Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. You're listening to a special hour we've created called Patience and Fortitude: A history of Mayor La Guardia on WNYC, examining the life of Fiorello La Guardia as we commemorate the 100th anniversary of WNYC this year.

As a Republican mayor in a liberal city, La Guardia lived and breathed New York. He served during a crucial era in city history, guiding New York through the aftermath of the Great Depression and also through the pain and sacrifice of World War II. To get his message across, he famously spoke directly to New Yorkers right here on WNYC for his Talk to the People broadcasts because during his tenure, WNYC was owned by the city. Many of those WNYC broadcasts still exist in New York's municipal archives. So throughout this hour, you'll hear La Guardia speaking, including the time he read the comics to children during a newspaper strike.

But first, we'll learn about his early life, how he was born to immigrants in Manhattan, his childhood spent as an army brat out west, and how he became the first Italian-American ever to serve in Congress. My guest this hour is Terry Golway, author of the book I Never Did Like Politics: How Fiorello La Guardia Became America's Mayor, And Why He Still Matters. Terry also teaches history and political science at the College of Staten Island. Hi, Terry. Thanks for joining us.

Terry Golway: It's my pleasure.

Alison Stewart: Let's start at the beginning. Fiorello La Guardia was born in Manhattan in 1882. His parents were recent immigrants from Italy. His first name means Little Flower in Italian. Let's hear a clip of La Guardia speaking about his childhood and how he was actually present for the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Fiorello La Guardia: The opening of the Brooklyn Bridge was quite an event in the La Guardia family. I was there and I was five months old then, and mother took me and sister. And for decades after that, whenever any question would arise in the family as to date, mother always dated everything from the day of the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Alison Stewart: Describe New York City and the family environment that La Guardia was born into.

Terry Golway: Well, he-- first of all, that is such a great clip. His voice is so fantastic, right? He was born in New York, as you said, but he moved out of New York when he was about three years old, which is something I didn't know before I started this book. His formative years were actually spent in Prescott, Arizona. He had a very loving family. His father was in the US Military. He was a band leader. They moved around a lot. They lived in South Dakota, they lived in the Appalachians for a while, but his formative years were spent in the dusty streets of Prescott, Arizona, which to be honest, doesn't sound like the Fiorello La Guardia that we think of as a sort of quintessential New Yorker, but he said it was really formative for him to spend that time in the west, and I think that also influenced some of his political positions as well.

Alison Stewart: We'll get into that in a little bit. Let's talk about that he would be the first Italian-American to serve in the US Congress. How would La Guardia's immigrant background inform his politics and his career as a public servant?

Terry Golway: He saw immigration from the ground up.

Fiorello La Guardia: For here people live, all their ancestors having come from every country and clime in the world, living in peace.

Terry Golway: When he was a young man, he was a diplomat in Eastern Europe, and part of his consular duties was to do paperwork for immigrants coming across to the United States. He saw the faces of these people, in many cases, desperate faces, people just wanting to come to the United States. Then later, he moves back to the United States because his family had moved to Europe. He works in Ellis Island as a translator in five languages, mind you, so he is literally telling the stories of immigrants on Ellis Island to the officials there. I think those experiences of seeing immigration in its rawest form and hearing the stories and interpreting the stories made him as much of a pro immigrant member of Congress as there was in the 1920s.

Alison Stewart: La Guardia was known to be stern in his positions. You write about the conflicts that he got into with shipping officials and even royalty who made requests. This is when he was in the part of now Croatia, when he was working as a 20-year-old clerk. Tell us, what are the details of these spats. What does this say about his career?

Terry Golway: Part of the problems that he saw with that side of the immigration experience is that people were treated like huddled masses. In one case, one of the royal family from Austria-Hungary, came to Fiume, which was the name of the city at the time, and asked for a command performance, wanted to see the immigrants lining up several days before they were supposed to go on board. The captain of the ship was fine with it, everybody was fine with that, except for the American consular person, Fiorello La Guardia, who said, "No, if Her Highness wants to be entertained, I am not going to entertain her." And they said, "But, what, she said," and he said, "No, no. She may be used to dealing with other people, but she's dealing with an American now," so he was sort of like a very small R Republican in that regard. He didn't bow and scrape to his "social superiors".

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about why he's Republican. He graduated from NYU Law School. La Guardia begins to get the itch to enter politics. He registers as a Republican. What do you make of that choice?

Terry Golway: Well, he had no choice in a way, because he loathed the Tammany machine that ran New York at the time.

Fiorello La Guardia: The people of the 8th Congressional District are the people who are showing the way how to break away from the political machines and select their own representatives.

Terry Golway: Now, I've also written a book about Tammany Hall, in which I sort of give an alternative history to what we mostly think of Tammany Hall, but there's no question, in the late 19th and early 20th century, Tammany Hall was corrupt. It ran roughshod around New York, and La Guardia was going to have no part of that, so the only alternative was to be Republican. The Republican Party back then was-- remember who was president in 1905? Teddy Roosevelt. So the Republican Party was very much a good fit for him in the early part of the 20th century because Roosevelt was the quintessential progressive Republican, and that's how he saw himself.

