♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ 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!"

♪ ♪ NEW: When I asked recording artist Regina Spektor to discuss Emma Lazarus's "The New Colossus" with me, I was hopeful she'd say yes.

Regina had immigrated with her family from the USSR in 1989, and I could tell from her lyrics that Regina is a poet.

- ♪ Be afraid of the lame, they'll inherit your legs ♪ ♪ Be afraid of the old ♪ ♪ They'll inherit your souls ♪ NEW: As it turned out, Regina was eager to meet me at the American Jewish Historical Society, where the original manuscript of Lazarus's poem is held.

I also had a chance to talk with David Rubenstein, business leader and philanthropist, who purchases important historical documents and donates them to public institutions; with Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers; with Cristina Jimenez, who advocates for the rights of the undocumented young immigrants called "Dreamers"; and with Duy Doan, winner of the prestigious Yale Younger Poets prize.

♪ ♪ If we could begin talking about the first eight lines of the poem, lines that are less familiar to most readers.

DOAN: Those last lines everyone knows, right?

"Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free."

I always thought maybe that was the only line on the plaque.

"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, with conquering limbs astride from land to land."

NEW: It's interesting to begin a poem with a "not"-- "Not."

WEINGARTEN: But it's this kind of comparison, you know, of the New Colossus to the Colossus of Rhodes, and basically saying, "We're not talking about Zeus here, and we're not talking about Rhodes here."

Even if you just look at the main terms that are associated with the Colossus of Rhodes, and then the New Colossus, they're very different.

Brazen.

Greek fame.

SPEKTOR: Conquering.

It's very aggressive, male, scary, imposing, you know, Colossus protecting, kind of almost like a "fear this."

"Those who enter here," you know, "beware."

In the ancient days, when you won a war, you would take the captured prisoners and kind of march them through the streets to show who you had conquered to your own citizens, and sometimes you would march them in front of your major statues.

So she's saying, "This is not something "about a military conquest.

And we're not trying to be a Greek, Greek hero."

DOAN: It's a... it's a new story, right?

She kind of pits us right away against the, the ancient Greeks.

What the Greeks bring to the table is power and fame.

What we have is a little more complex.

The America as we know it was established as a reaction.

It was a direct rejection of something that was happening in Europe, and it wanted to be a new kind of a thing, so it's, like, "not" is the first word.

And then, this next sextet starts with, "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp."

You know, and it's, like, it keeps saying no to the way it was before, and it wants to be something different.

♪ ♪ DOAN: And with the, this New Colossus... WEINGARTEN: "A mighty woman with a torch."

JIMENEZ: "Mother of Exiles."

SPEKTOR: "Mild eyes."

DOAN: "Silent lips."

JIMENEZ: It's also a sense in the imagery of welcoming.

"A mighty woman with a torch."

"Mild eyes."

There's just something that is just... nurturing.

DOAN: What we have in our harbor is... is benevolent, although mighty.

I love that she's mighty.

You know, and she's got this flame that's lightning.

DOAN: It could simply be referring to the electricity in the torch.

You know, this is around 1900, so that's a technological achievement.

You know, you already had what was really happening in terms of industrialization.

NEW: Yeah.

WEINGARTEN: Of the migration north.

Of the factories.

So it was industrial muscularity.

And the power comes with peril, too.

NEW: And the power of industry.

I mean, imprisoned lightning, there's... electricity.

WEINGARTEN: Exactly, exactly.

NEW: And electrification that brings opportunity, right?

She's saying, "This is a country that has, as its symbol, "a woman holding a torch.

Don't think there isn't power there."

It's power that's governed.

DOAN: If you go back to the first line and remember that she mentions the ancient Greeks, so maybe she's saying that the Mother of Exiles has captured Zeus's lightning.

(waves lapping) JIMENEZ: "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."

DOAN: "The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame."

I mean, she's referring to the, the geography, right?

The actual landscape.

When you think about those words, you actually see the coast of New York Harbor.

JIMENEZ: And I feel, like, you know, such a proud New Yorker, and being able to take the ferry to Staten Island.

NEW: Yes.

JIMENEZ: And, you know, pass through the Statue of Liberty, and being reminded of these words.

WEINGARTEN: But you actually see "sea-washed sunset gates."

And when you think about sunset in New York, you see the sea kind of both in its bellicosity as well as in its serenity, going up and down the islands of Staten Island, Long Island, and Manhattan.

NEW: It's a harbor, which is a place of commerce, and a place of welcome, and you see America as it's connected to the rest of the world by that sea.

SPEKTOR: You know, usually statues, and sort of symbols of cities, of countries, they're placed on the land, and they're in the confines of that place.

She is forever an outsider, just like the people that she is welcoming.

Everybody's some generation of an... of an immigrant, or a stowaway, or a refugee.

She is in exile, too.

She's an immigrant, she came here from France, and she is going to stay in the harbor, and never get so assimilated that she forgets.

