From LBJ to Robert Moses: Robert Caro on Writing About Political Power & Its Impact on the Powerless

I'm Amy Goodman we turn now to one of the nation's most celebrated writers the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Caro he's out with a new book titled working that gives an inside look at his remarkable research and writing process and it does appear that Robert Caro is always working forty-five years ago he published his first book the power broker Robert Moses in the fall of New York over a seven-year period he conducted over 500 interviews for what turned out to be a twelve hundred page book looking at how Robert Moses reshaped the nation's largest city New York the modern library would later name the power broker as one of the top 100 non-fiction books of the 20th century along with such works as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and wev Du Bois is the souls of black folk and Carroll hasn't stopped working since for the past 45 years Robert Caro with much help from his wife ina has been researching the life and times of President Lyndon Baines Johnson from his childhood in hill country Texas to his time in the White House four volumes have been published so far the path to power means of ascent master of the Senate and the passage of power they totaled more than 3,000 pages Robert Caro is now writing the fifth volume looking at Vietnam the Great Society and President Johnson's decision not to seek reelection in 1968 Robert Caro has been described as the greatest political biographer of our times and America's biographer in chief but to reduce Karos work as simply biographies of great men misses the point kara uses both Moses and Johnson to show how political power works Cairo writes that by focusing on Robert Moses he was able to explore quote the realities of urban political power power and cities not just in New York but in all the cities of America in the middle of the 20th century with LBJ Caro helped expose how national power works in the Senate and the presidency Robert Caro once told Kurt Vonnegut quote what trying to do is to show not only how power works but the effect of power on those without power how political power affects all our lives every single day in ways we never think about he says well with democracy now co-host Juan Gonzalez who today is joining us from Rutgers University in New Brunswick New Jersey we're spending the hour with Robert Carroll welcome to Democracy Now it's great to have you with us right right to be with you I want to go back to 55 years ago in fact it would be 55 years ago in July that President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and go back a few months before that when Lyndon Baines Johnson standing next to a blood-spattered Jackie Kennedy would be sworn in as president he could have taken on any issue at that point becoming president worn by many in his inner circle don't do the Civil Rights Act don't lose the south he moved forward describe for us set the stage and the place talk about LBJ's decision to go this route for weeks for four days after the assassination yes the given address to the joint session of Congress he's not even in the Oval Office yes he's still working out of his private home in Washington three or four of his speech writers are sitting around the kitchen table trying to draft this speech and at some point Johnson comes down wearing a bathrobe and asks them how they're doing they said we're the only thing we're all sure of us don't make civil rights a priority if you anger the southerners who control Congress they're gonna stop your whole legislative program like they did Kennedy it's a noble cause but it's a lost cause don't fight for it and Lyndon Johnson says to them well what the hell is the presidency for then and of course in his speech he says with all the southern senators sitting in a row in front of him our first priority to be the passage of the civil rights bill and talk about the battle that ensued you particularly focus on Richard Russell and you pit these two well they pitted themselves against each other well Russell you know Johnson convinced the southern senators for 20 years before 1964 every vote that he made was on the south side of the south you he not only supported every southern bill and opposed every civil rights bill but he was a southern strategist and Russell took him under his wing Richard Russell was the most powerful figure in the Senate he was the head of the mighty southern courts you have to understand him in that year I forget the I may have the numbers wrong here but approximately right of the 16 great standing committees in the Senate 11 were chaired by southerners or their allies they had all the power in the Senate and Russell raised Lyndon Johnson up through the position of Majority Leader it was him who really put Johnson in so I would speak to some that some of the southern senators and I asked one of them I remember Herman Talmadge who was actually dying when I finally got to talk them he was the senator from Georgia finally talked to me and I'm asking him about this and I said well what did how did what did Lyndon Johnson convince you should be the relationship between white men and black men what did he believe Talmadge said master and servant and I said so how did he make you believe that and tell him it sure was you know a show up man and proud of his shortness said he talked to me all the time I thought we were friends I thought I knew what he really believed so I said well how did you feel when Johnson gave the speech saying our first priority