How the Statue of Liberty symbolizes the American dream

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NARRATOR: New York City is neither a national nor a state capital, but it is a symbol. New York is part fact and part legend. The city's power and influence are reflected in landmarks that have come to signify America and the American dream to the rest of the world.

The Statue of Liberty, for example, was the gift of one democracy born of revolution to another. France commissioned the statue from sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi as a gift to a still-young United States in 1886, little more than a century after the declaration of American statehood and a little less than a century after the founding of the French republic. It symbolically affirmed the United States as a great nation among its fellow Western powers of the time.

The statue gazed over European immigrants as they arrived at nearby Ellis Island through the early 20th century. Anticipating the statue's significance to future citizens of the U.S., American poet Emma Lazarus wrote these famous words, inscribed at the statue's base:

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"...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-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

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NARRATOR: Thus, New York City was heralded as a gateway to social freedoms and economic opportunities. More than 17 million immigrants—many from Hungary, Poland, Sweden, Russia, and Italy—streamed through the port in search of a better life. To them, the statue symbolized the American dream.

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