Hope and Fail

Whiffing the history of the Statue of Liberty

During his speech on immigration reform at American University, President Obama trotted out Emma Lazarus’ poem “The New Colossus,” which is engraved on a plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.

The poem is fitting when talking about immigration — “give me your tired, and your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” — but he got the history of the poem and of Lady Liberty all wrong.

Here’s what Obama said:

It was at this time that a young woman named Emma Lazarus, whose own family fled persecution from Europe generations earlier, took up the cause of these new immigrants. Although she was a poet, she spent much of her time advocating for better health care and housing for the newcomers. And inspired by what she saw and heard, she wrote down her thoughts and donated a piece of work to help pay for the construction of a new statue — the Statue of Liberty — which actually was funded in part by small donations from people across America.

Years before the statue was built — years before it would be seen by throngs of immigrants craning their necks skyward at the end of long and brutal voyage, years before it would come to symbolize everything that we cherish — she imagined what it could mean. She imagined the sight of a giant statue at the entry point of a great nation -– but unlike the great monuments of the past, this would not signal an empire. Instead, it would signal one’s arrival to a place of opportunity and refuge and freedom.

He then quoted the poem, leaving out parts and restating others.

More than misquoting the poem, though, the president’s history is wrong.

Emma Lazarus did not, as Obama said, spend “much of her time advocating for better health care … for the newcomers.” She was a poet and a leading advocate of Zionism. Perhaps the work to which the president referred was her work for the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society — which found Jewish refugees to the United States jobs and homes.

Lazarus did not donate her poem to raise money for the Statue of Liberty — the poem was auctioned to raise money for the pedestal of the statue. “Liberty Enlightening the World” was given to the United States, and paid for, by the French to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

That bears repeating. The French gave the statue to the United States to mark the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence — it had nothing to do with immigration.

On that same note, the statue was not “funded in part by small donations from people across America.” The deal was, the French would donate the statue and the Americans would provide the pedestal. And in fact, according to the National Park Service, the fundraisers for the pedestal fell far short of paying for it, and “Joseph Pulitzer stepped in and was able to raise the remaining money for the pedestal using his newspaper ‘The World.’ ”

While the president may be correct that Lazarus envisioned a statue that “would signal one’s arrival to a place of opportunity and refuge and freedom,” the poem wasn’t even read at the statue’s dedication.

It didn’t even appear in the pedestal until 1903, when Lazarus had been dead for six years, after her friend pushed to memorialize the poet.

Rush Limbaugh teed off on this during his show, and The Right Scoop has video.