Trump official's comments on Statue of Liberty poem distort true meaning: historian

When Emma Lazarus wrote her famous poem that's inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, she was talking about an America that is "welcoming and inclusive," says a leading historian on the poet. 

Not, as a Trump administration official suggested this week, a place only welcome to Europeans who can "stand on their own two feet."

"Emma wrote that poem in which she talked about the Statue of Liberty as a mother of exiles," Annie Polland, the executive director of the American Jewish Historical Society, told As It Happens guest host Nil Köksal.

Lazarus wrote The New Colossus in 1883. The poem is best known for the line: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." 

On Tuesday, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Ken Cuccinelli suggested in an NPR interview that the poem should be changed to "give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge."

'Emma would not agree'

The comments came just one day after the Trump administration announced it would seek to deny green cards to migrants who seek Medicaid, food stamps, housing vouchers or other forms of public assistance.

Cuccinelli doubled down on Wednesday, telling CNN the poem was about "people coming from Europe where they had class-based societies where people were considered wretched if they weren't in the right class."

"It's a take that Emma would not agree with," Polland said. 

Polland, whose organization runs a program called "The Emma Lazarus Project," says Lazarus was working closely with refugees in New York City when she wrote the poem.

A friend asked her to write it as a favour to raise money for the Statue of Liberty pedestal, Polland said.

"Emma said, you know, 'I don't write on command,'" she said.

"And then [the friend] said, 'But think of the refugees you've been working with. Think of the East European Jews you've been working with, and that they'll see the statue in the harbour.' And so Emma's eyes lit up." 

What's problematic about the current discourse over the poem for Polland is that people are making definitive statements about that it means.

"I find that troublesome because it ignores the deeper context in which it was written," she said. "What I do think is important is for people to keep reading it, keep interpreting it."

Through the American Jewish Historical Society, Polland has young students do just that. 

She tasks students with writing their own poems about American ideals, and the problems and fixes that they see in society. 

"I think that the poems the students are writing have actually been much more inspiring than some of the blanket statements or the attempts to link the poem to policy that I've been hearing," she said. 

Polland also points out that when Lazaurus wrote the poem, she didn't think every single person would agree with her.

But it was important for her to write about the U.S. as the best it could be, Polland said.

"I think she's writing this poem to distinguish America from what had come before."

Still an inspiration  

Even after more than a century, Polland said the poem still moves people — especially when they see the original manuscript kept at the American Jewish Historical Society in New York City.

"I think one of the reasons why the Statue of Liberty and the idea of immigration resonates with so many people is that we can understand that story is a saga of people and family," she said.

"Whether it's 1850 … or 2019, these kinds of sacrifices made in order to better families are ones that are inspiring to us all."

Written by Sarah Jackson with files from The Associated Press. Produced by Richard Raycraft.