Emma Lazarus was born in New York City on July 22, 1849 to Moses and Esther (Nathan) Lazarus. It was a very prominent fourth generation Jewish family and one of the oldest in New York City. The "privileged" Emma was well educated and by the time she was age 25, she was a published poet and author.
During the time Emma was growing up and being educated, the world was changing very rapidly. By the time Emma was 20, the population of New York City, which was her home, had more than doubled to over a million people. The people who swelled the population of the city came from every corner of the globe. Emma, welathy and privileged as she was, grew up among these different people in lower Manhattan and absorbed these multi-cultural influences.
New York City, by the early 1880's, was the "cultural hub" of America. It was also the destination point for thousands of Jewish immigrants escaping the Pogroms of Russia. Emma was a vital part of the artistic climate in New York, writing articles on music, art and literature that were published in the Century and the Critic. She was a welcomed part of the cultural elite and traveled extensively throughout Europe. She also became one of the most outspoken Americans on Jewish issues. She used her celebrity to bring attention to the idea of the resettlement of Jews in Palestine. She created classes for Jewish immigrants to learn and helped to find them housing in an overcrowded city. She started an organization called the Society for the Improvement and Colonization of East European Jews. She wrote articles on Jewish history and cultural life that were published for both Christian and Jewish readers.
In the year 1883, Emma Lazarus published her famous poem, "The New Colossus" for an auction at the Art Loan Fund Exhibition in Aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund for the Statue of Liberty. The statue was a gift to the United States from France called, "Liberty Enlightening the World," honoring both of the two nations who achieved independence through revolution. Later, the poem fell away into obscurity while the nation waited for its "Lady Liberty."
In 1886 the Statue was erected in New York Harbor where President Grover Cleveland said of Liberty, that her light would, "pierce the darkness of man's ignorance and oppression." Emma Lazarus would not live to understand the full impact of what she had written. She died in 1887 after visiting France and it was not until four years later (1901), that her poem "The New Colossus" was added to a bronze plaque at the base of the statue. It was then that Liberty took on her more well known meaning. Baring Emma's words, she was born the ``Mother of Exiles," calling out across the seas, the most famous immigrant herself, welcoming those from foreign lands to America - a land of freedom and hope.