Emma Lazarus was an American author of poetry, prose, and translations, as well as an activist for Jewish and Georgist causes. She is remembered for writing the sonnet "The New Colossus", which was inspired by the Statue of Liberty, in 1883. Its lines appear inscribed on a bronze plaque, installed in 1903, on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Lazarus was involved in aiding refugees to New York who had fled antisemitic pogroms in eastern Europe, and she saw a way to express her empathy for these refugees in terms of the statue. The last lines of the sonnet were set to music by Irving Berlin as the song "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor" for the 1949 musical Miss Liberty, which was based on the sculpting of the Statue of Liberty. The latter part of the sonnet was also set by Lee Hoiby in his song "The Lady of the Harbor" written in 1985 as part of his song cycle "Three Women".
Mary Edwards Walker, commonly referred to as Dr. Mary Walker, was an American abolitionist, prohibitionist, prisoner of war, and surgeon. She is the only woman to receive the Medal of Honor.
Anzia Yezierska was a Jewish-American novelist born in Mały Płock, Poland, which was then part of the Russian Empire. She emigrated as a child with her parents to the United States and lived in the immigrant neighborhood of the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Eleanor Antin is an American performance artist, film-maker, installation artist, conceptual artist and feminist artist.
Mary Antin was an American author and immigration rights activist. She is best known for her 1912 autobiography The Promised Land, an account of her emigration and subsequent Americanization.
Ruth Gruber was an American journalist, photographer, writer, humanitarian, and United States government official.
Syrian Americans are Americans of Syrian descent or background. The first significant wave of Syrian immigrants to arrive in the United States began in the 1880s. Many of the earliest Syrian Americans settled in New York City, Boston, and Detroit. Immigration from Syria to the United States suffered a long hiatus after the United States Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924, which restricted immigration. More than 40 years later, the Immigration Act of 1965, abolished the quotas and immigration from Syria to the United States saw a surge. An estimated 64,600 Syrians immigrated to the United States between 1961 and 2000.
Helen Frances Barolini was an American writer, editor, and translator. As a second-generation Italian American, Barolini often wrote on issues of Italian-American identity. Among her notable works are Umbertina (1979), a novel which tells the story of four generations of women in one Italian-American family; and an anthology, The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writings by Italian American Women (1985), which called attention to an emerging, and previously unnoticed, class of writers.
Stereotypes of Jews are generalized representations of Jews, often caricatured and of a prejudiced and antisemitic nature.
Hasia R. Diner is an American historian. Diner is the Paul S. and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History; Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, History; Director of the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History at New York University and Interim Director of Glucksman Ireland House NYU.
Saul Raskin was a Russian born American artist, writer, lecturer and teacher best known for his depiction of Jewish subjects.
Cecila Davidson Razovsky was a Jewish American social worker and activist for immigrants in the US.
Yente Serdatzky was a Russian-born American Yiddish-language writer of short fiction and plays, active in New York City.
From Plotzk to Boston is an 1899 memoir by author and immigration activist Mary Antin (1881–1949). It chronicles her emigration from her hometown of Polotsk in the Russian Empire to the United States in 1894, focusing primarily on her observations of life in unfamiliar surroundings, the emotional trials endured by her family, and the hardships that accompanied their passage to and eventual settlement in Boston, Massachusetts. Her first major publication, it laid the groundwork for her later autobiography and most famous work, The Promised Land (1912).
Fradl Shtok was a Jewish-American Yiddish-language poet and writer, who immigrated to the United States from Galicia, Austria-Hungary, at the age of 18 or 19. She is known as one of the first Yiddish poets to use the sonnet form; and her stories, which were less well received than her poems in her lifetime, have since been recognized as innovative for their exploration of subjectivity, and, in particular, for their depiction of Jewish female characters at odds with traditional roles and expectations.
Kate Holladay Claghorn was an American sociologist, economist, statistician, legal scholar, and Progressive Era activist, who became one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Lina Frank Hecht was one of Boston's leading philanthropists. She founded several of the city's earliest settlement houses, most notably the Hebrew Industrial School for Girls. She was active in the Women's Educational and Industrial Union, supported the arts, and helped launch the careers of Mary Antin and Louis Brandeis. In 1908 she became the first female vice president of the Federated Jewish Charities.
Fanny Goldstein (1895-1961) was an American librarian, bibliographer, and editor who founded Jewish Book Week. As head of the West End branch of the Boston Public Library (BPL), she was the first Jew to direct a public library branch in Massachusetts. During her tenure Goldstein made a point of recognizing the literature of the various ethnic communities of Boston, and curated a unique collection of Judaica. She also published literary articles and bibliographies and gave lectures on Jewish literature. After retiring in 1958 she became the literary editor of the Jewish Advocate.
Cecilia Greenstone Arnow was a social worker in New York who became known as "the Angel of Ellis Island".
