• Emma Lazarus (1849-1887). American Jewish poet, writer. Raised in the rarefied cultural atmosphere of one of New York’s leading Sephardic families, Lazarus published her first poems at age 17. She was an established writer and translator when the 1881 pogroms forced thousands of Russian Jews to flee to the United States. As volunteer work with these immigrants inflamed her passionate soul, she turned her literary energies to the cause of publicizing their plight and called for a renewal of Jewish culture in America and in Judaism’s historic homeland in Palestine. When she died, many mourned this quiet woman who had kindled a torch that continues to illuminate America’s golden door.
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Emma Lazarus and the New Colossus postcard

From Women Making History: The Revolutionary Feminist Postcard Art of Helaine Victoria Press by Julia M. Allen and Jocelyn H. Cohen

  • Printed letterpress in black type with rose and turquoise accent, 4 ¼” x 6”. The front of the card quotes the well-known sonnet Lazarus wrote in 1883 for a literary auction to aid the Statue of Liberty: The New Colossus
    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-tossed to me,
    I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” In 1903, the sonnet was inscribed on Liberty’s pedestal. Although millions of people read her words every year, they know little of this American Jewish woman’s life.
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