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Immigration issues are still relevant today!!

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Immigration issues are still relevant today!!

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What would Emma have to say about that???

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White House aide Stephen Miller caused a stir Wednesday when he argued that "The New Colossus," the poem written for and featured on the Statue of Liberty, wasn't relevant to the meaning of the statue because it was " added later."

A line from the poem ― "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" ― is often praised for symbolizing liberty in the United States.

The poem was never intended to work as a policy statement, and was part of a fundraiser to help pay for a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty to sit upon.
Read more about Emma Lazarus, who penned the poem, at The Washington Post.
Read the full text of the poem below:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

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Read The Text Of 'The New Colossus,' The Poem On The Statue Of Liberty

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White House aide Stephen Miller caused a stir Wednesday when he argued that "The New Colossus," the poem written for and featured on the Statue of Liberty, wasn't relevant to the meaning of the statue because it was " added later."

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The year was 1883 when Emma Lazarus, a young, high society New York poet and the descendant of Jewish immigrants, was asked for a favor.

Fundraising efforts were underway for a pedestal to hold the Statue of Liberty, an expensive gift from France that many Americans found especially uninspiring. The French had paid for construction of the monument, but its recipients were responsible for buying its base. This made out-of-towners scoff.

But elite writers and authors in New York went to work anyway, soliciting help from people like the 34-year-old Lazarus to reach their monetary goal. Would she compose, they asked, a sonnet to be sold at auction, alongside the writings of Mark Twain and Walt Whitman?

Lazarus agreed, begrudgingly, for she didn't write " to order. "

What the poet didn't know at the time - as a woman whose work as a "poetess" had been at times the subject of condescension - was that it would be her words, lyrical and poignant, that decades later came to define the American vision of liberty.

More than a century later, in 2017, the words are rallying people against a controversial president and his policies and attitudes toward immigrants.

Though raised in privilege, Lazarus had spent her life writing about anti-Semitism and ethnic prejudice, and in the 1880s became a fierce advocate for Jewish refugees fleeing massacre in Russia. The sonnet, called "The New Colossus," reflected that conviction.

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses," she imagined the Statue of Liberty saying, "yearning to breathe free."

At the time, her words were praised by other writers, who said they gave the cold and disconnected statue a spirited purpose. But the sonnet ( and women in general) went unrecognized during the ceremony to dedicate Lady Liberty in 1886, and when Lazarus died a year later from cancer at age 38, it was not mentioned in her New York Times obituary, either.

It wasn't until 1903, two years after a friend found "The New Colossus" in a New York bookstore and nearly two decades after Lazarus's untimely death, that the poet's stirring words were inscribed on a plaque and affixed to the inner wall of the statue's pedestal.

In the century since, the final stanzas of "The New Colossus" have been quoted by presidents but also weaponized against them - much like protesters did nationwide in recent weeks at airports, the Supreme Court and the White House to protest President Trump.

Last Friday, Trump signed an executive order limiting the admission of visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries and temporarily banning the admittance of all refugees, creating chaos at airports worldwide and sparking another weekend of widespread protests that mirrored the Women's March from just seven days prior that drew millions of global citizens into the streets.

There is no fine print on the Statue of Liberty. America must remain open to people of all faiths & backgrounds. #RefugeesWelcome pic.twitter.com/4LvMiZTRJJ

- Madeleine Albright (@madeleine) January 25, 2017

Scrawled across signs and typed out in tweets, those opposing the Trump administration's immigration and refugee policies have made Lazarus's most famous words their rallying cry, proof, they say, that American liberty means welcoming those in need, not shunning them.

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the daughter of an Italian immigrant mother, said outside the Supreme Court Monday night. "You know the rest. It's a statement of values of our country. It's a recognition that the strength of our country is in our diversity, that the revitalization constantly of America comes from our immigrant population."

[How America's immigrants came to be 'huddled masses yearning to breathe free']

The stanza Pelosi quoted is the most widely recognized element of "The New Colossus," likely because it's the part that appears on a placard at the Statue of Liberty. But the entire poem is much longer, and according to historians, speaks to the work Lazarus did to be a spokeswoman for the Jewish community and welcome Russian refugees in the 1880s.

The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows worldwide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Lazarus grew up the fourth child of seven in a wealthy New York family that descended from America's first Jewish settlers, according to the Jewish Women's Archive. Her father found success as a sugar refiner and, recognizing his daughter's talent early on, was prosperous enough to fund the publication of her first book of poems when she was 17.