must be the civil rights bill how did you feel sitting there as he stands the saying this Talmadge said there was a slowing pause finally he says to me SiC I felt sick and and Robert Carroll what then changed Johnson and made him such a proponent of the civil rights movement well I'm not sure that anything changed Johnson see you see it may be that he believed the same thing all along but he concealed it for 20 years you know why do I think Lyndon Johnson truly believed in civil rights that it wasn't a political thing because when he was 20 and 21 years old he went to college it was a college he called the poor boy his school he didn't have enough money to continue had a dropout between his sophomore and junior year and teach school and he taught in a school that in little town down near the Mexican border in Texas in what they called the Mexican school I wrote about that no teacher had ever cared if these kids learned or not this teacher cared he was so insistent that they they learn English he thought that was the crucial thing if at recess he heard boys shouting in excitement on the baseball diamond he in in Spanish he'd run out and spanked them on the spot girls he gave a tongue-lashing to now all this all this time later he has concealed us now he becomes president he has the power you know we all learn Lord Acton's axiom all power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely I'm not sure that as a result of my work I believe that what I really believe I really believe that power does not always corrupt sometimes power cleanses but what power always does is reveal when you get enough power so you can do what you want then people see what you wanted to do all along well you know I was interested in in your new book working and obviously some of the stuff that you have in here is a distillation not only of what you learned and in the the bigger books that you wrote but also the process by which you learned them you talk about the rise of power of Lyndon Johnson and you Center on this moment in October of 1940 when it appeared to be that Johnson really as a as a young as a young member of Congress begins to gain more CH much more influence and power and you were fascinated to try to understand what had happened in October of 1940 to suddenly catapult Johnson into a key figure and you end up discovering this whole connection that he developed to the oil barons of Texas and the funding of the Democratic Party I'm wondering if you could talk about that yes it was quite it was quite you see he's been in Congress only three years he's 32 years old he has no power and then all of a sudden after the month of October 1940 just before the election he's the guy you see in the files senior congressman asking for five minutes of his time so I said what happened during that five months at that time I was talking to a notable Washington fixer a very beautiful decades and Tommy the cork he used to call me kid so I said what happened in October 1940 a room of cork and said to me money kid money but we're never going to be able to under write about that kid and I said why not he said because Lyndon Johnson never put anything in writing well Corcoran was only partly right Johnson hardly ever put anything in writing but as I'm going through the papers in the Johnson library there are two amazing documents one is a telegram from Brown & Root the huge Texas oil contracting and dam building firm from Johnson is getting federal contract saying to Lyndon Johnson at the beginning of October 1940 Lyndon the checks are on the way and the check the the the money that that is being sent to him unprecedented amount of money is for him to distribute to congressman because Lyndon Johnson is a genius he doesn't have any power but he realizes there is one thing he has that no other congressman has he knows two groups of people he knows the Texas oilman and contractors who need favors from the federal government and he needs and are willing to pay together to give campaign contributions and he knows the Northeast and northern liberal congressman who need money for their campaigns he arranges that all this money be given through him and that creates power and there is a list that I found in the Johnson library that was just remarkable you know we wonder how do you prove that economic power has such an effect on political power that economic power creates political power sometimes you see it all in this list the list is typed by one of Johnson's secretaries there to type columns in the left column is the name of the congressman who's asking for money in the center column is how much money he's asking for small amounts tiny amounts by our standards for honey Linda need four hundred and fifty dollars for poll Watchers Lyndon the seven hundred dollars will give me a round of litt last minute advertisers but in the left-hand column left-hand margin next to the congressman's name the errors by each name something in Johnson's handwriting sometimes he writes if he's giving the congressman all the money the guy has asked for he writes okay sometimes if he's giving him part of it he writes okay in the amount okay 300 okay 500 but sometimes he writes none he's not giving him anything and sometimes he writes none out and I asked his longtime assistant John Connelly what did it mean when Lyndon Johnson wrote none out and Connally said to me I'll never forget his tone he said that guy I was never going to get money from Lyndon Johnson then then Johnson never forgave and he never forgot so our guest for the hour is the Pulitzer Prize winning