Emma Lazarus (poet responsible for "The New Colossus" engraved inscription) -- her birthday

from Writer's Almanac (American Public Media - Garrison Keillor, Minnesota Public Radio):

July 22 is the birthday of American poet Emma Lazarus, born in New York City (1849). She came from a wealthy Jewish family, and her father paid to have her first collection of poems published when she was 17. Her early work impressed Ralph Waldo Emerson, and they corresponded for many years. In the 1880s, she was horrified to hear of violent anti-Semitic attacks in Russia and Germany, and her work took on a new Zionist focus. She became concerned with the plight of the poor and the refugee, and organized relief efforts for immigrant Jewish families. The Statue of Liberty committee approached her in 1883 and asked her to write a poem that they could auction off to raise money for the monument. She responded with "The New Colossus." The statue was erected in 1886, but she was in Europe. She sailed back to New York the following year, but she was too ill with Hodgkin's lymphoma to go on deck to see it as the boat passed, and she died without ever seeing the statue she'd help raise. "The New Colossus" includes the famous lines, "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."