As we were going to press it was announced that our own Frank McCourt won a Pulitzer Prize for his memoir Angela’s Ashes. Over the years many Irish Americans have been so honored. Boston Globe columnist Eileen McNamara (all four grandparents were Irish) was also a Pulitzer recipient this year. Two years ago Jim Dwyer (the son of immigrants), currently a columnist with The New York Daily News, received a Pulitzer for a body of work which included his coverage on Northern Ireland.
Full of pride in these descendants of Irish immigrants and their contributions to America, I was moved to find out more about Joseph Pulitzer. The Ellis Island &Statue of Liberty handbook proved an unexpected source.
Mr. Pulitzer, whose name graces these most American of literary awards, was an immigrant, something worth noting in this present-day anti-immigrant climate.
Newly arrived in America from Hungary, Joseph Pulitzer fought in the Civil War. (Then as now, enlisting in or being drafted into the armed forces does not require U.S. citizenship.)
After the war Pulitzer moved to St. Louis where he started his journalistic career with the Westliche Post, a German-language newspaper. (Will such foreign-language newspapers be outlawed by conservatives who deem bilingualism as anti-American?)
Pulitzer went on to publish the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the New York World, two very successful newspapers in which he championed the cause of the working man.
Like many immigrants he had a fierce love of his adopted country, and the ideals of liberty that it espoused, and when he had the opportunity he used his influence to save Lady Liberty.
The French had raised the money for the statue, the Americans were supposed to pay for the base, but by 1884, after years of fundraising. there was little happening on this side of the Atlantic, and it looked as if the gift to the American people would be turned down.
Congress rejected a bill appropriating $100.000 for the venture. New York did approve a grant of $50,000, but the expenditure was vetoed by the governor.
It was Pulitzer, the immigrant, who turned things around. In his editorials in the World he called on the ordinary people of America to come to the aid of Lady Liberty, promising that anyone who contributed even one cent would have their names printed in his newspaper.
The ploy worked. Thanks to the intervention of Pulitzer one hundred thousand dollars was raised by 120,000 individual contributions.
Government was quick to ride on the bandwagon once the money was in place. At the dedication of the statue on October 28, 1886, President Cleveland emoted, “We will not forget that Liberty has made here her home, nor shall her chosen altar be neglected.”
In 1986, at the rededication, President Ronald Reagan declared, “We are the keepers of the flame of liberty; we hold it high for the world to see.”
In today’s climate the words of both Presidents ring false. Lady Liberty, recognized worldwide as the symbol that best expressed the ideals of America — who for more than a century signified to new immigrants that they were entering a safe haven from persecution — has become fodder for political cartoons. Her very presence is insulted by politicians such as Pete Wilson (grandson of an Irish immigrant), the architect of the fiercely anti-immigrant Proposition 187, who chose the Battery Park site looking towards Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty to launch his presidential campaign.
Wilson’s cheap politics helped stir up the hysteria that led to the new Welfare law and its mean-spirited approach to legal immigrants.
Now, Irish and other immigrants who paid social security and taxes and who in every way led exemplary lives but who, perhaps harboring the dream of returning to their home country on retirement, did not become citizens, will lose Supplemental Security Income benefits and all other public assistance. Old, enfeebled, their dream of returning home unrealized, these grandparents and parents of American citizens are in danger of being thrown out on the street.
And foreign nationals seeking political asylum here will find it virtually impossible under the new law.
What would Joseph Pulitzer say about the manner in which America is treating a segment of the population that has been the source of so much of its success? Perhaps he would quote President Lincoln: “Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories and its hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it?”
Leave a Reply