Big Apple History . Coming to America . New Colossus


	Immigrants to America in 1902

Most Americans know Emma Lazarus' poem "New Colossus" -- or, at least they know the poem's last few lines:

". . . 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 light beside the golden door!"

It's easy to get a sense of what the words mean: they serve as an invitation, as a welcome to arriving immigrants. What about the poem's name? If the Statue of Liberty is the NEW colossus (or giant statue), what was the OLD one?

One of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Colossus of Rhodes stood over the entrance to the city's harbor -- one of the greatest in all of Greece. The giant statue was masculine, imposing, and intended to scare invaders away.

With that information in mind, scan some of the words in Lazarus' poem: "Mother of Exiles . . ." "beacon-hand . . ." "mild eyes . . ." "golden door." These are not frightening words and images. Lazarus and the people who put her poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty, unlike the Greeks who build the original Colossus, did not want to scare the new arrivals off! On the contrary - Lady Liberty was meant to welcome them.

Illustration: Courtesy of the Library of Congress.