Alison Stewart: La Guardia never identified as a "politician", he hated politicians. Let's listen to a speech he gave as mayor to a graduating police class as an example.

Fiorello La Guardia: And don't be intimidated by any lousy politicians. I ask you older men, did a politician ever ask you to do something that was right? Why, of course not. It wouldn't be necessary, would it? They always come with some idea that's wrong. Don't give them a break.

Alison Stewart: I feel like I should ask you questions with that voice. Why do you think he resented politicians as a label for himself?

Terry Golway: Because his idea of a politician was a Tammany hack. He writes in his autobiography that one of his formative experiences was reading the New York papers when they came in as he was a teenager in Prescott, Arizona, and a lot of Tammany stuff was going on. He basically said, "I can't believe people allow this sort of thing to happen." So when he got into public office, his idea of appall was your quintessential backslapping corrupt Tammany guy, and he wasn't one of them.

Fiorello La Guardia: There was something for the polies. Polies is my short word for politicians.

Terry Golway: But the problem was he basically generalized so that even his putative allies in the Republican Party, he dismissed as mere politicians. He presented himself as a citizen legislator or a municipal office holder, not a politician.

Alison Stewart: In 1916, La Guardia won an election and became the first ever Italian-American congressman. What reputation does La Guardia earn as a young congressman on the House floor?

Terry Golway: He's a rabble rouser. He's a dissident.

Fiorello La Guardia: And I'm not going to change one bit of my own self in not speaking out anytime, anywhere, on anything I think the Republicans--

[applause]

Terry Golway: So he's not going to go along with the party line. Although in one case, he did. Fairly famously, he voted in favor of America's entry into World War I. Some of his Republican allies opposed it, like Robert La Follette thought that World War I was basically a rich man's war. Some of that rhetoric stuck with La Guardia, but he felt that it was America's duty to fight Germany and the Central Powers. He's young enough that he felt, "I just voted for war, I'm obliged to fight in that war."

Alison Stewart: I have a question. He's maybe 5'2.

Terry Golway: Maybe.

Alison Stewart: How did he serve in the war?

Terry Golway: I guess standards were, shall we say, lower back then. He volunteers to serve in what becomes the Army Air Corps because he had had some pilot training on Long Island.

Alison Stewart: Some?

Terry Golway: The evidence suggests that it wasn't very much and wasn't very good, but they were delighted to have him. He became something of a celebrity during the war, not only because of his courage, because after all, he didn't have to serve, but because he could combined his congressional office privileges with being an officer in what became the Army Air Corps and becomes known as the fighting congressman.

Alison Stewart: In 1923, La Guardia finds himself back in Congress, now representing a district in East Harlem. He'd be the representative for 10 years.

Fiorello La Guardia: The happiest days of my official life was as a congressman in Washington. I know how much work a congressman can do if he wants to work, and I know how little he can do, and I know how little some of them do do.

Alison Stewart: What sort of political and social issues was the country facing in the '20s and La Guardia found himself in the thick of?

Terry Golway: Everything.

Alison Stewart: Everything.

Terry Golway: He was a dissident. He was a man fighting against his times.

Fiorello La Guardia: No one will ever accuse me of being timid and saying what I think.

Terry Golway: He was in a rage against the 1920s. Think about some of the issues that we faced precisely 100 years ago. The Immigration Act of 1924, this racist document that was passed overwhelmingly by the Congress in which immigration basically from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe was shut down. There was a quota put in place, for example, 66,000 people from Great Britain, 6,000 from Italy. Basically, it was aimed at Catholics and Jews, Southern European Catholics and Eastern European Jews. He raged against that. He's raging against the supply side economics of the 1920s. He's raging against Prohibition, not so much because he was a heavy drinker, but because he saw the hypocrisy of it. He saw that Prohibition was making lawbreakers out of ordinary Americans who used to be able to enjoy a drink.

At one point, he actually brews beer in his congressional office and basically says, "Come arrest me," which, of course, nobody did. He also did it in public in New York. Near his house in East Harlem, he sets up this chemistry lab outside a drugstore, buys two perfectly legal beverages, mixes them together, and very cleverly has a bunch of reporters on hand and says, "Look," of course they were all guys back then, "Look, fellas, here's beer. Why don't you give it a try?" And wouldn't you know, at that point, a police officer comes by and he says, "Officer," remember, he's a congressman, "Officer, you need to arrest me. I'm making beer," to which the police officer very wisely says, "Oh, that's interesting," and is in a rage that he hadn't been arrested, but he infuriated the Prohibitionists. This display of law breaking. They were sputtering with rage, which was exactly the reaction he wanted. But he also understood the power of the media, the power of the message, and he was poking at the hypocrisy, which I just love.

