Social Security Act Became Law August 14, 1935

Steven A. Levine
Coordinator for Educational Programs

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Postmaster-General James A. Farley,

and Senator Robert F. Wagner, circa 1936.

Seventy seven years ago today, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law.  New York’s Senator Robert F. Wagner was the law’s lead sponsor in the Senate and he had been a fierce advocate of this legislation to protect the elderly, unemployed and children.*  In May of 1935, he gave a speech on WEVD, a mostly Yiddish language radio station, to rally support.  In the midst of the Great Depression and mass unemployment, he set forth a vision of the United States based on economic security for all, particularly the most vulnerable.

The time has come when our government, backed by overwhelming sentiment of the American people, is prepared to raise men from a level below that of machines and place them on a higher level.  It is our objective to lighten the burdens of unemployment, of uncared for childhood, and of neglected old age, thus making life more enjoyable and secure for the vast majority of Americans.  (Senator Wagner’s complete speech can be read here.)

As the presidential candidates today debate the future of the programs begun by the Social Security Act in 1935 and our nation and the world confront a new economic crisis, Senator Wagner’s words and vision are well worth remembering.

*While the law increased security for many Americans, it also excluded many women, African-Americans and other minorities by not initially covering agricultural workers, domestics, teachers, nurses, and social workers.  Southern Democrats in Congress used their political power to prevent the inclusion of most African-Americans.  

Triborough Bridge Opens: July 11, 1936

Stephen Weinstein

Assistant to the Director

July 11 Marks the anniversary of the Triborough Bridge's opening in 1936. Spanning the Harlem River, the Bronx Kill and the Hell Gate, its 3 main bridges connect Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx.  

This is part of a film celebrating the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority's 30th anniversary in 1964. The full video is the property of the MTA Bridges and Tunnels-Special Archives and has been edited by the La Guardia and Wagner Archives

Built largely with money from the federal government, the bridge provided the first rapid access between Queens and the Bronx. Indeed, 1936 was a crowning year in improving New York's infrastructure because in addition to the great bridge, 11 WPA pools opened that summer just in time for one of the hottest summers on record, and two federally-funded public housing projects, the Harlem River Houses in Manhattan and the Williamsburg Houses in Brooklyn, began construction. See our NYCHA Black History Month Celebration of the Harlem River Houses for more information.

"I Am An American Day" 1941 and 1945

Steven A. Levine 
Coordinator for Educational Programs


In celebration of Independence Day, I hope you will take the time to watch the Archives’ YouTube video “I Am An American Day: 1941 and 1945” and consider the meaning of U.S. citizenship today and also what it meant to Americans during World War II. In 1940 Congress created “I Am An American Day” to honor Americans who had reached voting age and immigrants who had become citizens. The event in Central Park in 1945, as World War II came to a close, attracted more than one million people.

June 27, 1956: Federal Interstate Highway Act Becomes Law

Stephen Weinstein
Assistant to the Director

On Friday, June 27, 1956 President Dwight Eisenhower signed the greatest public works act in this country’s history. The Federal Interstate Highway Act committed the federal government to pay 90% of the cost of building 41,000 miles of highways over the following ten years to connect 90% of American cities with a population greater than 50,000. Before this act, the federal government covered only 50% of construction costs. In New York, Construction Coordinator Robert Moses had already persuaded Congress to change its original plans and include within the Act those roads leading to toll bridges. Among Moses’s proposals were the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opened in 1964 (see photo from the Archives City Council Collection 05.002.12232) linking Brooklyn and Staten Island, the Throgs Neck Bridge (opened in 1961 with its approach roads financed by the federal government) connecting the Bronx and Queens, and two Manhattan highways that never happened—cross-town routes along 30^th Street and Broome Street that would have defaced Manhattan’s streetscape.

Nowhere in Moses’s plans, however, was there any provision for mass transit as part of this highway construction. While planning the Van Wyck Expressway in Queens, Moses adamantly refused to allocate any money for a mass transit line to run along the center median to Idlewild (now Kennedy) Airport. Fifty years later at a far greater expense, mass transit was built between Jamaica and Kennedy Airport, running along the Van Wyck median.

One Moses project that got completed was the Bruckner Expressway in the Bronx, connecting the Triborough Bridge and the New England Thruway. At the opening of the Bruckner Expressway in 1962, Mayor Robert F. Wagner nonetheless warned that constructing new highways not only did not end traffic bottlenecks, but encouraged additional traffic. He said: “The trouble with expressways is that the minute they are opened, if they are good, they attract increasing amounts of traffic; and then, during peak traffic hours, they, too, become choked up, and movement can easily become paralyzed.” For Mayor Wagner’s complete comments, click here. Mayor Wagner called for more funding for mass transit. Mass transit has a capacity of moving 40,000 to 50,000 people an hour; in contrast, standard highways move 1,500 cars an hour. This debate over funding for mass transit or highway construction still rages today.

