Date and Time: July 29, 1:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m. ET
Actions Rather than Words: Emma Lazarus, Activism, and Citizenship | Special Topics (Summer PD 2024)
About This Session
While Emma Lazarus is best known for The New Colossus, a stanza of which was emblazoned onto the Statue of Liberty decades after her death, the poet was also a political activist who fought for the rights of immigrants, stood up to anti-Semitic rhetoric and violence, and advocated against economic inequality, alongside contemporaries like Frederick Douglass, Henry George, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Julia Ward Howe. This session will explore the ways in which late 19th and early 20th century debates about gender, religion, immigration, race, and labor engaged New Yorkers and other Americans - and how they, in turn, responded from atop soapboxes, on picket lines, and by authoring articles and other writings to further their causes. Using Emma Lazarus as a starting point, educators will be given the tools to help students identify political themes and activist movements, starting in the 19th century and moving into the 20th century. Whether through a focus on an individual like Lazarus, or via an exploration of larger social issues and causes, presenters will address broader trends of a changing nation and shed light on the contours of the ever-evolving identity of the United States, using the primary sources and collection materials of the American Jewish Historical Society to enhance discussions of civic responsibility and citizenship.
This session is sponsored by the American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS), the oldest ethnic, cultural archive in the United States. AJHS provides access to more than 30 million documents and 50,000 books, photographs, art, and artifacts that reflect the history of the Jewish presence in the United States from 1654 to the present.
Established in 1892, the mission of AJHS is to foster awareness and appreciation of American Jewish heritage and to serve as a national scholarly resource for research through the collection, preservation, and dissemination of materials relating to American Jewish history. At our home on West 16th Street in downtown Manhattan, AJHS illuminates American Jewish history through our many archival treasures, scholarship, exhibitions, and public programs. Among the treasures of this heritage are the handwritten original of Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus,” which graces the Statue of Liberty; records of the nation’s leading Jewish communal organizations; and important collections in the fields of education, philanthropy, science, sports, business, and the arts.