[MUSIC]

Alison Stewart: You are listening to Patience and Fortitude: A history of Mayor La Guardia on WNYC, a one-hour special on the life of Fiorello La Guardia. After the break, we'll learn about how La Guardia got lucky in his campaign for mayor and the issues he faced during his tenure, from managing the aftermath of The Great Depression to serving as the mayor of New York during the Second World War, and we'll hear highlights of his famous Talk to the People WNYC broadcasts.

You're listening to Patience and Fortitude: A History of Mayor La Guardia on WNYC, an All Of It special about the life of Fiorello La Guardia. La Guardia knew early on that he wanted to be mayor of New York, even as a veteran congressman in Washington. After a few unsuccessful campaigns, he was finally elected mayor in 1933, but the city that La Guardia took on was in crisis. New York was reeling from the Great Depression and soon the country would enter a second world war.

La Guardia leapt at the chance to be the wartime leader of New York. It was around this time that he launched his Talk to the People broadcast on WNYC, which was owned by the city at the time, and he sure used the radio to his advantage. Every Sunday, he spoke directly to an average of 2 million New Yorkers about the issues the city was facing. From his plans to defend New York from enemy air raids to the price and availability of certain products, there was no topic too small for La Guardia. He even provided advice on saving butter.

Fiorello La Guardia: Now, butter is scarce. If you can refrain from buying butter for a while, I advise doing it. After all, the weather is very hot now and there's a great deal of waste in hot weather in butter. Conserve butter as much as possible. Save your coupons, save your money and save the butter.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Terry Golway, author of the book I Never Did Like Politics: How Fiorello La Guardia Became America's Mayor, and Why He Still Matters. So Terry, it's no secret that Fiorello La Guardia wanted to become mayor of New York. He ran a few times before winning in 1933 with about 40% of the vote, but you write that he got lucky. How so?

Terry Golway: He sure did. It was a three-way race and it wasn't supposed to be that. In 1929, he was the sacrificial lamb against Jimmy Walker, who was everybody's favorite mayor until he wasn't and he had to resign. By 1931, a new mayor is basically appointed, although there was a special election. This guy O'Brien becomes mayor and the depression hits and everybody agrees O'Brien is just not up for the job.

At one point the reporters ask him, "Your Honor, who's going to be your police commissioner?" and his very honest answer was, "I don't know, they didn't tell me yet," so that gives you an idea of Mayor O'Brien. Now it's setting up to be La Guardia versus O'Brien. La Guardia looks good, but then a third party is created by supporters of Franklin Roosevelt, who were supporting this guy named McKee who had served as acting mayor, and he's thought to be pretty good. He was a good mayor for three months after Walker resigned.

And you've got Roosevelt's people here, Ed Flynn and Jim Farley running the Recovery Party, and now the Democratic vote is split between O'Brien, not very good, and McKee, actually pretty good. As a result, La Guardia wins with 40% of the vote. I mean, arguably the greatest mayor in New York City, barely won election and was lucky.

Alison Stewart: When he was sworn in as mayor in 1933, New York was in the depths of The Great Depression.

Fiorello La Guardia: There will not be one cent of indebtedness passed on for relief, except the $70 million that were borrowed before I took office, which will take 10 years to pay and which were spent in 14 months. And you can readily see that it would be just impossible to attempt to pay for relief out of long-term borrowers. That I refuse to do. Now I have been running New York City within its revenue.

Alison Stewart: The city was facing massive debt. Its people were hurting. What does La Guardia do in order to solve the financial issues of the city?

Terry Golway: He does something that he doesn't want to do. La Guardia is a progressive. La Guardia believes that government is here to help people, and government programs such as Roosevelt is putting into place nationally are good, but he's got massive deficits to cover, so he's got to cut the budget. That's the number one task he has assigned as mayor. Philosophically, in his bones, he doesn't want to do it, but he realizes he has to. And his opponents are, what a surprise, Tammany Hall, who are not interested in cutting the budget because that means cutting their patronage.

He is going back and forth to Albany in ways that no mayor had ever done before, pleading with the legislature, which is pretty much controlled by Democrats, therefore Tammany, to do it, to cut the budget in ways that he wants. Eventually there was a compromise. Not as much spending cuts as La Guardia had proposed, but enough that the city was able to balance the budget in the middle of The Depression. But again, it's something that must have really hurt him to do.

Alison Stewart: When La Guardia was mayor, Hitler was rising to power. Unlike other officials, La Guardia wasn't afraid to speak out.

Fiorello La Guardia: Well, Hitler made a New Year's proclamation to the German people on New Year's. And this last proclamation was certainly the wail of a desperate man, a fanatic being haunted by the millions and millions of his victims.

Alison Stewart: He once called Hitler a "brown shirted fanatic who is menacing the peace of the world". How were his comments received, one, by Germany, but also by American officials who were cautious in their public criticism of Hitler?