author Robert Carol when the prize is for two books one on Robert Moses one on President Johnson though he's actually written four on President Johnson and right fifth and now has a new book out called working as we listen to that break Pete sing Pete Seeger singing we shall overcome talk about Lyndon Johnson hearing that song outside the White House he's hearing is you know in those days we had Martin Luther King marching in Selma the marchers the pickets the civil rights movement believe Lyndon Johnson wasn't fully on their side they heard his south southern accent they are singing it on Pennsylvania Avenue outside the way you can hear it you know in the family dining room at the White House on the night that he goes to Congress to deliver his speech on the Voting Rights Act as the cola turns out of the white house onto Pennsylvania the pickets are there just pressing almost up to the car and among the things this and they're chanting hey hey LBJ yes you wait see what happens in 68 and you're singing we shall overcome Johnson is sitting in the back of the car three aides of facing him he doesn't even look up he's turning the pages but I asked one of the aides I who knew Johnson I said did he hear them he said he heard he gives goes to Congress and gives this speech in which he adopts the key law in the anthem of the civil rights movement we shall overcome as our anthem he says it's not just Negroes who have to come overcome we have to overcome our prejudice and we shall overcome when Johnson's car comes back to the White House I wrote the pickets were going I want to turn to an audio recording of a phone call between President Lyndon Johnson and the Reverend Martin Luther King jr. this is from January 15 1965 as they're discussing the Voting Rights Act that would be us Johnson would sign off on where the qualifications of voters that will answer 70% of your problems if you just clear it out everywhere or make it age and reason right no tests on what Chaucer said Browning's poetry or constitutions are memorized for anything else and we may have to put them in the post office let the postmaster that's a federal employee that I control who they can say is local he's recommended for the congressman he's approved by the senator but he doesn't register buddy I'm putting human in and it's not an outside Washington influence it's a loaf of my ass but thank you to all those opposed to always like to buy a stain I haven't thought this through but that's that's my general feeling and I've talked to the Attorney General and I've got them working on it I don't want to start off with that any more and I do it 14 feet because we wouldn't get anything else and I don't want to publicize it but I want you to touch that don't just know the outline of what I had mine when I remember [Music] what your statement was perfect about the votes important very important and I think it's good to talk about that and I just don't see how anybody can say that man can fight there but he can't both [Music] that was who by the way that conversation 1965 was on dr. King's birthday at the time the Voting Rights Act would be signed August 6 1965 that was Johnson speaking to dr. Martin Luther King and I wanted you to comment on their relationship I once was speaking to Harry Belafonte and said when you get on in years and can't remember your almost daily conversations with dr. King you can just apply under the Freedom of Information Act to the FBI to get the transcript of all the conversations you had Robert Kennedy Johnson's Attorney General had King wiretapped talk about that relationship and what Lyndon Baines Johnson did and signing both the Civil Rights Act and one year later the Voting Rights Act well you know in the tape you just played the most significant line was the first two lines that Johnson said he says basically if you make it easier for Negroes to register seventy percent of your problem is solved Johnson believed that if they black people were given the right to vote they could take care of a lot themselves they would start electing their own officials they would start to change the America so he's saying to King the thing that I'm concentrating on is that you can register just as easy as going into a post office if we give them the power to vote they'll have the power then you know Martin Luther King for a long time didn't trust Lyndon Johnson you know he didn't fill it fully he didn't believe he fully believed it when Johnson gives his speech and says we shall overcome Martin Luther King is down Selma he's listening to it on television in the living room of one of his supporters and when Johnson says and we shall overcome they turn around and look at dr. King and it's the only time they say they ever saw him cry and Robert Carroll too to go back to your your approach to writing and and in researching especially in this age when everyone or most of the young people get their information and their news from Twitter and Facebook posts and relatively short articles that they might read online you actually moved with your wife to Texas to be able to really get into the the subject matter of LBJ and his role in history and where he came from could you talk about your approach to spending years often just writing one book well the research research you know I write pretty fast although no one believes that it's the research that takes the time the particular thing you're talking about moving to the hill country I thought we wouldn't have to do that there were already as I recall seven biographies published they all had chapters on his