Sealed records prevented citizens from testing Moses’ public legend

Evidence

The vast majority of the public accepted the legend as fact. And even those skeptics who were disposed to test its truth had no facts with which to make the test, because the records of Triborough and the mouths of its ministers were so effectively sealed. If, however, they had been able to see the records and open the mouths, they would have learned that the legend was a gigantic hoax. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 89

Categorization

• QUESTION: What specific mechanisms — legal, political, bureaucratic — sealed Triborough’s records and its officials’ testimony for four decades?
• XREF: The archival control that hid Moses’ costs echoes the Pentagon’s obscured contractor spending in Base Nation and how state records stage what history can know. — connects to: The full extent of black wealth plunder is unknowable because record-keeping was deliberately omitted — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 554

Broader Connections

• The full extent of black wealth plunder is unknowable because record-keeping was deliberately omitted #complicates (0.70) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 554