Terry Golway: They certainly were cautious. La Guardia early and often called out Hitler for exactly who he was and what he was. Now, mind you, in a certain way, I mean, he's the mayor of New York. Why is he commenting on affairs in Germany? The answer is because he's mayor of New York and felt a responsibility to do that, as you suggest, at a time when people were-- I don't know the history as well as I should, but I imagine a lot of American people and diplomats were hoping it would just go away. Right?

Well, obviously we know it didn't. And as Hitler continued to gain power and is clearly beginning to target the Jews of Germany, this is, I think, after Kristallnacht, he calls Hitler the brown shirted fanatic. Well, the German government formally protests La Guardia's comments to the Roosevelt administration, which basically issues an apology and says the mayor of New York doesn't speak for Washington, which is amazing. Now, what's interesting about that too is when Franklin Roosevelt had La Guardia to the Oval Office, which he did a lot, the next time La Guardia appeared in the Oval Office, they kidded each other about that, because Roosevelt knew. In fact, Roosevelt at one point said, "We shouldn't be condemning La Guardia, we should be giving him a medal."

Fiorello La Guardia: Patience and fortitude. Our troubles are just starting, but nothing that we will not be able to overcome. We're in this war to win, and we're going to win and win as soon as we possibly can.

Alison Stewart: In 1941, America enters World War II, and La Guardia must prepare to protect New Yorkers from potential attacks, air raids. He's also got to keep morals high.

Fiorello La Guardia: I have given a good deal of thought to the care of civilians in case of enemy action on these shores. The experience in England shows that in case of bombing, many more people will need information, temporary shelter and kindly assistance.

Alison Stewart: What was La Guardia like as a wartime leader of New York?

Terry Golway: He was all over the place. Take this in the spirit it's offered. He loved it because it was all action. Fiorello La Guardia wanted to be where the action was.

Fiorello La Guardia: Patience and fortitude. Our troops have smashed through the Hitler line in Italy, and on their way north, nothing can stop them. And General Eisenhower is waging a war of nerves the like of which the dirty Nazis never contemplated.

Terry Golway: And as you suggest, by 1941, the action was now about war. It wasn't about how often does the sanitation department pick up my garbage. It's about something larger, if you will, and he wanted a piece of that.

Fiorello La Guardia: We will fight until ultimate and complete victory and complete destruction of the Nazi and the fascist form of government.

Terry Golway: Roosevelt appoints him to be the head of the civil defense for the entire country, along with Eleanor Roosevelt as sort of co-directors. It didn't take too much for La Guardia to put on a helmet and get out there and conduct an air raid himself. This is when he starts speaking to the people of New York on WNYC.

Fiorello La Guardia: Yes, before I forget it, just want to remind you that we go on wartime tomorrow morning. Now look here, all you boys and girls who work for the city, New York, be on time tomorrow. You'll get away with one excuse, but that'll be about all.

Terry Golway: Telling them about his civil defense preparations, and about rationing, and the menace that New York City may have to face.

Fiorello La Guardia: The war news during the last week has been anything but cheerful. We must not become discouraged. It is all part of a difficult and hard war. We must be patient for our time is coming. You must have fortitude to be able to absorb these losses, heavy as they are.

Terry Golway: He does wonderful work in setting the tone for what is about to happen, but eventually, of course, civil defense becomes a little too much for him to handle, because remember, he's still mayor of New York too, so that job is passed off to somebody else. Right?

Alison Stewart: You are listening to Patience and Fortitude: A History of Mayor La Guardia on WNYC, an All Of It special examining the life of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia as we commemorate the 100th anniversary of WNYC this year. My guest is Terry Golway, author of the book I Never Did Like Politics: How Fiorello La Guardia Became America's Mayor and Why He Still Matters. All right, we've come to WNYC.

Fiorello La Guardia: Watch the radio for complete and accurate information, patience and fortitude.

Alison Stewart: La Guardia launches a weekly Talk to the People program right here on WNYC. The broadcast would average 2 million listeners.

Fiorello La Guardia: What we have been accustomed to or spoiled to is the choice beef, that's fed cattle. There won't be any of that in the market for a long time. So go to your dentist and get your teeth fixed and be ready to just chew on commercial meat for some time to come, and thank God that we have it.

Alison Stewart: How would you describe what one could hear when they tuned in every Sunday?

Terry Golway: It was a performance. There are times when you can hear him flipping papers, which would indicate that he was reading from a script, but for the most part, it was La Guardia unfiltered.

Fiorello La Guardia: I talked this over with my wife this morning, and she says, "Fiorello, now you be careful when you talk about mutton, because if people haven't had it before, they may not like the taste. And, you know, if it isn't cooked properly, it may be tough, and then they'll say, what's the mayor talking about?" Well, we have to live and learn.

Terry Golway: What comes across in this is that he did have his finger on the pulse of New Yorkers' concerns.