youth that depicted him a certain way but I'm trying to get a little more detail just so I can write better a couple of chapters myself and I realize I'm talking the people in the hill country then it was a land of such loneliness such poverty that's for me coming from New York I have said to irony you know I'm not understanding these people I'm not understanding the Amore's I'm not understanding this country the hill country and therefore I'm not understanding Lyndon Johnson because this is what he came out of in shape so I said we're gonna have to move down there and get to know these people I know who loves Paris writes books on French history herself said why can't she do a biography of Napoleon but we moved down there you know anything where you talk about why it's hard to get these people to talk to you they mistrusted journalists because when Johnson was a president that journalists would come down for three or four days or maybe even a week and go back and write the series of articles and what the hill country was really like I'll tell you what the hill country was like you'd go to interview some person who was alive who knew Lyndon Johnson in high school now was old and the directions would be something like you drive out of Austin for 47 miles you watch for the cattle guard on your left you turn left there and you go on this rudder unpaved Road for like 30 miles at the end of it is a house with a person who do the information you need you say I haven't passed the house for 30 miles who does this person talk to does she have any friends but it's a different they're very wary of strangers and I wasn't getting people to talk to me at all so as soon as we move down there as it happens as soon as they realize someone had come to stay and trying to understand them they would tell me what Lyndon Johnson was really like as a young man which was very different from anything that had been depicted before you talked about moving there with I know your wife yes I wanted to talk about her role which you have extolled her what role in your work I mean everything from when you move to hill country how she gets to be friendless taciturn woman who is an important source for you turning up with homemade fig jam she made herself that opens up the people to speak but it's more than the gem it is the research it is your trusted fellow researcher partner in all of us yes you know Einar is the only you know you look at other biographies and you at the end and the acknowledgments they might name three or four or more researchers who help them I found that there's only one person besides myself that I been able to trust to do my research on its own she is a wonderful researcher she's also a historian in her own right you know in her high school yearbook says her ambition is to be historical researcher so we've spent a lot of a lot of months and even years of our lives in the Lyndon Johnson library going through papers we're spending the hour with the Pulitzer Prize winning author Robert Caro who's out with a new book called working researching interviewing writing he won the Pulitzer Prize for the master of the Senate about Lyndon Johnson and before that he wrote he won the prize for the power broker Robert Moses in the fall of New York I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez well Robert caret like to turn to the power broker I've often said over the years to all of my friends or in journalism as well as the students I've taught but you really cannot understand modern urban America without having read the power broker it is really the Moby Dick of non-fiction writing in America in terms of its epic approaching and analysis of how power is wielded and how cities are shaped could you talk about how you first decided to write about Robert Moses perhaps the most powerful unelected official never elected to any office in the history in the modern history of New York and really had influence in cities across the country well I was a reporter for Newsday an investigative reporter so I had won a number of minor really minor believe me really minor journalistic awards but when you're young and you win anything you think you know everything about and I thought I really understood political power Robert Moses wanted to build this bridge from right I wish the bay you know he built these bridges across Long Island Sound they built the Triborough the Bronx white stone the Throgs Neck now he wants to build the Royce the Bay Bridge Newsday assigns me I was then 24:25 to look into it I discover it's this really terrible idea or would have generated so much traffic the Long Island Rail Express way needed 12 would have needed 12 more lanes just to hold the car and the piers of this bridge would have had to be so big that they would have caused tidal pollution in Long Island Sound I went up to Albany I saw the governor Nelson Rockefeller has council the Assembly Speaker this president of the state Senate everybody understood this was a terrible idea I write this story saying the idea is dead and go on to something else about two weeks later I have a friend in Albany quote and he says Bob you oughta come back up here Robert Moses was here yesterday so I said oh I don't think so I think I took care of that bridge he's as well Robert Moses was up here yesterday I think you ought to come back I come back I speak to the same people the governor of the Assembly Speaker etc they all think this is now the greatest idea in the world and in fact the state is going to pay for the initial stages of it and I'm driving back to Long Island at