Much of her work explored her heritage as a Jew of Sephardic - or Spanish and Portuguese - descent. She was proud of that history, but her father tried to distance his family from it and assimilate into wealthy Christian society, giving Lazarus many Christian friends but also a distinct feeling of otherness.

She was called a "Jewess," according to the JWA, and years later wrote in a letter that she was "perfectly conscious that this contempt and hatred underlies the general tone of the community towards us."

[Lady Liberty is 'modeled after our society's continued evolution.' In this new coin, she is black.]

Still, her talents earned her great praise from the literary elite of her day. She befriended Ralph Waldo Emerson as a young woman, and he became a mentor and critic of her writing. By 1882, the year before she wrote "The New Colossus," more than 50 Lazarus poems and translations had been published in mainstream periodicals, according to the JWA, and she had penned a novel and a drama.

It was a wave of "particularly vicious" anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe in the 1880s that inspired her most powerful work, wrote the JWA. "Pogroms," a Russian word that means to "wreak havoc" and "demolish violently," were driving as many as 2,000 Russian Jewish refugees to New York monthly, Lazarus biographer Esther Schor wrote.

"Because her popularity enabled her to reach a broad audience, she became both a spokesperson for and a fiery prophet of the American Jewish community," according to the JWA.

In an annotated version of "The New Colossus," Schor explained that Lazarus plunged "recklessly and impulsively" into a written defense of the Russian Jewish immigrants in Century magazine and began volunteering.

"She took the streetcar from her lavish home on 57th Street to work at the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society at 105 East Broadway, where she helped train refugees" and taught English, Schor wrote. "She visited them in their squalid quarters on Ward's Island and wrote an exposé about dirty water, overflowing garbage, unemployment, and lack of training for adults and education for children."

It was during this time, according to the JWA, that Lazarus "became increasingly convinced that 'the time has come for actions rather than words.'" And, aware of her own privilege, she would sometimes joke: "What would my society friends say if they saw me here?"

[Who is affected by Trump's travel ban]

In 1883, she formed the Society for the Improvement and Colonization of East European Jews, but it later collapsed in 1884. She also advocated voraciously for Zionism. A year after Lazarus died, her cousin founded the Emma Lazarus Club for Working Girls, "where young Jewish immigrants could learn to type or sew - or recite Shakespeare," Schor wrote. Her legacy was further cemented in the mid 20th century with the creation of the Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Women's Clubs, which offered "leadership to women in Jewish communities in our own time in the same spirit as Emma Lazarus did in hers."

Her own family, though, was perhaps not as proud of Lazarus's outspoken and brazen efforts as those in the Jewish sisterhood. After the poet died, her sisters worked to craft a narrative for Lazarus that ran counter to the way she lived, painting her as a "more demure and feminine" spinster, according to the JWA, and they even refused to grant permission to republish her Jewish poems.

[Denied Entry: Stories of refugees and immigrants barred from the U.S.]

In the decades since, Lazarus's works have been passionately resurrected - thanks, Schor argues, to the towering presence of her Mother of Exiles.

"The irony is that the statue goes on speaking, even when the tide turns against immigration - even against immigrants themselves, as they adjust to their American lives," Schor told the New York Times in 2011. "You can't think of the statue without hearing the words Emma Lazarus gave her."
More from Morning Mix: Neil Gorsuch wrote the book on assisted suicide. Here's what he said. Trump's team has detected the 'dark matter' of government regulation, meaning you ain't seen nothing yet Two days after TV star's death, artist who cast Mary Tyler Moore sculpture dies

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'Give me your tired, your poor': The story of poet and refugee advocate Emma Lazarus

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The year was 1883 when Emma Lazarus, a young, high society New York poet and the descendant of Jewish immigrants, was asked for a favor. Fundraising efforts were underway for a pedestal to hold the Statue of Liberty, an expensive gift from France that many Americans found especially uninspiring.

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Encyclopedia of Jewish and Israeli history, politics and culture, with biographies, statistics, articles and documents on topics from anti-Semitism to Zionism.

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BY EMMA LAZARUS

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

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"Until we are all free, we are none of us free."

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What are some of her accomplishments?

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Poet Emma Lazarus wrote the lines "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" which are inscribed on pedestal on which the Statue of Liberty stands.