Fiorello La Guardia: Oh, here's a little personal message. I have Jane, Marie and Rita. I received your letter. Oh, I think that the question you ask is very easily answered. Drop in someday at my office on a Sunday. Come in for a broadcast, see? And after the broadcast is over, we'll talk it over.

Terry Golway: He talks about the price of various goods and he's telling-- it's sort of sexist language, but he's saying, "Housewives, don't buy much this week. It's too expensive." He's giving this wonderful advice to ordinary New Yorkers about how to negotiate things like scrap metal drives.

Fiorello La Guardia: May I suggest to citizens who dispose of scrap metal before the day of the general collection by giving it to a recognized charitable organization or who sell such scrap, and you're permitted to do it to a junk dealer to get a receipt for this.

Terry Golway: Not only did he understand the inner workings of your average New Yorker, he also understood the inner workings of his own administration, which is pretty good too, and that comes across in these Talks to the People.

Alison Stewart: We put together a short montage of his Talks to the People to get a sense of what one would hear on WNYC. Let's take a listen.

Fiorello La Guardia: All right, now that brings us up to snow. I dread snow. I don't know. I just dread snow and I crave and like to please keep snow away. Well, I always tell you what we're short of and how scarce some food is. Well, here's something that we have plenty of. Now, don't let your mouth water. It's only potatoes. Oh, we have just a lot of potatoes, and if you want to go on a potato spree, now is the time to do it. Well, the order on fish finally came through. Amen. Did I wait for that? I've been waiting for that for four months.

Alison Stewart: Potatoes. If you would like to have a potato. What is it about hearing his voice that would help us understand more about La Guardia? You can talk to us, I can talk to anybody about it, but hearing the voice.

Terry Golway: Yes. First of all, it's the voice itself, right? I can't place that accent. It's certainly not a New York accent, the likes of which I heard growing up on Staten Island, so there's that, and the enthusiasm in his voice. This is a man who loves what he's doing. And you can tell that he's been waiting for potatoes and he knows about the fish. He's also clearly asking questions, whether of his own administration or of people in the markets, because he knows this stuff, and he knows this is what people want to hear.

Fiorello La Guardia: Now, we're all in agreement. five cents a pound for tomatoes, for canning, no more. Now, we all want to get along, don't we? And you know me that if you cooperate, I'll stand by you. But if you don't cooperate, I'll come right over this station and tell the whole world. Now, A and P, I just don't like the way you handled the tomatoes last week. Let it not happen again. What? Okay.

Terry Golway: If you're listening to La Guardia, as my grandparents did at this time, they felt, as they told me when I was 10 years old, "He was talking to me," and that's what came across. People say the same thing about Franklin Roosevelt, but Franklin Roosevelt, he had that patrician sort of voice, and yet he still was able to relate to people. La Guardia did not have a patrician's voice, but had a mannerism that most New Yorkers said, "Wow, you know, I was just thinking about that, and here's the mayor telling me about it."

Fiorello La Guardia: Now last week, I talked about the transportation tax and the subway fare, and I had hoped to provoke some discussion. Well, we have provoked discussion and isn't that fine? Isn't it great that we're just living in a country where public problems are really the problem of all of the people, and they all have an opportunity to have their say, give their views, and if they haven't any views, an opportunity to abuse the mayor?

Terry Golway: Those were great clips, because this is why 2 million people were listening to Talks of the People on Sunday afternoons.

Fiorello La Guardia: Patience and fortitude. And that's something we will all need in order to win this war.

Alison Stewart: He started the broadcast with the phrase patience and fortitude. Why was this important to him, and are the library's lions named after him?

Terry Golway: Yes, he actually named the lions.

Alison Stewart: Oh, really? Yes.

Terry Golway: Yes, but it was his code word or his phrase that he offered many times. In his last speech as mayor, those are the last two words that you hear. But remember, when he was mayor, he was mayor at a time when people needed patience and fortitude. During The Depression, during the war, those were watchwords. What better two words sum up what it must have been for an average New Yorker who got through the '30s and now is trying to get through the '40s? Patience and fortitude. Yes.

Alison Stewart: You're listening to Patience and Fortitude: A History of Mayor La Guardia on WNYC, an All Of It special looking at the life of Fiorello La Guardia. Next, we'll learn about some of Mayor La Guardia's difficult moments, an uprising in Harlem in 1943, and his approval of segregated housing. And we'll hear revealing details about his turbulent relationship with then Parks Commissioner Robert Moses.

You're listening to Patience and Fortitude: A History of Mayor La Guardia on WNYC an All Of It special about the life of Fiorello La Guardia. I'm Allison Stewart. We've arrived at La Guardia's later years. He had a huge influence on how New York City looks and feels today. He unified the subway system we depend on, built both of our airports, and created NYCHA, the New York City Housing Authority. He built many of these projects alongside a man he had a complicated relationship with, his parks commissioner, a guy by the name of Robert Moses. But before we get there, we're going to learn about La Guardia's relationship with Black New Yorkers, including how he handled an intense uprising in Harlem and also supported the construction of segregated public housing.

