Statue of Liberty — Bunk History

The Statue of Liberty Was Created to Celebrate Freed Slaves, Not Immigrants

Lady Liberty was inspired by the end of the Civil War and emancipation. The connection to immigration came later.

by Gillian Brockell via Retropolis on May 23, 2019

Sentinel

From the day it was inaugurated, the Statue of Liberty has symbolized the tensions between national independence and universal human rights.

by Francesca Lidia Viano via Places Journal on October 1, 2018

Who Does She Stand For?

As the Statue of Liberty turned 100, our long battle over immigration was having its moment in Reagan’s America.

by Paul A. Kramer via Slate on March 5, 2018

The Story Behind the Poem on the Statue of Liberty

Why so many of the people who quote Emma Lazarus’s Petrarchan sonnet miss its true meaning.

by Walt Hunter via The Atlantic on January 16, 2018

Trump at a rally and newspaper headlines about immigration.

How America Tried and Failed to Stay White

100 years ago the U.S. tried to limit immigration to White Europeans. Instead, diversity triumphed.

by Eduardo Porter via Washington Post on May 15, 2024

Tyler Stovall and his book

The History of Freedom Is a History of Whiteness

A conversation about whether or not the legacy of liberty can break away from racial exclusion and domination.

by Tyler Stovall, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins via The Nation on March 17, 2021

What We Get Wrong About the “Poor Huddled Masses”

We can’t fix our immigration policy without understanding its history.

by Christopher F. Petrella via Made By History on December 18, 2018

Not Who We Are

The U.S. is neither a land of nativists nor a haven for immigrants. Since the founding, the truth has lain somewhere in between.

by Paul A. Kramer via Slate on February 3, 2017

Carbinari seal of a woman holding a liberty cap.

Lady Liberty in Restoration Italy? Crime, Counterfeit, and Carbonari Revolutionary Politics

Following Napoleon’s fall, international secret societies emerged promoting dissent from absolutist forms of power and sharing ideologies and iconographies.

by Giuseppe Perelli via Age of Revolutions on June 3, 2024

Lady Columbia drawing from 1890.

Before Lady Liberty, There Was Lady Columbia, America's First National Mascot

The forgotten figure symbolized the hopes—and myths—of the early United States.

by Cari Shane via Smithsonian on August 30, 2023

‘The Proposed Emigrant Dumping Site’; cartoon by Victor Gillam from Judge magazine, March 22, 1890

Whose Freedom?

On the ways that people have conflated freedom with whiteness but pays too little attention to the force of freedom as a concept.

by David A. Bell via New York Review of Books on September 2, 2021

American Degeneracy

Michael Lobel on Confederate memorials and the history of “degenerate art."

by Michael Lobel via Art Forum on June 27, 2020

Immaculately Restored Film Lets You Revisit Life in New York City in 1911

Other than one or two of the world's supercentenarians, nobody remembers New York in 1911.

by Colin Marshall via Open Culture on April 20, 2018

Ellis Island's Forgotten Final Act as a Cold War Detention Center

The idealistic interpretation of Ellis Island should be revisited.

by Brianna Nofil via Atlas Obscura on February 2, 2016

37 Maps That Explain How America Is a Nation of Immigrants

It's impossible to understand the country without knowing who's been kept out, who's been let in, and how they've been treated once they arrive.

by Dara Lind via Vox on January 12, 2015

Remarks at the Signing of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

President Lyndon B. Johnson, Liberty Island, New York, October 3, 1965.

by Lyndon Baines Johnson via LBJ Presidential Library on October 3, 1965

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