night I remember it was a hundred and sixty-three miles and I'm thinking you know you think you know what political power is you don't have the faintest idea it is you think you're in a democracy and political power comes from being elected from the votes that people cast at the ballot box here's a guy who was never elected to anything and he had more power than anyone who was more power than any mayor more power than any governor more power than any mayor and governor combined and he held his power for 44 years and with it he shaped all New York City and you Robert Caro don't have any idea where this power comes from and I also realized neither does anybody else that's what I decided to do the power broker well in working you talk about also the impact that Moses had on the the neighborhoods of the scene and really redesigning many of New York City's des boards and you you say at one point he shaped the city physically not only by what he built but by what he destroyed too bill expressways he evicted from their homes 250,000 persons in the process ripping out the court the dissenters of a score of neighborhoods many of them friendly vibrant communities that had been made this the city a home to its people and to build his non-highway Public Works he evicted perhaps 250,000 more of perhaps half a million people were displaced by the public works of Robert Moses and of course many people don't think about the impact the destruction of communities in the 50s and 60s then led to the rise of crime in the in the 70s and 80s and many of these same neighborhoods well you know what you're talking about is when I decided that my books had to be different than what I thought they would be at the beginning I came to realize that if I wanted to write about political power the way I wanted to write about her I would have to show the effect of power not just on those who wield power but on those on whom it's wielded on the powerless show what government can do for people for good but also to people for not good and what I did was I decided to take one mile of the 627 miles of expressways in Park West at Robert Moses built and showed the human cost of that one mile to do that I think he had evicted 15,000 people for this one more ounce a mile of the Cross Bronx Expressway and called East in a neighborhood called East Tremont and find the people who would live there before now before this was a lower middle middle class community largely Jewish but a lot of Irish and German and there these people were not well-off but as long as they had a community a neighborhood where they knew how all their friends and neighbors they had something I had to find them finding them wasn't easy because they were scattered all over the Four Winds it's like the Czar issuing Annie in Russia I think of Anatevka ever sorry every time I see fiddler on the roof the little town of Anatevka he just he these people I found them in co-op city in small apartments and the housing projects living with their relatives and when I would come back and write my interviews I saw that I was writing one word over and over lonely I was asking people what's life like now and over and over again they would say lonely they had lost their neighbor their sense of community and this is the human cost of what part of the human cost of what Robert Moses did I wanted to go back to 1953 the TV program long Jean Khurana scope interviewed Robert Moses this is anchor William Bradford Huie questioning Moses of course to build these roads you have to move a lot of people's homes don't you say yes especially in urban communities in urban and suburban communities that is one of the big problems you give us any indication of how many homes will have to be moved and building the New York Thruway is I would say 3/4 of it is an open territory where there's no problem the other one for how many that's Robert Moses in 1953 and I was wondering if you could comment on what he's saying and also the building of Jones Beach the access to Jones Beach what Robert Moses intended people of color poor people not being able to get there talk about this Robert Harris I talk about the Jones Beach first you know Jones Jones Beach is on the one in one side the wonderful side of Robert Moses he creates this the world's greatest bathing beach in the in Long Island there was no place for the masses of New York City by which was meant then white middle-class people they were just the automobile age was just flowering it was the 1920s and he's creating Jones Beach it's an act of great inspiration but he doesn't want poor people and in particular poor people of color to use Jones Beach so what he does poor people in the 1920s and 30s don't have automobiles so the only way they can get to Jones Beach is by mass transportation so he takes care of the railroad Sawyer that very easily the Long Island Railroad wants to build a spur to Jones Beach he just says no but they can also get out there by bus he doesn't want to take any chances of that so the pork waves out there first he passes legislation passed that buses can't use the pork wise which was the only way to Jones Beach but then as his chief aide once said to me and he said you know the Commissioner they call them the Commissioner Commissioner knew that legislation can always be changed you can't change a bridge when it's up so if you drive out to the law not to Jones Beach you see along the southern state and the Meadowbrook Parkway with the roads to Jones Beach clearance there 173 of these bridges clearance 13 loin inches clearance 10 feet because buses