Robert Moses's Cross Bronx Expressway Destroys Black and Jewish Neighborhoods

New York power broker Robert Moses deliberately routes the Cross Bronx Expressway (begun 1948) through densely populated working-class neighborhoods, displacing approximately 60,000 residents — disproportionately Black and Jewish. Moses is documented as deliberately designing parkway overpasses too low for buses, ensuring Black residents without cars cannot access Long Island beaches and parks. His public housing projects are deliberately sited in Black neighborhoods, concentrating poverty. Robert Caro's 1974 biography documents Moses's racial animus in infrastructure design.