Thread: Ellis Island strives to tell more complete immigration story

Ellis Island strives to tell more complete immigration story
By Charisse Jones
USA Today, September 24, 2008

New York -- For 62 years, millions of immigrants passed through the corridors of Ellis Island on their way to becoming Americans. Their journeys, however, are only part of the story.

What of those immigrants who came before and those who continue to come long after? What of the Africans who came not of their own free will and the Mexicans who through annexation suddenly found themselves Americans?

A new center on Ellis Island soon will tell those stories, too.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and other officials are scheduled to unveil plans today for The Peopling of America Center. It's an expansion of Ellis Island's Immigration Museum that will chronicle the years before the historic portal opened in 1892 and the evolving face of immigration since it closed in 1954. The center is slated to open in 2011.

"There were other ports of entry," says Stephen A. Briganti, president of The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, "but there's none as symbolic as Ellis Island, so we think it's important we tell the story of everybody, even the many people who didn't come through Ellis Island."

The new $20 million center will illuminate other eras in immigration history, such as the arrival in the mid-1800s of more than 4 million Irish, Germans and Scandinavians, the nation's first mass migration, says Alan Kraut, a history professor at American University. The National Park Service has contributed some of the funds, but the rest will come from private donations.
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http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/200 ... land_N.htm

"There were other ports of entry," says Stephen A. Briganti, president of The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, "but there's none as symbolic as Ellis Island, so we think it's important we tell the story of everybody, even the many people who didn't come through Ellis Island."

What is the point??? Ellis Island should stick to telling the story ONLY of those who came through Ellis Island.