During a press conference on 8 November 2021, American transport secretary Pete Buttigieg alluded to the story of Robert Moses and his racist overpass.
It goes a little something like this:
Moses, the so-called “master builder” of mid-20th century New York, was very concerned that white-only spaces in America (like beaches) might eventually be opened to all people. When designing the Grand Central Parkway in the late 1920s — a road intended, in part, to give New Yorkers “an easy way to reach Jones Beach’’ — Moses purposely made the bridges over the parkway too low for buses to travel under. At the time of the parkway’s construction, Black Americans predominantly relied on public transport. This made it very difficult for them to access Jones Beach.