In their own words, coupled with hand-painted collage illustrations, immigrants recall their arrival in the United States. Includes brief biographies and facts about the Ellis Island Oral History Project.
From 1892 to 1954, Ellis Island processed 12 million immigrants. Produced in cooperation with the Ellis Island Research Foundation, "Ellis Island Interviews" collects the oral histories of more than 130 men and women from all socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. The stories of these last original surviving immigrants are enhanced by more than 60 photographs, many never before published.
More than twelve million immigrants, many of them children, passed through Ellis Island's gates between 1892 and 1954. Children also came through the "Guardian of the Western Gate," the detention center on Angel Island in California that was designed to keep Chinese immigrants out of the United States. Based on the oral histories of fifty children who came to the United States before 1950, this book chronicles their American odyssey against the backdrop of World Wars I and II, the rise and fall of Hitler's Third Reich, and the hardships of the Great Depression. Ranging in age from four to sixteen years old, the children hailed from Northern, Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe; the Middle East; and China. Across ethnic lines, the child immigrants' life stories tell a remarkable tale of human resilience. The sources of family and community support that they relied on, their educational aims and accomplishments, their hard work, and their optimism about the future are just as crucial today for the new immigrants of the twenty-first century. These personal narratives offer unique perspectives on the psychological experience of being an immigrant child and its impact on later development and well-being. They chronicle the joys and sorrows, the aspirations and achievements, and the challenges that these small strangers faced while becoming grown citizens.
A dramatic, multi-vocal account of the personal agonies and ecstasies that played out within the walls of Ellis Island, as told by Poland's greatest living journalist. This is the people's history of Ellis Island--the people who passed through it, and the people who were turned away from it. From Annie Moore, the Irishwoman who was the first to be processed there, to Arne Peterssen, the Norwegian who was the last to be taken away from the island via the official ferry boat in 1954, Ellis Island weaves together the personal experiences of forgotten individuals with those who live on in history: Fiorello La Guardia, Lee Iacocca, and other American leaders whose paths led them to the Island for various reasons through the years. Award-winning journalist Małgorzata Szejnert draws on unpublished testimonies, memoirs, archival photographs, and correspondence from many internees and immigrants, including Russians, Italians, Jews, Japanese, Germans, and Poles. At the book's core is a trove of personal letters from immigrants to their loved ones back home--letters which were confiscated and never delivered, finally discovered in a basement in Warsaw. But also brought to life are the Ellis Island employees: the doctors, nurses, commissioners, interpreters, social care workers, and even chaperones, who controlled the fates of these émigrés--often basing their decisions on pseudo-scientific ideas about race, gender, and disability. Sometimes families were broken up, and new arrivals were detained and quarantined for days, weeks, or even months. All told, the island compound spent longer as an internment camp than as a migration way-point--in addition to filling other roles through the years, including that of rescue station in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Now brought back to life by a master storyteller, this is a story of a place and its people, steeped in politics and history, that reshaped the United States.
Provides information about the immigration station in New York harbor, along with fictionalized accounts of the people who came through or worked there.
Called both the "Island of Hope" and "Island of Tears," Ellis Island has a history as rich and surprising as that of the immigrants who passed through its doors. Between 1892 and 1954, it was the first stop for some 12 million immigrants coming to America, a tiny speck of land in New York Harbor that served as their gateway to new lives in a strange new world. Their experiences are put into vivid historical context, highlighted with riveting firsthand accounts and vintage photographs that eloquently capture their hope and heartbreak. In addition, you'll read accounts of the hardworking officials manning the station and the reformers who strove to salvage the immigrants' humanity on their journey through the Golden Door.
This fascinating look into American history uncovers how some of our ancestors came to the United States, seeking freedom and fortune, and often risking everything to make a home in America. This resource tells the story of the immigrant history of the United States, using documents and photographs from the heyday of one of the most important immigration ports. The history of Ellis Island is revealed to be one of grit, misfortune, and luck that is both true of the island and of the people it welcomed to America?s shores.