♪ ♪ NEW: It is now assumed that the Statue of Liberty stands in New York Harbor in order to welcome immigrants.

But it wasn't until 1903, when the sonnet Lazarus had written back in 1883 to raise money for the statue's pedestal was finally affixed there, that the statue even began to acquire this significance.

RUBENSTEIN: The Statue of Liberty, which is so well-known to everybody, was, had nothing to do with immigration.

It was really designed to be a gift by the French to the United States to more or less thank them for republican forms of government.

♪ ♪ There was an island in the New York Harbor they were going to put it on, but they had to get a pedestal, and an effort to raise money for it, and as part of that, there was a, a kind of an auction that was being put together.

She was asked, Emma Lazarus, if she would write a poem that might be auctioned off.

NEW: Emma Lazarus herself was a person of very comfortable circumstances and upbringing, who, in the early 1880s, when Jews began to flee Eastern Europe, she heard some sort of call herself.

RUBINSTEIN: Many Jews were leaving Russia and Eastern Europe, and they came to New York, and they were put in tenements and other kinds of very unattractive places, and she went down there, and she kind of bonded with them.

And she kind of saw the terrible life that people who had the same religion that she had were being treated.

NEW: And she began to volunteer with the newly formed Hebrew... ...Emigrant Aid Society.

SPEKTOR: Who brought me here.

(laughs) My ancestors were part of a group of people who bought tickets, they thought, to get them to the United States.

But it was a scam, and they only got to Leeds, England.

So they get there, and there are 40,000 Jews stuck in Leeds, England, for quite a while before they could afford the money to actually get to the United States.

But the universality of it is made possible by the fact she doesn't tell anybody that the people coming in are basically Jewish.

NEW: It was in the very decade that Lazarus's poem was placed on the pedestal that the first great waves of immigrants from outside Northern Europe, not only Jews, but Italians, Czechs, Poles, and others from all across Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe were arriving in New York Harbor.

And it was precisely then that the federal government began regulating and restricting their influx.

Beginning with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, new laws restricting immigration were added in 1891, 1892, 1898, and on into the new century.

These restrictions would culminate in the Immigration Act of 1924, that capped numbers of immigrants and established national quotas.

WEINGARTEN: This could be a poem about Cuban immigrants.

NEW: Yes.

WEINGARTEN: This could be a poem about Haitian immigrants.

This could be a poem about Southeastern European immigrants.

Suppose she had written a poem that said, "We welcome Jewish people."

(New laughs) "We welcome the sons of Hebrew, the daughters of, and sons of Abraham."

You know, the poem may not have had the kind of universal appeal that it later took on.

She doesn't say, "Give me your tired, your poor unless you're from this nation or that nation."

She doesn't say, "Send these, the homeless "unless you're of this religion or of that religion, this race or that ethnicity."

WEINGARTEN: What you see is people who are trying to find a different way and are willing to go through amazing odds to cross a sea to get here.

SPEKTOR (singing "Apres Moi"): ♪ Pisat o fevrale navzryd ♪ ♪ Poka grokhochushchaya slyakot ♪ ♪ Vesnoyu chernoyu gorit ♪ ♪ Fevral dostat chernil i plakat ♪ ♪ Pisat o fevrale navzryd ♪ ♪ Poka grokhochushchaya slyakot ♪ ♪ Vesnoyu chernoyu ♪ ♪ Gorit ♪ ♪ ♪ DOAN: "'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!'"

My parents were refugees of the Vietnam War.

They were part of the boat exodus in 1975.

My mother actually told me that they could hear the news on the radio when the... when the boat was already on the water.

That was the official news that Saigon had, had been officially taken.

And I remember thinking, "That's so solemn, so sad."

JIMENEZ: As immigrants who came from Ecuador, who were leaving a really difficult economic situation-- we weren't homeless, but I bet that if we would have stayed in Ecuador for longer, we could have ended there.

I come from a long line of people that were rejected by their homeland.

My grandmother passed away, and I found this, this poem that her and my grandfather's friend had written.

The first part of the poem, he's remembering fighting in the war, and the horrors and the hunger and the cold of World War II and being on the front.

After that, he writes about returning back home after they were victorious over the Nazis, and being told that all the Jews didn't fight.

They all went and hid, and all their medals of honor are bought and stolen from the real fighters.

And this is how these people were living in Soviet Union, as these second-class citizens.

(seagulls crying) SPEKTOR: "Give me your tired, your poor, "Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore."

What is it that makes those lines... (laughs) so unforgettable?

It's beautiful, just the music.

"The huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore."

"The wretched refuse."

Wretched refuse.

Well, obviously, it's a literary device.

DOAN: The sounds alone-- "wretched refuse"-- right?

That's... it's W-R, but it's an R sound.

The emphasis falls on the first syllable.

NEW: Mm-hmm.

DOAN: And it happens, as well, with the second word, "refuse."

