How a Forgotten Poem Transformed the Statue of Liberty

Our American Stories

iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture, Documentary

4.3 • 737 Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this episode of Our American Stories, long before the Statue of Liberty became a beacon for newcomers, it was simply a gift from France that struggled to find a purpose. To raise money for the statue's pedestal, Jewish American poet Emma Lazarus wrote a sonnet about the sculpture, never expecting it to be more than a throwaway donation. Years later, as anti-immigrant fervor spread through the country, her friend Georgina Schuyler returned to the poem and recognized the power in its plain plea for mercy.

Professor Elizabeth Stone shares the story of how Schuyler quietly worked to place The New Colossus inside the statue's pedestal and, in doing so, changed the meaning of the monument itself.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an I-Heart podcast.
0:02.5	Guaranteed Human.
0:14.3	This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,
0:18.2	the show where America is the star and the American people.
0:22.3	And we love to hear your stories.
0:24.5	Our listeners' stories are adored here by our staff.
0:27.9	We love to produce them, put them up on air.
0:30.0	Send them to Our American Stories.com.
0:32.9	They're some of our favorites.
0:34.7	Up next, a story about the remarkable woman who gave Lady Liberty her identity,
0:39.9	Georgina Schuyler. Dr. Elizabeth Stone, journalist and professor of literature at Fordham University,
0:46.1	is here to tell the story of how the Statue of Liberty, a gift to America from France,
0:52.3	designed by sculptor Friedrich Bartolte, came to be the worldwide
0:56.6	symbol of freedom and opportunity we know today through a visionary woman named Georgina Schuyler,
1:04.0	who recognized that a poem written by her friend Emma Lazarus could change the definition
1:10.1	of the monument forever.
1:12.5	Let's get into it.
1:15.0	It's a sonnet. It's called the new colossus because there was an old colossus.
1:21.1	This is the new colossus, and it's a woman.
1:26.8	Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame with conquering limbs astride from land to land.
1:33.3	Here at our sea wash, sunset gates shall stand a mighty woman with a torch whose flame is the imprisoned lightning and her name, Mother of Exiles.
1:47.3	From her beacon hand glows worldwide welcome, her mild eyes command the Airbridge Harbor that Twin Cities frame.
	...

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