L'Italo-Americano

www.italoamericano.org 18 L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, MAY 30, 2019 LA VITA ITALIANA TRADITIONS HISTORY CULTURE D ear Readers, Ellis Is- land had no "Wall" to keep the "undesir- able" immigrants out of the USA but they had an abbondanza of rules, regu- lations and restrictions that did. My father Vincenzo came through Ellis Island in the 1920s but many Italo- Americans have grandparents who "got off the boat" in Boston or Bal- timore because they arrived on out shores before the 1892 opening of Ellis Island. With the US govern- ment in charge, a series of immi- gration laws were enacted, that in- cluded a ban on convicts, polygamists, anarchists and a Chi- nese exclusion act. With the opening of Ellis  Is- land, in 1892, a system was put into place to manage the large number of people that needed to be processed through "the system." Upon arrival, immigrants were tagged, watched by inspectors and doctors, and met with a registry clerk with the shipping manifests listing all of the people hoping to immigrate. There were interpreters to help with a literacy test. If you passed all criteria, you entered your new country - if not, you were ei- ther held or denied entry. Addi- tional exclusions included: likely to become a public charge (the most likely reason, as subjective as it might have been, for exclu- sion); disease and contract labor (the unions did not want you to say you had a job in hand). *** A little history tells us that in 1667, Isaac Bedloe, a Dutch colonist, obtained a colonial land grant for a small island later known as Bedloe's Island. In 1794, after the American Revolution, federal dollars were appropriated to con- struct fortifications on Bedloe's Is- land.  The U.S. Army began construc- tion of a star-shaped fort on Bed- loe's Island in 1807.  Edouard de Laboulaye pro- poses that France give the United States a statue representing liberty for its centennial and by 1870 Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi be- came the sculptor o the Statue of Liberty.  The Statue was completed in France in 1884 but had no pedestal. In the US Joseph Pulitzer led a fundraising drive with many nick- els and dimes from school children that raised over $100.000 to build the pedestal for the Statute. On June 17th, 1885 the Statue arrived in New York and placed in storage for a year while the pedestal was completed. When the Statue's pedestal was completed the task of reassembling the Statue began. In 1886, on Oc- tober 28th, the Statue was unveiled at a dedication ceremony on Bed- loe's Island. One million people turned out for New York City's first ticker tape parade. Bedloe's Island was renamed Liberty Island by a joint resolution in Congress and signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956. President Johnson signed a Presidential Proclamation, adding Ellis Island to the National Park Service, under the administration of the Statue of Liberty National Monument in 1982. *** In 1992, the Centennial year of the 1892 opening of Ellis Island, the American Immigrant Wall of Honor was unveiled and with the salesmanship of Lee Iacocca, Leg- endary Chrysler Corporation CEO, who in 1982 had been appointed by President Ronald Reagan to serve as the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Foundation's first chairman, my father Vincenzo's name was added to the American Immigrant Wall of Honor. This wall pays trib- ute to those brave individuals who with little money or ability to speak English, risked everything for the chance to build a new life in the land of the free.  Located directly behind Ellis Is- land's Main Building, The Wall of Honor, the largest wall of names in the world, is inscribed with the names of over 410,000 individuals and families who have been hon- ored by their descendants through a donation to the Ellis Island pro- ject. This very personal tribute is a gift of gratitude and remembrance to an ancestor whose courage and determination paved the way for the freedom and opportunity we so often take for granted. Today, chil- dren are proud to find the name of their grandparents or great-grand- parents recorded with others who came and built America. Lee Iacocca, CEO of Chrysler Chairman of the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Foundation

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