Happy Fourth of July from the city of Philadelphia! In this episode, I read an excerpt from Chapter 3 of The Last Ships from Hamburg, in which I discuss the infamous Hilton-Seligman Affair in 1877 (which legitimized “genteel” anti-Semitism in Gilded Age high society) and the story of the poet Emma Lazarus, who wrote “The New Colossus” not just to raise money for the construction of a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty, but to bring new urgency to the 18th century Enlightenment concept of “Liberty.”
The New Colossus
BY EMMA LAZARUS
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!”
Source: The Poetry Foundation
Happy Fourth of July