Emma Lazarus, The Courageous Jewish Poet Behind The Statue Of Liberty’s Famous Inscription

Emma Lazarus was a renowned Jewish-American writer whose most famous poem, ‘The New Colossus,’ is immortalized on the Statue of Liberty.

In the late 1870s, the French gifted the Statue of Liberty to the U.S. as a celebration of freedom and the abolition of slavery, an endeavor that the Americans had theoretically achieved and the French had yet to reach in all of its territories.

It wasn’t until 1901 when Lazarus’ close friend Georgina Schuyler rediscovered the poem that it was resurrected. In honor of the late poet, Schuyler organized efforts to memorialize the piece and, two years later, The New Colossus was embedded on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty.

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!”