[...]
I am liberty.
I am the living symbol of all women, creed and races.
I am the hopes and dreams of all mankind.
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled men, your men, the masses yearning
to be free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send them, tempest toss to me.
I lift the lamp beside the golden door.
The waters of the deep, restlessly tumbling at my feet, there past
my sky-flung arm, the persecuted and oppressed,
the crushed in spirit.
To them I am the symbol.
Their eyes, haunted and fear-ridden, are filled with a thousand
agonizing memories.
But as they look upon me, a new-found courage bleeds.
And in their hearts, surging almost to the bursting point with hope, are
born new men and women, Americans.
Into the man-made canyons of Manhattan they poured.
Many were there already, but many more were welcome.
They joined the steel of these towers.
They carved subways beneath these avenues.
Into the tall forest they came with axe and saw and wedge.
They knew how to fell a tree to the line and how to spare the nearby settling.
On the Great Plains there were early settlers.
In Dakota they dwelt at peace with the Indian and in Texas with the Mexicans.
They organized the counties and gave their names to villages and cities.
In the mountain state they prospected in mind.
They shared with the native-born a continent's treasure of metals
precious and useful.
To the vineyards of the Pacific Coast, they brought their knowledge of the grape
and put it to good use.
So they came and so they spread, with hungry eyes and hearts,
all seeking for what I, Liberty, promised.
You see them?
The foreign-born who lately came to me, reversing the streets of my cities
boldly, openly.
But can you point them out?
In what manner do they differ from you or your neighbors?
And their children.
What one of them has been denied the rights and privileges of my own?
When you see them at play, carefree as children the world over should be, can you
honestly say, this one is alien?
That one has been denied anything?
Look upon the marketplaces, consider the storefronts.
Where I am is the invitation to all, enter and buy, no matter who you are.
Where I am not is the placard of discrimination.
Where in all my land is the law forbidding the free enterprise of the man who
seeks to better his lot by working harder, selling cheaper, or improving the
product of his trade or industry.
Where the list of registered voters posted outside the polling place that lacks
the names of descendants of all nationalities, the names of believers
in all creeds.
All these things and more, much more, have I pledged in my
name liberty.
To my adopted children I have said and pledged, hear the rich soil
yearning to bring forth the fruits of your labor, yours to have
and to hope.
There the mill, the plant, the factory where skilled workers produce a nation's
necessities and luxuries and also carve their own futures.
Would you enter the learned profession?
My great universities offer all of you their degrees.
You may be a lawyer, an architect, at cost only of your time and ambition.
Now let us see for ourselves the works and achievements of the foreign born.
We ride upon a great railroad system founded and built almost single handed by an
untutored immigrant boy.
Have I liberty kept faith with all who trusted me?
Ask the least of independent tradesmen or ask his cousin who operates the huge
mill employing thousands of fellow Americans.
Ask the keeper of the roadside stand the next time you stop for a hot dog.
Ask the merchant who operates the great chain of department stores.
Interrogate the little group at the crossroads store or survey the many
opinions of a teaming city.
Talk with the unskilled worker on the farm or converse with the athlete
training to win a championship.
Go to the well informed, to the policemen enforcing my
laws without fear or favor.
Ask the editor of this uncensored newspaper and his reporters and writers.
They can tell you there's the right to fair pay to the American
standard of living, to collective bargaining and social security.
There are the freedoms.
Freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom of economic enterprise,
and most important of all, freedom from fear.
Fear of the state or its laws.
There are the rights to common goal, to speak or be silent.
The right to education, to equality in the courts of justice, to rest in
recreation in the nation's playgrounds, to adventure.
Yes, the adventure of progress.
My sons and daughters, yours is an opportunity given to few among the teaming
millions upon this planet.
The dim trail ahead may not be always smooth, but at its end is a broad highway,
a better way of life, not only for ourselves, but for all
peoples everywhere.
Together we shall climb the heights and look upon that clean and decent
world, the democratic world.
For so long as in your hearts you wish to have me with you,
so long as you want me so much that you will fight for me.
If me be, die for me, but above
all, live for me, then
I shall be with you.
And I am liberty, enlightening the world, for I lift
the lamp beside the golden door.
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