As the United States yet again comes to grips with this question, it will have to do it without an active facility like Ellis Island. Rather than passing through something like Ellis Island, today’s immigrants enter the country through airports like JFK or LAX, or pass across the Canadian and Mexican borders. The decision to allow immigrants entry into the country is made at American consulates abroad, not at immigration stations at American ports, although increasing numbers of immigrants are bypassing the cumbersome visa process and entering the country illegally.
In this new era of mass immigration, is it not too far-fetched to ask whether Ellis Island will go the way of that other once-totemic symbol of the American founding? One hundred years from now, will Ellis Island seem as quaint, distant, and unrepresentative as Plymouth Rock does now to a lot of Americans? Instead, will the descendants of Hispanic immigrants seek to build a memorial along the Mexican border fence that asserts their entrance into the American mainstream?
The future is notoriously hard to predict, but the fight over the meaning of Ellis Island—and the meaning of immigration in general— will most likely remain a part of our national dialogue for as long as individuals feel the need to pick themselves up from their homelands and make that American passage, whether by boat, plane, or foot.
Acknowledgments
WHEN DISCUSSING THE TITLE OF THE BOOK WITH MY EDITOR, I requested a slight change. Modestly, I asked that the subtitle be changed to “A History of Ellis Island” instead of “The History of Ellis Island.” I lost that argument but still think that it would have been a more appropriate subtitle. My modesty stemmed from my belief that it is impossible to write a comprehensive history of Ellis Island. Its history is literally that of millions of stories, of those who arrived and those who processed them, and of the numerous political and legal battles fought over the inspection station. Most readers will not find the names of their ancestors in this book, but I hope that they come away with a better sense of the many meanings of Ellis Island and how this country dealt with immigrants in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century.
Readers should keep in mind a few things. First, all of the names that appear in these pages are real. Some historians have used pseudonyms when discussing immigrants passing through Ellis Island because of the personal nature of their stories. Because of the passage of time and the public nature of these records, I have chosen to use actual names, though I have tried to tell all the stories with tact and sensitivity.
Second, it is important to keep in mind that many of the stories told about immigrants in these pages come from government records. Many of the immigrants do not “speak” directly to us, but instead “speak” through reports of government officials or transcripts of hearings at Ellis Island. Many of those recording the words of immigrants did not sympathize with those before them. To complicate matters, many of the words had to be translated by other officials before being added to the record. This is not to discount the importance of such historical records (often they are the only ones we have). It just reminds us that all sources have their own set of limitations.
Lastly, terms like “moron,” “idiot,” “lunatic,” “imbecile,” “mental defective,” “undesirable,” and “desirable” appear throughout the text, usually without quotation marks. This is a stylistic decision to make the narrative flow better, but does not imply that the author concurs in the often harsh judgments made against many immigrants by those who used such terms.
R ESEARCHING AND WRITING A book is ultimately a solitary endeavor. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the help that I received from various people along the way.
Phil Costopoulos, Matt Dallek, Tim Hacsi, Adam Rothman, and Tevi Troy all
422 ⁄ Acknowledgments
read parts of the manuscript and provided much-needed feedback. Kevin Swope deserves special mention for reading almost the entire manuscript and giving voluminous comments throughout. Chris Capozzola graciously shared with me his own research on World War I.
Kitty and Ira Carnahan have unfailingly provided support and friendship through the years in ways too numerous to count. Brittany Huckabee has been an invaluable editor and sounding board over the course of two books. Stephen Haas has shared his love of good books and good wine. Steve Thernstrom provided some important help at a crucial time for which I am grateful. Seth Kamil, owner of Big Onion Walking Tours and a good friend, unwittingly helped with the book many years ago when he scheduled me to give tours at Ellis Island while I was working my way through graduate school. Susan Ferber graciously shared her Ellis Island story with me.
Anyone working on immigration history knows Marian Smith. To use a cliché, she is a national treasure. As the senior historian at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (formerly the INS), Marian generously shared her vast knowledge of the topic and assisted me in navigating some bureaucratic hurdles.
Justin Kehoe, Dalton Little, Dennis Bilger, Amy Lewis, and Ben D’Amore provided research assistance at various stages of the process. Jim Thayer deserves separate thanks. As an undergraduate and graduate student, Jim has been a faithful research assistant and computer guru who has generously offered his help above and beyond what was required under his assistantship. Douglas Baynton, J. T. E. Richardson, and William Forbath graciously shared their research with me. Binkie McSweeney Orthwein and Susan Womack shared material relating to their ancestors who worked at Ellis Island. Robert Murphy of the Knights of Columbus Museum used his detective skills to track down an important photograph.
Besides providing me with a steady paycheck, the University of Massachusetts, Boston, also gave me a Joseph P. Healey Endowment Grant, which allowed a summer of research in Washington, D.C. I want to thank Donna Kuizenga, Roberta Wollons, Spencer Di Scala, and Lester Bartson.
The publication of this book would have been delayed even more had it not been for a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. This generous grant allowed me to take a year’s leave from teaching to concentrate on reading, research, and writing.