June 16 - National Industrial Recovery Act signed by President Roosevelt

Stephen Weinstein
Assistant to the Director

June 16^th marks the anniversary of the most important legislation of the New Deal, the signing of the National Industrial Recovery Act by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. Come see the pen President Roosevelt used to sign the Act in the La Guardia and Wagner Archives, Rm. E-238, as the president later gave the pen as a gift to Senator Robert F. Wagner Sr. of New York, the leading proponent of New Deal legislation.

Title 1 of the Act brought industry, labor and government together to establish fair competition in industry and to establish trade union rights. Title 2 established the Public Works Administration (PWA), father of enormous public works projects throughout the country. No city reaped greater benefits from this legislation than did New York, thanks to the concerted effort of the newly-elected mayor, Fiorello H. La Guardia. In prior administrations, New York had a deserved reputation for mismanagement and lackluster interest in federally-funded projects. La Guardia, however, overcame President Roosevelt’s intense hatred of New York City Parks Commissioner and Triborough Bridge Authority leader Robert Moses to garner federal funding for new bridges, highways, parks, playgrounds, public housing, and schools throughout New York City, including the Triborough Bridge, Riverside Park, the Henry Hudson Parkway, Orchard Beach, the Sixth Avenue subway and the Holland Tunnel. The Archives’ La Guardia Collection contains correspondence between Mayor La Guardia and Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior and chief administrator of the PWA that reveal the Mayor’s micro-management of the city’s affairs. To see a telegram from La Guardia to Ickes urging federal action regarding the purchase of slum property in Brooklyn to construct public housing, click here to see PDF:

After Title 1 was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in the famous Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States in May, 1937, President Roosevelt worked with his chief ally in the Senate, New York Senator Robert F. Wagner Sr. to craft the National Labor Relations Act (known as the Wagner Act) in July 1937. This act strengthened many of the labor provisions from Title 1. 

Title IX Passed 40 Years Ago

Steven A. Levine

Coordinator for Educational Programs

Feminism was on the rise as a political, economic and social movement in 1972 and Title IX was just one example of its increasing influence. The importance of women’s rights as a political issue could also be seen in the presidential campaign of New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay. In a campaign speech in Miami in March 1972, (click here) he declared his support for women’s equality, listing the accomplishments of his administration in support of that goal. “What this means, for women, is that their work must be counted at full value - - whether they work in the home or on the job. Women who want a job or need a job, to earn a second income, or support themselves, or their children, must have equal opportunities, and full pay, and the same chance for promotion that men enjoy. And the rights to proper child care and to abortion are just as legitimate and necessary to equality as an end to job discrimination and the exploitation of women workers.”
      Forty years ago today, Congress passed Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, declaring that "No person in the U.S. shall, on the basis of sex be excluded from participation in, or denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal aid." This single sentence gave legal standing to women demanding equal access to all aspects of federally funded education, opening doors to women and girls in elementary, secondary and higher education. Title IX was a response to pervasive sex discrimination in education raised in congressional hearings in 1970 by Rep. Edith Green (D-Ohio), chair of the subcommittee that dealt with higher education and championed by Title IX's co-author Rep. Pasty Mink, the first Japanese American from Hawaii.*   While it did not end sex discrimination, Title IX greatly increased opportunities for girls and women in education.

To learn more about Title IX and women’s rights, go to the Archives’ Women’s Leadership website and curriculum.  What are your thoughts about the effects of Title IX and how much progress has been made toward sexual equality 40 years later?  Leave your comments below.

*Title IX was later renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act.

Dr. Jean Pakter Remembered: Women's and Children's Health Advocate

Steven A. Levine

Coordinator for Educational Programs

Last week the New York Times reported the death of Dr. Jean Pakter at age 101, director of New York City’s Bureau of Maternity and Child Services from 1960-1982. As her obituary noted, Dr. Pakter was not an ordinary functionary, but a pioneering researcher and clinician “who made New York City a national model for providing safe, legal abortions and led an innovative effort to educate women about the benefits of birth control, prenatal nutrition and breast-feeding.”

Dr. Pakter was also one of the first researchers to note the rise of unwed mothers and her article “Out of Wedlock Births in New York City, 1961”was cited by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in his controversial and influential report, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.” She also published some of the initial research on abortion in articles such as “Two Years Experience in New York City With the Liberalized Abortion Law-Progress and Problems” in the American Journal of Public Health, June 1973.

She came to prominence in Mayor Robert F. Wagner’s Department of Health compiling reports about the commerce in abortion when it was illegal, including statistics on the number of women injured or killed by illegal practitioners. After New York State made abortion legal in 1970, Dr. Pakter, who had advocated for the law, set up the guidelines for clinics performing abortions and mandated that all abortions performed after 12 weeks be done in hospitals, which became national models. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun cited her research in the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.

To learn more about Dr. Jean Pakter or public health in New York City please feel free to contact to contact the Archives or go to our Health in America website and “You and Your Health: Public Health in New York City” curriculum.