Part V - Memory

Chapter 18 - Decline
Ellis Island was now up for sale as surplus government property. In response to complaints, the Eisenhower government delayed the sale of the immigration station. Nonetheless, bidding was opened in 1958, but the one bid, from a developer who wanted to turn the island into a convention center, was too low.

Historians and politicians including Oscar Handlin, Edward Corsi and Allan Nevins came forward to advocate for the preservation of the island.

How should Ellis Island to be remembered and commemorated? As a place of suffering for what immigrants had to undergo to be allowed into the U.S.? As a symbol of “the welding of many nationalities, races and religions into a united nation, bound together by freedom and equality of opportunity”? (Corsi’s words, quoted on page 381) As a museum?

Civil Rights Era
In addition to promoting civil rights for all Americans, President Lyndon B. Johnson called for an immigration law “based on the work a man can do and not where he was born and how he spells his name.” (page 382) He signed a bill ending immigration quotas as they had previously been established. However, overall quotas remained, limiting the total number of people who could immigrate to the U.S. each year.

In 1965 President Johnson signed a proclamation making Ellis Island part of the National Park Service. Plans for developing the island never materialized.

A Seedy Ghost Town
How did children and grandchildren of those who came through Ellis Island regard the island? Was it a symbol of their success and assimilation, or just a place where their ancestors happened to land?

The neglected and empty buildings were rundown, vandalized and rotting.

African-Americans and Ellis Island
The family stories of most African-Americans, which included slavery, emancipation and discrimination under Jim Crow laws, were dramatically different from the stories of voluntary immigrants who arrived in an America where there were jobs and opportunities for everyone willing to work hard.

“Race and immigration in America have an intertwined and complex relationship,” Cannato states. (page 384) “Periods of mass immigration have coincided with low points in African-American history.” (page 385)

In this chapter we learn the bizarre story of a physician, Dr. Thomas Matthew, and his attempt to establish a self-sufficient African-American community on Ellis Island. Although his colony was not legally established at first, the group was left alone, and Mathew later got a five-year permit from the National Park Service allowing his group to remain on the island. The plan ultimately failed because of Mathew’s legal and financial problems and the “deteriorated, dilapidated, unsanitary” conditions of the island. (page 389)

The Melting Pot
Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan published a book, Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City, in 1963. In their study of racial and ethnic groups in New York, the authors concluded that the popular melting-pot U.S. image was misleading because ethnic groups maintained distinct and dynamic identities. Despite this evidence, they maintained that assimilation is still the goal of American culture.

In Cannato’s opinion, “the growth of black power and racial pride among African-Americans helped spur white ethnic groups to more public displays of their own identity.” (page 390)

In the meantime, Ellis Island “had been forgotten and sat in New York Harbor as a rotting symbol of a bygone era.” (page 390)