Immigration is considered to be one of the
key-defining characteristics of American national identity.
On 1st January 1892, Ellis Island Immigration Station
was opened to process newly arriving immigrants and came
to symbolise a change in attitude towards immigration.
Between 1892 and 1924, over 16 million passed through
the station amounting to 71% of all migrants to the US.
Ellis Island was closed soon after a 1924 Congress Bill
that curtailed mass immigration and provided that those
seeking entry to the United States would be cleared in
their country of origin. The island housed deportees for
a time but was finally closed in 1954. Thirty years later
work began to restore the buildings and create a museum
of immigration, which opened in September 1990.
You will need at least half a day to see
the whole of the Ellis Island museum. Here are some things
to think about after the Ellis Island trip:
How does early twentieth century Ellis Island compare
with JFK as a ‘gateway to America’?
What is the symbolism of the choice of this location
for the processing centre and later for the museum?
What does Ellis Island pick out as the key elements
in the history of emigration into New York/ United States?
More generally, what reading does Ellis Island give
of the migrant experience?
How was the United States represented in promotional
material that encouraged migration in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries?
How did the ‘reception’ immigrants received
in Ellis Island, and more generally in the US, compare
with the messages given out by the promotion material?
The creation of visual representations can serve
as a way of labelling certain groups to create ’distance’
between them and the general population. What evidence
is there of such distancing in materials collected at
Ellis Island?
How are discourses used to socially exclude some
and socially include others?
Why was it seen important to create an ‘American’
identity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries? Is the creation of an ‘American’
identity as important today as it was then?
Ellis Island claims to celebrate the diversity of
Americanism – ethnic cultures coming together
– but what of evidence of this celebration in
downtown New York?
The Statue of Liberty is located on Liberty Island in
New York Harbour. In 1886, the French presented it to
the American people to honour the friendship between the
two nations. Today the statue is one of the most widely
recognised landmarks in the world. It is probably New
York's most famous icon and has a strong symbolic association
with immigrants particularly since 1903 when a poem ,
'The New Colossus', written by Emma Lazarus was laid in
the pedestal and it reads the quote above.
Consider the following
why do you think the French built the Statue of Liberty?
What does it symbolise?
How has its reading changed over time?
What does the Statue contribute to the sense of place?
The opening hours are 9.30pm
- 5.30pm; boats leave from Battery Park and run about
every 30 -45 minutes from 9.15am; Charge approximately
$7(includes entrance to Ellis Island).
