Emma Lazarus’ Ode to Immigrants

In 1883, while teaching English to Eastern European Jewish refugees at 92NY, poet Emma Lazarus wrote “The New Colossus” to fund the construction of the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal. Though her lines are now virtually synonymous with Lady Liberty — “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” — Lazarus had only seen the torch prior to penning the piece and had yet to feast her eyes upon the colossal statue itself. The green goddess, a symbol for American immigration, had not yet departed from Paris.

Lazarus, whose family had been among the first Jewish immigrants in US, cared deeply about the community she taught at 92NY — her poem echoes the spirit of her heroic work. But following its publication, the sonnet was nearly forgotten — neither poem nor poet were mentioned at the statue’s dedication in 1886, and it wouldn’t be another 16 years, 15 years after Lazarus’ death, that the lines would be memorialized there. In 1903, a bronze plaque engraved with “The New Colossus” was placed on the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal, which can be seen to this day.

For over a century Lazarus’ words have welcomed immigrants to New York Harbor as if spoken by the Statue of Liberty herself, an expression of Jewish optimism and American possibility.