Robert Moses is the man most New Yorkers love to hate. This is in no small part due to his own hubris and the impact he had on the people living in the path of his massive construction projects. Add to that Robert Caro’s hard hitting 1974 biography The Power Broker and you’ve got a reputation that is hard to live down.

Kara Schlichting and Katie Uva, both teachers and urban historians, have been contending with Moses in their works and in their classrooms. On today’s episode they discuss the challenges of teaching Moses and of broadening our understanding of the man and the times in which he operated. We also discuss the undeniable impact of The Power Broker and how historians work to bring context and understanding to this very important figure in New York history.

We also discuss the crucial early years of Robert Moses relating to Long Island and the creation of wildly popular parks and beaches. Did he work to exclude minorities from Jones Beach? Was there anyone to stop him running roughshod across Nassau and Suffolk Counties? The answers in the historical record may not be as simple as you expect.

Further Research

• Katie Uva
• Kara Schlichting
• “Teach NY: Three Case Studies for Reassessing New York’s Power Broker.” New York History 103.1 Summer 2022.
• “Robert Moses and His Racist Parkway, Explained“
• Books mentioned on this episode (via WorldCat)
• Intro music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
• Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0
• Audio Footnotes
  • Episode 26: The Barbash family leads the fight on Fire Island
  • Episode 25: Journalist Karl Grossman covering Robert Moses