My agent, Rafe Sagalyn, deserves a great deal of credit for helping this book along. After a chance meeting at a Washington party many years ago, Rafe took a chance on a then-unpublished author. I appreciate his patience over these past seven years and the faith he has shown in this book.
My editor, Tim Duggan, has proven to be a wise editor whose comments and edits have pushed me to make this a more readable narrative, while at the same time not losing sight that this is also a serious work of history. This is a better book for his efforts. At HarperCollins, I would also like to thank Tim’s assistant, Allison Lorentzen, for her help, and Martha Cameron for her excellent copyediting.
Donna Beath came into my life toward the end of this project. Not quite realizing what was ahead, she threw herself into the role of reader and critic, sometimes going over chapter drafts while sitting on the beach. She has put up with the ups and downs that are an inevitable part of any book project with her warm smile, good cheer, and an always ready cup of tea.
My ties to Ellis Island are not merely professional. It was from my late grandfather that I first learned of Ellis Island, which Pop passed through at least once as a young immigrant from Italy. His wife, my grandmother Antoinette, was born in New York’s Little Italy, but her parents, stepmother, and brothers passed through Castle Garden and Ellis Island.
Acknowledgments / 423
The joy of finishing this book is mixed with a great deal of sadness. Over the course of researching and writing, I have lost two of my aunts. I wish that Marion Marino and Kitty Molinari were still here to see this book.
As I write these words, it has been two months since my father passed away. In addition to the countless hours we spent over the years watching innumerable baseball and football games and boxing matches, it was my father who first encouraged my interest in history and politics. He taught me an important lesson that too few young people learn: Not only does history matter, bu
t it is also endlessly fascinating.
My father suffered from many health problems over the years. He never thought he would see me graduate from college, but he did. He never thought he would see me get my PhD, but he did. He never thought he would see the publication of my first book, but he did. He desperately wanted to see this book published, and although he didn’t say so, I know that his nagging over the last year or so to finish it was brought on by the fact that he wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold on.
As my father’s condition worsened this past summer, I spent a great deal of time driving back and forth to New York to be with him. In my spare time, I was finally able to finish the manuscript. But it was too late. This fall, when we knew that the time was near, I told him I was sorry that he wouldn’t see the book. “I tried,” he told me with a smile. “I tried.” And he did. He fought so hard for so many years, but in the end it was all too much.
Although his suffering has ended and he is now in a better place, that doesn’t take away the deep sadness I feel from his absence. It is hard to imagine that I won’t hear his voice again or that I won’t be able to share the reviews of this book with him. There is still so much more that I want to say to him and so much more that I want to hear from him. However, I was blessed to have him around for as long as I did, and I am grateful for everything that he did for me. I think about him every day, as I will for the rest of my life.
Thankfully, my mother, Maria, is still here to share the joy of this book’s publication. She is a “JFK immigrant” who arrived in New York by airplane after the closing of Ellis Island, coming during the quota years of the early 1960s. Words cannot describe how grateful I am for her love and support.
Watertown, Massachusetts December 2008
Notes
ABBREVIATIONS
AH American Hebrew
ANY Archives of the Archdiocese of New York, St. Joseph’s Seminary,
Yonkers, New York
BG Boston Globe
BH Boston Herald
CC Calvin Coolidge Papers, Library of Congress
CN Charles Nagel Papers, Yale University
CR Charles Recht Papers, Tamiment Library, New York University EG Emma Goldman Papers, University of California, Berkeley FLG Fiorello La Guardia Papers, La Guardia and Wagner Archives, La
Guardia Community College, City University of New York HW Harper’s Weekly
HP Herbert Parsons Papers, Columbia University
HST Harry S. Truman Papers, Official File, Harry S. Truman
Presidential Library, Independence, Missouri
INS Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Record
Group 85, National Archives, Washington, DC
IRL Papers of the Immigration Restriction League, Harvard University JAMA Journal of the American Medical Association
LD The Literary Digest
LOC Library of Congress
MK Max Kohler Papers, American Jewish Historical Society NAR North American Review
NMB Nicholas Murray Butler Papers, Columbia University NYHS New York Historical Society
NYM New York Medical Journal
NYPL New York Public Library
NYS New York Sun
NYT New York Times
NYTM New York Times Magazine
NYTrib New York Tribune
NYW New York World
OS Oscar Straus Papers, Library of Congress
PSM Popular Science Monthly
RMN Richard M. Nixon Papers, National Archives, College Park,
Maryland
SG Samuel Gompers Papers, University of Maryland, College Park SP Saturday Evening Post
TR Theodore Roosevelt Papers, Library of Congress
TVP Terence V. Powderly Papers, The Catholic University of America WC William E. Chandler Papers, Library of Congress
WGH Warren G. Harding Papers, Library of Congress
WL William Langer Papers, University of North Dakota WSJ Wall Street Journal
WHT William Howard Taft Papers, Library of Congress WP Washington Post
WW Woodrow Wilson Papers, Library of Congress
WW-NYPL William Williams Papers, New York Public Library WW-Yale William Williams Family Papers, Yale University
INTRODUCTION
1 By 1912, thirty-three-year-old: On the Tyni family, see File 53525-37, INS.
2 Unlike the Tyni family: For the story of Anna Segla, see File 52880-77, INS.
3 Other immigrants: Letter from Louis K. Pittman, December 3, 1985, Public Health Service Historians Office, Rockville, MD.
