The original Statue of Liberty was a gift from France and installed in New York harbor on October 28, 1886.
Most often quoted in connection with the Statue of Liberty are the last few lines of The New Colossus by poet Emma Lazarus:
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!
“The New Colossus” is a sonnet by American poet Emma Lazarus (1849–1887). She wrote the poem in 1883 to raise money for the construction of a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World). In 1903, the poem was cast onto a bronze plaque and mounted inside the pedestal’s lower level. The important writer Louis Adamic was responsible for popularizing the poem and having it placed on the statue.
The New Colossus (full text of the poem)
This cartoon shows how the sentiments in the poem were often associated with Eleanor Roosevelt.
Emma Lazarus
