Robert Moses '56: Education Must Be Pursued for All By Ian
Thresher '12 Contact: Holly Foster 315-859-4068 October 26, 2010
Robert Moses ’56 gave a lecture titled “Quality Public Education
as a Constitutional Right” as part of the Arthur Levitt Public
Affairs Center’s Inequality and Equity Program on Oct. 25 in the
Chapel. Moses began his lecture by talking about Somerset v.
Stuart; a famous English case in which Lord Mansfield held that
slavery was unlawful in England, though not in the English
colonies. Moses used this case, which was decided in 1772, to
show the disparity between England’s civil rights history and
America’s civil right history. Fifteen years after England
declared slavery illegal, Moses noted, the Founders codified the
institution of slavery in the American Constitution. This
recognition and toleration of slavery ensured that people of
color would remain inferior to whites socially and politically
for the next 200 years. Moses talked about how the enormous
civil rights gains during reconst