3 Others, luckier than Pittman: For the story of Frank Woodhull/Mary Johnson, see NYT, October 5, 6, 1908; NYTrib, October 5, 1908; New York Herald, October 5, 1908; and Erica Rand, The Ellis Island Snow Globe (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), Chapter 2.
5 For these individuals: Bruce M. Stave, John F. Sutherland, with Aldo Salerno, From the Old Country: An Oral History of European Migration to America (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994), 44–45.
5 No one story: James Karavolas, who arrived as a six-year-old in 1915, told of his memories of Ellis Island years later. “Ellis Island didn’t impress me at all. The memory is faint,” Karavolas admitted. Peter Morton Coan, Ellis Island Interviews: In Their Own Words (New York: Checkmark Books, 1997), 279.
7 The process at: Edward A. Steiner, On the Trail of the Immigrant (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1906), 72; Stephen Graham, With Poor Immigrants to America (New York: Macmillan, 1914), 44.
7 The central sifting: Allan McLaughlin, “How Immigrants Are Inspected,” PSM, February 1905; J. G. Wilson, “Some Remarks Concerning Diagnosis by Inspection,” NYM, July 8, 1911; Alfred C. Reed, “The Medical Side of Immigration,” PSM, April 1912; E. H. Mullan, “Mental Examination of Immigrants: Administration and Line Inspection at Ellis Island,” Public Health Reports, U.S. Public Health Service, May 18, 1917; and Elizabeth Yew, “Medical Inspection of Immigrants at Ellis Island, 1891–1924,” Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 56, no. 5 (June 1980).
8 All of these ideas: Speech by Henry Cabot Lodge before the Boston City Club, March 20, 1908, reprinted, 60th Congress, 1st Session, Senate Document 423.
9 Traditional histories: John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1955), 4. For a critique of Higham’s “psychopathological approach,” see Aristide R. Zolberg, A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006), 6–8.
9 The “nativist theme”: See John Higham, “Another Look at Nativism,” Catholic Historical Review, July 1958 and John Higham, “Instead of a Sequel, or How I Lost My Subject,” Reviews in American History 28, no. 2 (2000). 10 Few Americans argued: Allan McLaughlin, “Immigration and Public Health,” PSM, January 1904.
11 Take the opinions: Max Kohler, “Immigration and the Jews of America,” AH, January 27, 1911.
11 On the other side: Frank Sargent, “The Need of Closer Inspection and Greater Restriction of Immigrants,” Century Magazine, January 1904.
11 “We desire to”: American Jewish Committee report quoted in Max J. Kohler, Immigration and Aliens in the United States: Studies of American Immigration Laws and the Legal Status of Aliens in the United States (New York: Bloch Publishing Company, 1936), 1.
11 The laws that dealt: See Erika Lee, “The Chinese Exclusion Example: Race, Immigration, and American Gatekeeping, 1882–1924,” Journal of American Ethnic History, Spring 2002; Lucy E. Salyer, Laws Harsh As Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995). On the role of Angel Island in historical interpretations of immigration, see Roger Daniels, “No Lamps Were Lit for Them: Angel Island and the Historiography of Asian American Immigration,” Journal of American Ethnic History 17, no. 1 (Fall 1997).
CHAPTER ONE: ISLAND
19 Fifty thousand: Daniel Allen Hearn, Legal Executions in New York State, 16
39– 1963 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1997), 40, 299–300.
19 Pirates bring to: Rudolph Reimer, “History of Ellis Island,” mimeo, 1934, 6–7, NYPL.
20 When Washington Irving: Washington Irving, History, Tales and Sketches (New York: Library of America, 1983), 628–629.
20 “Guests from Gibbet Island”: Washington Irving, “Guests from Gibbet Island,” in Charles Neider, ed., Complete Tales of Washington Irving (New York: Da Capo Press, 1998). Irving also returns to the theme in his short story “Dolph Heyliger.”
20 Pirate hangings: “Life and Confession of Thomas Jones,” 1824, NYHS.
21 A similar tale: “Trial and Confession of William Hill,” 1826, NYHS; Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (New York: Signet Classics, 1997), 26.
21 On the night: Genius of Universal Emancipation, January 2, 1827; Ralph Clayton, “Baltimore’s Own Version of ‘Amistad’: Slave Revolt,” Baltimore Chronicle, January 7, 1998, http://baltimorechronicle.com/slave_ship2.html.
22 Confusion reigned: Reimer, “History of Ellis Island,” 24; Commercial Advertiser, April 23, 1831; Workingman’s Advocate, April 30, 1831.
22 Gibbs was a white man: “Mutiny and Murder: Confession of Charles Gibbs,” (Providence, RI: Israel Smith, 1831), NYHS.
23 Their dead bodies: New York Evening Post, April 23, 1831; Atkinson’s Saturday Evening Post, April 30, 1831.
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