It's a repetition of the sound, the beats, "huddled masses," "wretched refuse."

NEW: "Huddled masses," "wretched refuse"-- they sit right on top... DOAN: Right on top.

NEW: These phrases sit right on top of each other... DOAN: Yeah... NEW: ...as if they're piled.

You see the images of people hunched over, you know, huddling their families, with whatever remnants of luggage they have, with clothes that look like they've been unwashed for days or weeks.

NEW: Yes.

- That's... That is the image that you see.

I was, I was born here.

I'll never know what it is to yearn to breathe free.

And I remember seeing, you know, kids on campus with megaphones, you know, on a lawn, you know, yelling, you know, "You think you're free in this country?"

You know?

And I just remembered rolling my eyes and thinking, like, "You're saying whatever you want, "no one's going to come and knock on your door at night "and take you away.

"Your, your family history isn't full of people "being sent off to labor camps because they made a joke at a party."

DOAN: Any kind of civil or personal liberty that I've ever felt might have been violated or threatened as a citizen of this country is nothing in comparison to the oppression that they suffered when they fled Vietnam.

♪ ♪ SPEKTOR: That she used "tired" first.

Of all the things that these people had gone through, that they were tired.

And it's, like, this, obviously physical exhaustion, but also just this... you know, spiritual and existential exhaustion that they have just... they're so tired from struggle.

What she is really doing is, she's talking about the importance of welcoming people, and that's what, really, the key message of the entire poem is.

That we want people, we welcome people who may not be the wealthiest people, the healthiest people, the people who might bond with our society most readily, but these are the kind of people that we should welcome, and that's what the Statue of Liberty is all about.

Basically, everybody who's not wanted is wanted here.

That's an incredible symbol to have.

JIMENEZ: So many immigrants share this story.

Others are escaping war.

Others are, um, like my own parents and myself, coming here to seek opportunity and, and a better life for themselves and their families.

And as you read the poem, you can also even feel... the relief.

That many immigrants, um, across generations have felt when they got here.

♪ ♪ 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!"

♪ ♪ NEW: That was such a beautiful reading, Regina.

In fact, it wasn't a reading-- you, you memorized the poem.

This poem is a sonnet.

SPEKTOR: Yeah.

NEW: It begins with an eight-line octet, and then moves to a six-line sestet, which is a fixed, traditional form.

What your reading did was, um, combine a warmth that sounded very contemporary with the elevation and the grandeur of this language, you humanized-- you humanized the poem, but you left... the grandeur.

You know, I come from... from a culture where poetry was recited constantly throughout life.

In the Soviet Union, everybody memorized poems, and once you are using your voice, it's this in-between thing.

It's conversation, but it's also elevated.

It just kind of vibrates on a higher level.

I have to admit, I, I never...

I didn't really give this poem much of a chance, you know, for a long time.

I, I think it's probably a case of the young poet being too cool for school.

But then you look at some of these beautiful lines.

"Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me."

Tempest-tost, that's so hard.

NEW: The stresses are heavier.

DOAN: Yeah, she goes hard, like, at the very end there, "tempest-tost to me" and then, very lightly, "I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

For me, the music in that line's so understated, even though there's an exclamation point.

It's understated, but then the... the gesture of lifting is, is triumphant.

The thing that I feel is most skillful or powerful is the torch, the repetition of the torch.

The first time you see it is in the fourth line, the last time you see it is in the final line.

"A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame..." So we know that there's a torch, we know that there's a flame.

Maybe we can picture it, I'm, I'm not quite sure.

And then, one line later, "From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome."

So now we have a hand and a glow.

So it's coming alive a little bit.

But the image is still static, right?

Nothing's, nothing's really happening.

But when it comes back around again to the final line, "I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Now there's movement and action.

It's not a static image anymore.

SPEKTOR: I once heard somebody say that if you want to forget about someone, you build a statue of them and put it in the town square.

And in that way, I, I wonder, you know, if the... the poem being written on the pedestal of a statue, it probably wouldn't have mattered.

I think that it's the combination of that it's this poem and written on the pedestal of that statue.

That it was this beloved ever-powerful statue, and so long as people keep working towards this golden door actually being a golden door, this place actually being worthy of somebody striving towards it, then she will always have her power.

And she will always, you know, be the mother and the poem will not be forgotten and she will not be forgotten.

(singing "Apres Moi"): ♪ I must go on standing ♪ ♪ I'm not my own, it's not my choice ♪ ♪ I, uh, must go on standing ♪ ♪ You can't, can't break that, that which ♪ ♪ Isn't, isn't yours, yours ♪ ♪ I, uh, must go on stan-standing ♪ ♪ I'm not my own, it's not my choice ♪ (singing wordlessly) (continues singing) (singing wordlessly) (singing) ♪ ♪ ♪ Oh.

♪ ♪ ♪ (song ends) ♪ ♪