The Timeless Importance of Emma Lazarus’s Poem, “The New Colossus,” Emblazoned on the Statue of Liberty

Her Mother of Exiles, as she wrote, shall prevail

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! From The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus (1883)

In this era of brazen antisemitism, when several elderly Jewish people were attacked in Boulder, Colorado (one of them a holocaust survivor), along with the extensive anti-immigrant actions by our government and support of those actions by many citizens, the words of Emma Lazarus’s poem, inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, are profoundly meaningful.

As the well-educated daughter of wealthy Jewish New York settlers, Lazarus (1849-1887) advocated for Jews fleeing the draconian pogroms (organized massacres of Jewish people in Eastern Europe), and strove valiantly to understand the immigrant experience, even though she was not an immigrant. Her advocacy extended to people of other ethnicities and religions, including Catholics.

In 1883, she helped form the Society for the Improvement and Colonization of East European Jews. She wrote The New Colossus that year to help raise funds to create the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. Her poem was printed in the Catalogue of the Pedestal Fund Art Loan Exhibition. Twenty years later, in 1903, it was inscribed on the statue’s pedestal.

While the Statue of Liberty was reportedly created as a symbol of democratic ideals, shared by both France and the United States, Lazarus’s poem altered Liberty’s message to become a welcoming beacon of hope for immigrants—into perpetuity. Yet today that message is often dismissed by legislators and citizens, especially as immigrants of many different backgrounds are arrested and deported.

With the picture in mind of armed and masked agents grabbing and handcuffing people, consider The New Colossus’s opening words with its inspiring imagery.

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.

Emma Lazarus’s words and prophecy were written by a woman who understood that a thriving democracy supports and nurtures all residents, citizens or not. That democracy is based in part on the devotion and labor of numerous immigrants, who have transformed their lives, while contributing to our country in so many ways. Stanley F. Chyet wrote in the catalog, “New Beginnings,” © 1996 by Skirball Cultural Center, “Lazarus…had a faith in America’s alchemy: the New World would transform European dross into American gold.”

The words of The New Colossus were recited by schoolchildren decades ago, even sung by them to a tune written by Irving Berlin in his song, Give Me Your Tired Your Poor (1949). Indeed, those words need to be revived and spoken, as the Statue of Liberty, that Mother of Exiles shall prevail.