My guest is Terry Golway, author of the book I Never Did Like Politics: How Fiorello La Guardia Became America's Mayor, and Why He Still Matters. Terry, let's talk about one of the more difficult times during La Guardia's tenure. There was an event.

Fiorello La Guardia: And you who are listening to me now, if you will, just go downstairs and call your members of your family and your friends and get them off the streets. The quicker we do that, the better it will be.

Alison Stewart: It was an uprising in Harlem in August of 1943. It was one of the worst outbreaks of violence in Harlem's history. What happened to spark the unrest, and how did La Guardia manage the situation?

Terry Golway: There was a dispute in a hotel on 125th or 126th street, but sort of in Central Harlem, where the rumor was that a soldier had been shot defending his mother, shot by a police officer. That wasn't entirely what happened.

Fiorello La Guardia: This is Mayor La Guardia talking. A very unfortunate incident took place in Harlem this evening.

Terry Golway: There was some sort of a dispute in the lobby of a hotel. A police officer got involved. A shot was fired. The soldier who was protecting his mother was wounded, but as these things will happen, even before social media, they take on a life of their own, and people are angry, and they take to the streets.

Fiorello La Guardia: A crowd gathered first in front of this hotel and then down in front of the 28th Police Precinct House

Terry Golway: It leads to an uprising, as you suggest. He goes to the streets himself.

Fiorello La Guardia: I went through the district. In fact, I've been going through the district, oh, I would say since around 9:00 or 9:30. There was nothing very serious in the beginning, but the usual crowds gathering here and there and someone's going around spreading false reports and telling the people statements that are not true. Now and then, someone is heaving a bottle or something through a window and that must stop.

Terry Golway: He goes up to Harlem and is out on a car talking to people via loudspeaker. He's on WNYC multiple times during that night and into the morning.

Fiorello La Guardia: And I want the entire city to know that the good people of Harlem have been cooperating so splendidly that I do want to keep them informed.

Terry Golway: Complimenting the people of Harlem, telling them that he understands their anger, he understands their protests, it's time to go home. The best of you are doing that, but I'm asking the rest of you to do so.

Fiorello La Guardia: Now my purpose in speaking at this time is to ask all of the people in the neighborhood involved to please get off the streets and go home and go to bed.

Terry Golway: He's not confrontational. He's trying to deescalate. And he successfully deescalates to the point where one of his biggest critics in Harlem, Adam Clayton Powell, compliments him. Given their relationship, that probably took a lot for him to do, but his intervention on the streets, being seen in Harlem, did a lot to bring down the temperature that day.

Alison Stewart: What did he not do for Black residents? Because they don't happen because of one event. They happen because of bigger issues.

Terry Golway: That's correct. Some of what he didn't do was desegregate housing. In fact, the Williamsburg houses, which were built at his suggestion, that were built with WPA money were whites only, but not just whites only. You also had to show that you were working. So even poor, jobless, and we're talking about depression era, World War II, jobless white New Yorkers wouldn't have qualified, but there were no people of color in these houses.

Fiorello La Guardia: And I called a couple of architects in and I said, "I want to build houses." I violated two constitutions and 50 laws, but I built Williamsburg houses.

Terry Golway: Later on, and this is after 1943, he basically cooperates with the building of StuyTown as a whites' only development. MetLife was explicit. This was going to be a segregated tract of housing. La Guardia's reasoning for supporting that was that New York City needed housing so badly for the returning vets that he went along with it. He eventually was pressured to send a letter of protest, but he didn't really do much about it.

On the other side of the coin, he did appoint some very prominent African Americans to offices that they had never held. Some of the newspapers, the Amsterdam News was very complimentary of the fact that African Americans in New York were doing better under La Guardia economically than they had been in the past. But there's no question that some of the things he did, like going along with MetLife, to our ears in 2024, sounds pretty bad.

Fiorello La Guardia: I heard of a city called New York and I started to make it heaven.

Alison Stewart: The physical structure of New York as we know it has La Guardia's influence all over it. Whether we have the airport, unification of the subway system, public housing.

Fiorello La Guardia: I could visualize covering those tracks and an entirely new neighborhood created. It's very run down now and abandoned and unsightly and unattractive. Just think of covering those tracks and in the middle, having a beautiful boulevard. It could equal, if not surpass the Champs-Elysees.

Alison Stewart: What was his vision for the future? What did he want for New York?

Terry Golway: He wanted a government that was responsive to people's needs. He wanted a government where people who needed a job, who needed help, who needed health care, had a place to go.

Fiorello La Guardia: New York City is proud that it takes care in a proper and sufficient manner of its unfortunate citizens, who through no fault of their own, find themselves without employment.

