In the opening lines of Jewish Poet Emma Lazarus’s 1883 sonnet, The New Collossus, Lazarus evokes the Statute of Liberty’s symbolism of hope, freedom, and compassion. The poem was read at a fundraiser for the installation of the Statute of Liberty, which had been gifted from France to the United States.
“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-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
— Emma Lazarus
