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The New Colossus (1883)

Author: Emma Lazarus Type: Poetry · Sonnet Published: 1883 (written for the Statue of Liberty fundraiser); engraved on the statue's pedestal 1903 Copyright: Public domain Era/Period: USH Unit 1 — Immigration, Industrial Era; WH Era 3 ELA Standards: 9-10.R.8 · 9-10.R.9 WH Standards: WH.6_12.3 · WH.6_12.5 USH Standards: US.6_12.4 · US.6_12.2

What This Poem Is About

Emma Lazarus wrote this sonnet in 1883 to help raise money for the Statue of Liberty's pedestal. It reframes the statue's meaning: instead of a monument to the alliance between France and America, it becomes a beacon to the world's poor and displaced. The famous lines — "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" — are not on the original statue. They were added in 1903, two decades after Lazarus died of cancer at 38. The poem is the most contested inscription in American history: what America said it was, and what it actually did to those who arrived.

Read It

Public domain — full text.

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. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she 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!"

— Emma Lazarus, 1883

Why This Poem Matters

Emma Lazarus was a Jewish American poet whose work was shaped by the mass persecution of Jews in Russia (the pogroms of 1880–82 that drove hundreds of thousands to America). She was one of the first American writers to write about Jewish identity as a political, not just religious, matter. The poem reflects her understanding of what it meant to arrive as a refugee — the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" were not an abstraction for her; they were people she was organizing to help.

The poem's history is itself a lesson in the gap between stated values and actual policy. While the poem promises welcome, the same decade saw the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882, the year before the poem was written) — the first federal law to exclude a specific nationality from immigration, a racial law that stayed on the books until 1943. The 1924 Johnson-Reed Act (the same year Coolidge signed it as a "national origins" quota system) explicitly used racial hierarchy to limit who could enter. The "golden door" was open for some and closed for others, by law, by race.

The poem has been cited in immigration debates since at least the 1930s. When President Trump's immigration advisors argued in 2017 that the poem was not part of official immigration policy, it triggered a national debate about what America's stated values actually mean.

ELA Standards Connection

Standard Connection
9-10.R.8 Literary elements: Petrarchan sonnet; extended contrast between "the brazen giant of Greek fame" (old world, conquest) and the "Mother of Exiles" (new world, welcome); personification of the Statue of Liberty
9-10.R.9 The poem as argument about national identity; compare to the Chinese Exclusion Act and the 1924 immigration law as counter-evidence
9-10.W.4 Argument: Does America live up to the promise of "The New Colossus"? Use specific historical evidence

Social Studies Connection

US.6_12.4 — Social conditions of immigration; who came, why, and what they encountered.

US.6_12.2 — American ideology: the promise of the poem vs. the reality of immigration policy; what does "America" mean as an idea?

US.6_12.3 — Political systems: who decides who can enter? How does immigration law reflect racial hierarchy?

Key Vocabulary

  • Colossus — a giant statue; the original Colossus was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, a massive statue at the entrance to the harbor of Rhodes; Lazarus contrasts the conquering ancient colossus with the welcoming American one
  • Mother of Exiles — Lazarus's name for the Statue of Liberty; refugees are her children
  • Brazen — made of brass/bronze; also implies shamelessness, aggression
  • Tempest-tost — tossed by storms; refugees and migrants battered by the forces that drove them out
  • The golden door — the entrance to America; the promise of opportunity and safety

Studio Ideas

  1. Promise vs. policy — Write a W.4 argument using "The New Colossus" and the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) as your primary sources. What does the gap between them tell us about American identity?

  2. The "Mother of Exiles" — Lazarus frames America as a mother who takes in the unwanted children of other nations. What obligations does that framing create? What happens when America refuses that role?

  3. Who gets the golden door? — Use immigration policy from at least two eras (1880s, 1920s, post-WWII, 1990s, 2000s) to trace who America has welcomed and who it has excluded. Is the promise getting closer to being fulfilled, or is it receding?

Why This Is Relevant Today?

In June 2018, Ken Cuccinelli, then acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, suggested the poem should be modified: "Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge." The original poem's promise — "the wretched refuse of your teeming shore" — was the point; Lazarus was saying that America welcomes those other nations have rejected. The debate about whether that promise is still American policy, or ever was, is one of the most active political arguments in the country.

Poetry Collection · SDA Commons Reading Library · South High School