Mortimer L. Downey's creative financing helped revive New York City’s subway system and he also oversaw far-reaching regional and federal transportation policy for more than six decades.
He devised innovative financing to revive New York City’s subway. In Washington, as a U.S. Transportation Department leader, he bolstered Amtrak and secured federal funds for public transit.
A few years before the Civil War, as Arkansas lawmakers worked to expel freed Black people from the state, a Black businessman named Nathan Warren decided to leave hostile Little Rock and head to Ohio.