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Liberty's Voice
A biography of one of the great poets in American History

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Emma Lazarus was born in New York City to a wealthy family and educated by private tutors. She began writing and translating poetry as a teenager and was publishing translations of German poems by the 1860s. Her father privately printed her first work in 1866 and the next year, her first collection, Poems and Translations (1867), appeared from a commercial press. The book gained the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson, among others. Over the next decade, Lazarus published a second volume of poetry, Admetus and Other Poems (1871); the novel Alide: An Episode in Goethe's Life (1874); and a play in verse, The Spagnoletto (1876). Reading George Eliot's novel Daniel Deronda, with its exploration of Jewish identity, stirred Lazarus to consider her own heritage. In the 1880s, she took up the cause-through both poetry and prose-against the persecution of Jews in Russia, publishing a polemical pamphlet The Century (1882) and Songs of a Semite: The Dance to Death and Other Poems (1882), one of the first literary works to explore the struggles of Jewish Americans.

Lazarus was one of the first successful and highly visible Jewish American authors. She advocated for Jewish refugees and argued for the creation of a Jewish homeland before the concept of Zionism was in wide circulation. After the publication of Songs of a Semite, she traveled to England and France and met and befriended poets and writers such as Robert Browning and William Morris. After her return to the United States, she was commissioned to write a poem to help raise funds for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. She initially declined and then wrote a sonnet commemorating the plight of immigrants. Lines from that 1883 sonnet, "The New Colossus," were engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1903.

After her death, the scope of Lazarus's life and career was obscured by the fame of "The New Colossus." There have been recent attempts to revitalize scholarship and interest in her work, including a volume of selected poems from the Library of America and a biography, Emma Lazarus (2006), by Esther Schor.

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Emma Lazarus was born in New York City to a wealthy family and educated by private tutors. She began writing and translating poetry as a teenager and was publishing translations of German poems by the 1860s. Her father privately printed her first work in 1866 and the next year, her first...

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Lady Liberty's face is modeled after the Roman Goddess of Freedom (Libertas). Emma wrote poems about her favorite Greek Goddess Aphrodite.

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The Statue of Liberty, that enduring symbol of freedom, which has welcomed immigrants to the US since it was opened in 1886, has seen a surge in visitors since the election of US president Donald Trump.

Nearly 170,000 people boarded the ferry service from Battery Park in Manhattan to Liberty Island and nearby Ellis Island in January, an 18 per cent rise over the same period last year, while February saw 171,000 visitors on the same service in February - a 15 per cent rise on the same month in 2016. A mild winter in New York may have contributed to the increase, but both figures are the highest for Statue Cruises, the company operating the services, since 1991.

Here are a few interesting things you may not have known about the 131-year-old attraction.

1. The statue's full name is Liberty Enlightening the World.

2. It was a gift from France, given to America in 1886.

3. The head of the statue was displayed at the World's Fair in Paris in 1878.

4. The robed female figure represents Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom.

5. She holds a torch and tablet upon which is inscribed the date of American Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776).

Credit: 2004 Getty Images/Authenticated News

6. From the ground to the top of the torch the statue measures 93 metres, and weighs 204 metric tonnes.

7. Lady Liberty wears a size 879 shoe.

8. She has a 35-foot waistline

9. Visitors have to climb 354 stairs to reach the statue's crown.

10. There are 25 windows in the crown.

11. Approximately 4.5m people visited the statue in 2016. By way of comparison, around 7m people visit The Eiffel Tower each year, and 3.75m visit The London Eye.

Credit: GETTY

12. The seven spikes on the crown represent the seven oceans and the seven continents of the world, indicating the universal concept of liberty.

13. The statue has an iron infrastructure and copper exterior which has turned green due to oxidation. Although it's a sign of damage, the patina (green coating) also acts as a form of protection from further deterioration.

14. Edouard de Laboulaye provided the idea for the statue, while Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi designed it.

15. Laboulaye proposed that a great monument should be given as a gift from France to the United States as a celebration of both the union's victory in the American Revolution, and the abolition of slavery.

16. Laboulaye also hoped the gift of the statue would inspire French people to fight for their own democracy in the face of a repressive monarchy under Napolean III.

Credit: 2003 Getty Images/FPG

17. Gustave Eiffel, the man who designed the Eiffel Tower was also behind the design for Liberty's 'spine'; four iron columns supporting a metal framework that holds the copper skin.

18. 300 different types of hammers were used to create the copper structure.

19. The statue's face was said to be modelled on the sculptor's mother, Charlotte.

20. The statue's original torch was replaced in 1984 by a new copper torch covered in 24k gold leaf.

21. Although you cannot see Lady Liberty's feet clearly she is in fact standing among a broken shackle and chains, with her right foot raised, depicting her moving forward away from oppression and slavery.

22. Despite the positive meaning of the statue - American independence and the abolition of slavery - African Americans saw the statue as an ironic image of America; professing to be a country of freedom and justice for everyone regardless of race, despite racism and discrimination continuing to exist.

