When Emma was a little girl,
she had plenty of everything—
plenty of pretty dresses,
plenty of good food,
and plenty of love from her family.

She lived in a large, comfortable house
in New York City
with her mother and father
and her sisters and brother.
She loved to read.
And she had plenty of books.
She loved to write.
And she had plenty of time
to create stories and poems.

All the people Emma knew
had plenty of good food
and fine clothes.
They had plenty of everything.

Even when Emma was all grown up,
and by then a well-known writer,
she still only knew people
who had plenty of everything.

But one day, Emma visited Ward's Island
in New York Harbor.
There she met very poor immigrants
whom she had only heard about.
They had traveled a long way
across the ocean by boat.

They wore ragged clothing
and looked tired and sad.
Some were sick.
All of them were hungry.
They were the poorest people
Emma had ever seen.
Her heart hurt to see them.

They were Jews like Emma.
Some were well educated like Emma.
But they had been treated very badly
in Eastern Europe.
Their homes had been burned.
Friends and relatives had been killed.

At that time in the 1880s
people believed that a fine lady like Emma
should not mingle with poor people.
But Emma often visited the immigrants.
She helped them learn English
and get training for jobs.
In time, she made friends
with many of them.

Emma knew that in her own city
many people did not care about the immigrants.
People said they were so ragged and poor,
they'd ruin the country.
In those days, women kept their thoughts quiet.
But Emma wrote about the immigrants
for the newspaper and in poems.

She told, with great feeling,
how badly they needed help.
She explained that with help
they'd give back to the country.
Many people read her writing.
Some began to care.
But still many did not.

One day, Emma heard about a statue
being constructed in France
as a gift of friendship for the United States.
It was meant to show the great love of liberty
that both countries shared.

The statue was huge—
one hundred fifty-one feet tall!
The arm holding the torch
was forty-two feet long!

The statue would be erected
right in New York Harbor.
But first, money was needed
to build a very large pedestal
for the statue to stand on.

To raise money,
many well-known American writers
such as Mark Twain and Walt Whitman
were asked to write something.
Emma was asked to create a poem.
The whole collection would be sold
to help pay for the statue's pedestal.

Emma Lazarus always wrote
what she cared about.
Now she thought hard.
What did she want to say?

At that time, the Statue of Liberty
had nothing to do with immigrants.
But Emma knew that immigrants
would see the huge woman
when their boats arrived
in New York Harbor.
Wouldn't they wonder
why she was there?
What might they think?
What might they hope?

And what if the statue
were a real live woman?
What might she think
when she saw immigrants
arriving hungry and in rags?
What might she feel?
And, Emma pondered,
what would the statue say
if she could actually speak?

Emma took up her pen
and began to write.

Emma's poem was the only one read
at the large celebration in 1883
to raise money for the pedestal.
Those listening heard a powerful new voice
speak up for the immigrants.

In the last few lines of Emma's poem,
they heard the huge statue send out a welcome
to immigrants and boldly tell the world,
Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...

Three years later, in 1886,
when enough money had been raised,
the statue was packed into 214 crates,
shipped across the Atlantic Ocean,
and erected in New York Harbor
on top of the pedestal.

Although, sadly, Emma did not live
to see the statue erected,
she knew that her poem
helped buy the pedestal for it.
She also knew that her poem
gave the huge woman
a strong and caring voice.
But she did not know
that in the years to come
her poem would do much more.
Slowly, over time,
Emma's poem stirred the hearts and minds
of people around the nation.

Twenty years after Emma wrote it,
a friend had the poem engraved on a plaque
and placed inside the entrance
to the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty
for all visitors to see.

Thirty years after that, Emma's poem
was printed in school textbooks
and children around the country
learned to recite it.

Then, more than sixty years after Emma wrote her poem,
the last five lines of it,
the statue's bold words, were set to music
by the famous songwriter Irving Berlin
and sung on Broadway.

Soon, schoolchildren around the country were singing,
Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

Now the huge statue was much more
than a gift of friendship
from France to the United States.

Because of Emma's poem,
the Statue of Liberty
had become the mother of immigrants.
And her torch was a lamp held out to welcome them.

Today, Emma's poem is so well known
that when people look at the Statue of Liberty
they can almost hear her speaking,
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!

To the immigrants then and now—L.G.