When the Statue of Liberty was completed in 1886, it was a symbol of friendship with France, and a celebration of democracy and the end of American slavery. It wasn’t, however, the symbol of welcome to the world’s tired and “huddled masses” that it is today. How the statue came to be a beacon to new arrivals in the US has to do with the poem inscribed at its base: “The New Colossus,” which was lost to obscurity for decades before claiming its place in the nation’s collective conscious.
