6] Barrett, “N.J. Levittown Started.”