Terry Golway: That wasn't the New York necessarily of the 1920s. I think he took New York out of the 19th century finally and brought it into the 20th century by creating basically a new deal city here. You could say his biggest capital project was the airport that bears his name.

Fiorello La Guardia: And the giant ship of the skies, the Yankee Clipper of the Pan American Airways is just about to take off, ladies and gentlemen, inaugurating service from the International Air Terminal, New York's municipal airport at La Guardia Field, across the Atlantic to Europe.

Terry Golway: What was interesting about that is, wait, you mean New York didn't really have an airport before? And the answer is no. Newark did. When he realized that the future for transport was through the air, and he being a former pilot, he was determined, all of that was willpower. He basically said, "I'm going to get this done whether you like it or not." Sure enough, New York, finally, in the late '30s, gets its first world class airport well after Newark got its own.

Fiorello La Guardia: One wouldn't be human if he did not take a great deal of pleasure in seeing an effort come to full fruition. Naturally, I am very happy today to attend the ceremonies of the departure of the first Clipper ship from this airport.

Alison Stewart: Apparently, it's quite glamorous now after a period of not so greatness.

Terry Golway: No, and he would not have liked the old La Guardia Airport one bit, because he would have said, "This looks like Tammany put it together."

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about Robert Moses.

Fiorello La Guardia: This city is, in fact, from day to day, being completely rebuilt and reconstructed. We have still, in the heart of the city some very bad substandard slum conditions.

Alison Stewart: When La Guardia was mayor, it was during the rise of the now controversial figure, Robert Moses, when he was the parks commissioner. You described Moses as La Guardia's master planner. How would you describe his relationship with Moses and how their two visions for New York compared and contrasted?

Terry Golway: The relationship was turbulent. Moses was not exactly La Guardia's type of guy. He was Robert Moses, but La Guardia needed Moses because Moses got things done.

Fiorello La Guardia: The task now is to build an entirely new West Side, mopping up between the circle and the square, pushing west toward the river and then north to redeem a once respectable neighborhood, which has become a reproach to our city.

Terry Golway: Now, of course, we debate even now whether what he got done was good or bad or mixed, but he certainly could get things done. Early on in La Guardia's administration, people are talking about the fact that New York is putting PWA, Public Works Administration, federal money to work and the parks were becoming transformed, including Central Park. Who was in charge of that? Robert Moses. La Guardia notices that and one thing La Guardia wants to make sure that people in Washington understand is that if you're going to give us money, fellow New Yorker Franklin Roosevelt, if you're going to give us money, we're going to spend it, not like Tammany did, we're going to actually get things done.

Moses was his guy. They had a mixed, turbulent relationship. At one point, Moses decides that he's going to get in on the housing money, even though, as people have pointed out, Robert Caro among them, that Robert Moses really had no interest in housing poor people, but he knew that's where some money was coming because of La Guardia. He announces on WNYC that he, Robert Moses, is going to create a new housing authority that is going to take over NYCHA, which is a La Guardia baby, and he's now going to spend Money on housing. What Robert Moses didn't know was the mayor actually told WNYC to cut the cord and not broadcast that speech.

Alison Stewart: Well then.

Terry Golway: Yes, so no one heard Robert Moses basically stabbing La Guardia in the back on housing. Now, of course, the newspapers reported it the next day, et cetera, but it showed you, A, that La Guardia understood the power of WNYC and also that La Guardia was a match for Robert Moses.

Alison Stewart: On the public housing issue, La Guardia created NYCHA and he builds public housing. A lot of it still exists today. Why was this move to expand public housing such a big deal for New York at the time?

Terry Golway: Because nothing existed before. Also, if you look at New York in 1933, a fair amount of housing stock was built in the 19th century, including what we historians call old law tenements, which basically didn't need things like air and modern sanitation facilities. New York housing was pitiful in the 1930s.

Fiorello La Guardia: I'm glad that some people are realizing now the necessity of tearing down some of the dilapidated, unsanitary, fire trap, disease-breeding buildings in which they have investments and putting in their place sanitary, safe, decent, healthy buildings.

Terry Golway: The tragedy that he never really spoke about, the death of his first wife, 26-year-old wife and infant child, he blamed on poor conditions in crowded areas. Now, he didn't live in a poor neighborhood nor in a poor person's tenement, but still, they lived in crowded, unhealthy situations and the wife died of tuberculosis, which he associated with these sorts of conditions. He says at one point, before he's mayor, "If I get to be mayor, I want to tear down all the slum housing so that people don't have to go through what I went through with my wife and my child," so it's a passion of his.

Fiorello La Guardia: To some, it may mean housing. To me, it means something else. It's folks, it's the transformation of the people themselves. To live in a crowded, dark and dingy apartment, to be unable to have the little comforts of a home, to be unable to give the little baby a bit of sunshine at the window, to be unable to keep that apartment clean no matter how hard you work. That's what we're interested in.