needed 14 feet of clearance so people couldn't get them into buses one of the room the revelatory moments of my life and honors life I wanted to see how this affects it over the decades so now I'm doing the power broker it's not 1930 anymore when he opened it it's now let's say 1970 40 years later there's one big parking lot in Jones Beach with four little four underpasses that people use to get to the beach we stood there I had a pan in the last had whites Latinos blacks and to this day one of the moments that shaped my career as a biographer was the rage really that kept building in me as you said all these things for the white people in number hardly any for the Latinos and even less for the blacks that you said this is what pub works Public Policy does to the powerless to poor people and how long the effect of it lasts and Robert Carroll you mentioned that many people called him the Commissioner you know I want to get back to this issue of how he was able to affect so much dramatic change in New York City through basically the skillful use of what's known as a public authority to circumvent the elected bodies of government and he was on so he was basically the the chair or the sole member of so many little-known public authorities how he wielded that power if you could talk about that yes you know Robert Moses was a political genius as I said looking into him I realized how little I knew about how political power works how he knew everything he thinks he's going to get elected to something he runs for governor of New York State and people don't like him and he loses by what I think is still the largest majority anyone ever lost by a state election in New York thinks he's going to be mayor of New York he's not going to be mayor of New York he realizes he has to get power to build these great public works these huge public works somewhere he takes a yellow legal pad and goes into a little room next to his office and sits there by himself and drafts legislation which basically create public authorities in the modern form before that they were just entities that sold bonds to build a bridge or a tunnel collected tolls until the bonds were paid off and went out of existence he created legislation that said these authorities will never go out of existence and as long as he is head of the authorities he's going to have the power of the authorities and these are power authorities of course you know for about 30 years if you were paying a toll - and at any bridge or tunnel in New York City you were basically paying it directly to Robert Moses he had more money to build things in the city did and if you could talk about the building of Lincoln Center this cultural mecca and what it destroyed and talked about the communities of color that lived in that area well it's when you look at you look at like you know this is why the power brokers are very complicated it was a complicated book to write because there are these two vividly different sides of Robert Moses one is this genius that can conceive of huge Public Works the other is this absolute disregard to what happens to the human beings who live there before and also the shape in which they're built when you look at Lincoln Center today you said before there there was a low-income but not a slum but a thriving low-income neighborhood which was simply wiped out for Lincoln Center but what got me about Lincoln Center was that part of this Lincoln the front part of Lincoln Center is is wonderful go to the back wall of Lincoln Center that's the wall that looks out on what's left of the neighborhood that had been there before a poor neighborhood it's blank there are almost no entrances to Lincoln Center it's turning its back on New York City on the poor people of New York City Robert kara I'd like to ask you a little time we have left about your writing style I mean your books are always very vivid and descriptive but some of your sentences go on for pages can you talk about whether you consciously write these amazingly long sentences well I don't do that consciously the answer to your question is a quick one no they just seem to cut sometimes they seem to come out that way some people say I write too many very short sons as I'd like to think that means I write contrasting sentences and you write longhand and then you type I don't mean into a computer but into a typewriter yeah yes Iraq my first few drafts in longhand on a legal pad and then I use a smith-corona or electric 210 oh it's to show me it's to slow myself down Amy I think I write too fast I want to make myself think things through and I find if I write it in hand it's a little bit slower so I think a little bit more you are a testament to the need for journalists at newspapers when we see staffs being cut the level of investigation that you need to investigate power and give voice to the powerless we want to thank you so much being with us we will do part two and post online at democracynow.org Robert Caro Pulitzer Prize winning author I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez thanks so much for joining us [Music] you

Channel: Democracy Now!

Views: 37,693

Keywords: Democracy Now, Amy Goodman, DN, News, Politics, democracynow.org, Video, Independent Media, Daily News, Breaking News, World News, Interview, Robert Caro, Lyndon B. Johnson, Master of the Senate, Civil Rights Act, civil rights movement, The Power Broker, New York, urban planning, Jones Beach, LBJ, New York City, racism, Robert Moses

Id: R4j1h71xVG4

Length: 39min 39sec (2379 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2019