23. The Statue of Liberty became the symbol of immigration during the second half of the 19th century, as over 9m immigrants came to the United States, with the statue often being the first thing they saw when arriving by boat.

24. The statue's most famous cinematic appearance was in the 1968 film Planet of the Apes, where it is seen half buried in sand.

25. It is also destroyed in the films Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow.

26. The cost of the statue was funded by contributions from both the French and the Americans. In 1885, a New York newspaper entitled "World" announced that $102,000 had been raised from donors, and that 80 per cent of this total had been received in sums of less than one dollar.

27. Groups in Boston and Philadelphia offered to pay the full cost of the construction of the statue, in return for its relocation.

28. When the statue was first erected in 1886 it was the tallest iron structure ever built.

29. In 1984 the statue was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

30. In high winds, of 50mph or more, Lady Liberty can sway by up to 3 inches, while her torch can move 5 inches.

31. Lady Liberty is thought to have been hit by around 600 bolts of lightning every year since she was built. A photographer captured this for the first time in 2010.

32. Two people have committed suicide by jumping off the statue, one in 1929 and the other in 1932, while many others have jumped and survived.

33. American poet Emma Lazarus wrote about the Statue of Liberty in a sonnet called "The New Colossus" (1883). In 1903 the poem was engraved on a bronze plaque and placed inside the lower level of the pedestal on the statue.

34. The island in which it stands was previously called Bedloe Island, but its name was changed in 1956 to Liberty Island.

35. There are various replicas of the statue, including a smaller version in Paris, and one on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada.

36. In 1944 the lights in the crown flashed "dot-dot-dot-dash" which in the Morse code means V, for Victory in Europe.

37. Andy Warhol painted "Statue of Liberty" as part of his Pop Art series in the 1960s. It is estimated to be worth in excess of $35m.

38. The statue functioned as a lighthouse for 16 years (1886-1902), lighting a distance of up to 24 miles away.

39. The statue will be celebrating its 132nd birthday in October 2017.

40. Miss America, the comic book character, was granted her powers by the statue.

41. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, the statue was closed for security reasons, with the pedestal reopening in 2004, and the statue in 2009, but only a limited number of visitors are able to go up to the crown.

42. The statue was again closed in 2012 due to the effects of Hurricane Sandy.

43. The statue sustained minor damage in 1916 when German saboteurs set off an explosion during World War One. The torch-bearing arm suffered the most damage, with repair works costing $100,000. The stairs in the torch were then closed to the public for safety reasons, and have remained closed ever since.

44. No-one has been able to visit the torch since.

45. Private boats are not allowed to dock at Liberty and Ellis islands. Therefore the only way on is via the ferry system.

An insider's guide to New York 01:40

46. The statue's 300 copper pieces were transported to America in 214 crates on the French ship Isere, which almost sank in stormy seas.

47. Liberty Island is federal property within the territory of the State of New York, even though it is closer to New Jersey.

48. In 1982, it was discovered that the head had been installed two feet off centre.

49. Two images of the statue appear on a $10 bill.

50. The cost of building the statue and pedestal amounted to over $500,000, over $10m in today's money.

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The Statue of Liberty, that enduring symbol of freedom, which has welcomed immigrants to the US since it was opened in 1886, has seen a surge in visitors since the election of US president Donald Trump.

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What was the world like in 1849?

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Jan 13 Vancouver Island granted to Hudson's Bay Company

Elizabeth Blackwell becomes 1st woman in the US to earn a medical degree

Jan 23 US Patent granted for an envelope-making machine to Jesse K. Park and Cornelius S. Watson

Jan 31 Corn Laws abolished in Britain

Feb 4 University of Wisconsin begins in 1 room with 20 students

Feb 8 New Roman Republic established.

Feb 9 Roman Republic declared in Rome replacing following flight of Pope Pius IX

In New York City, James Knox Polk becomes first serving US President to have his photograph taken (by Matthew Brady).

Feb 18 1st regular steamboat service to California starts (or 02/28)

Feb 28 1st boat load of gold rush prospectors arrives in SF from east coast

More Historical Events

M Jolly-Bellin discovers dry-cleaning, he accidentally upset lamp containing turpentine & oil on his clothing & sees cleaning effect

On December 28, 1849

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Jan 13 Vancouver Island granted to Hudson's Bay Company Elizabeth Blackwell becomes 1st woman in the US to earn a medical degree Jan 23 US Patent granted for an envelope-making machine to Jesse K. Park and Cornelius S.