Terry Golway: It's the first time that New York commits to public housing. That's all La Guardia.

Alison Stewart: For all the serious subjects that we've discussed about La Guardia, there were very funny moments, especially in WNYC. Famously during newspaper strikes, during his last year in office, La Guardia went on the air to read the funnies, as we know the comics, to children at home. Let's listen.

Fiorello La Guardia: Well, the strike isn't over, so I suppose the children have been waiting to hear something about their funnies. Here's Dick Tracy. Let's see what Dick Tracy is doing. "I offered you $1,000. What do you think I am? This is my money." And the picture shows a hand of Breathless stretching out. She's got hold of that iron pot. Remember the iron pot she took from the Van Hoosen's gardener's flat to put the money in? And crash, she crashes it on his head.

Alison Stewart: What does this story demonstrate about La Guardia?

Terry Golway: Well, first of all, that he loved the comics. He really did. There's a story where a young aide is starting to brief him on his next appearance and La Guardia's nose is in the newspapers. La Guardia, at one point, puts the newspaper down and basically says, "Don't ever interrupt me when I'm reading the comics." Now, mind you, he was not trying to ingratiate himself with anybody. By the time he read those comics, he had already decided he wasn't going to run for a fourth term in 1945, but he really did feel that the kids loved the comics. As the archives of WNYC also show with those two programs, he also has messages for adults coded in some of those readings where--

Alison Stewart: Like what, for example?

Terry Golway: Well, at one point, he's talking. Little Orphan Annie is on trial for murder, and she's clearly being railroaded by a corrupt judge. "Oh, ladies and gentlemen, just so you know, I just appointed several judges, and I want you to know that they're not from the social register, if you know what I mean. They're not that type. They're not like this judge."

Fiorello La Guardia: That's what he's telling you, children, don't you see? That's why these judges that I picked today, they come from homes like you and me, like your home and my home. They come with experience. They entertain no prejudices. They're just folks, decent, honest, clean.

Terry Golway: He's making some political points. He's talking to the adults while he's talking to the children.

Alison Stewart: La Guardia leaves office in 1946. Let's listen to a part of his final Talk to the People on WNYC where he ends by reciting one of his favorite poems, The Higher Good by Theodore Parker.

Fiorello La Guardia: Give me the power to labor for mankind,

Make me the mouth of such as cannot speak,

Eyes let me be to groping men and blind,

A conscience to the base, and to the weak,

let me be hands and feet, and to the foolish mind,

And lead still further on, such as thy kingdom seek,

And give me patience and fortitude.

[applause]

Alison Stewart: In 1947, La Guardia was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and he died on September 20th. He's buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. Your title of your book is Why He Still Matters. Why should his mayoral tenure and the issues he stood by still matter now?

Terry Golway: Because we're still talking about the same issues. Think about immigration and think about the way some people talk about immigrants today. That language hasn't changed in 100 years. 100 years ago, we had nativists in this country, in Washington, trying to close the border to certain kinds of people and La Guardia would have none of it. He would have none of the hypocrisy that Prohibition represented, which in his view was a top-down way of controlling ordinary people. And his integrity, more than anything else, his integrity. He was in public service to be a public servant.

Fiorello La Guardia: We must at all times consider that the privileges of democracy bring with it responsibility. Part of that responsibility is to understand our form of government, to do our duty as citizens, and it requires duty as well as the enjoyment of liberties.

Terry Golway: Now, I wouldn't have wanted to work for him. He was a hard boss, let me tell you, but his absolute integrity and intellectual honesty have not been surpassed all these years later. He still speaks to us, whether it's on issues or whether it's character.

Fiorello La Guardia: This great city, unique in its kind, nothing like it in the whole world. This great city of huge spaces that are too small, of millions of little people who are really big, of people coming from every climbing country of the world living in peace and happiness here. People knowing that their children will have the opportunity of an education. The most hospitable city in the world. Yes, my friends, you gave me a job and I did it. Now I ask you to carry on. Maestro Burleigh, won't you close this program by singing The Palms for us?

Alison Stewart: You've been listening to Patience and Fortitude: A History of Mayor La Guardia on WNYC, an All Of It special examination of the life of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia as we commemorate the 100th anniversary of WNYC this year. My guest has been Terry Golway, author of the book I Never Did Like Politics: How Fiorello La Guardia Became America's Mayor, and Why He Still Matters. Terry, thank you so much for joining us.

Terry Golway: It's been my pleasure.

Alison Stewart: This All Of It special was produced and edited by Luke Green and Kate Hinds, with support from Megan Ryan and Andrea Duncan-Mao. Engineering by Jason Isaac, mixing by Jen Munson. The WNYC audio you heard is courtesy of the New York City Municipal Archives. Huge thanks to WNYC archivist Andy Lancet for his guidance. I'm Alison Stewart. Thanks for listening.

Fiorello La Guardia: Thank you. Wasn't that beautiful?