joi's+speech

"Give me your tired your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

These words are a welcome to everyone who wishes to enter freedom, anyone who wants to be a part of our land. She stands tall, with broken chains at her feet, and a torch in her hand, lighting the way to liberty. The torch is her lamp, and the path to Liberty Island is the Golden Door. She towers over the city of New York, New York at a total of 151 feet and 1 inch. She was originally called “Liberty Enlightening the World,” but now, she is known around the globe as the Statue of Liberty. Everyone knows her, but do you know anything //about// her? What does she stand for? How did she come to be here? Where did she come from? The history of the Statue of Liberty played, and still plays a key role in the history of America-the land of the free.

The Statue of Liberty was a gift from the country of France, and was given to America to symbolize the friendship that was made between the two nations during the American Revolution. But over time, the statue began to mean something else to Americans-freedom.  A French sculptor, by the name of Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, created the sculpture by modeling the design after his own mother. His assistant was named Gustave Eiffel, who would later design the Eiffel Tower. The total height of the statue is 151 ft. 1 in. from the base of the pedestal to the tip of Liberty’s crown. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">She was so large, Bartholdi had to disassemble her after completing the figure, separating her into 350 different pieces. This was for the trip across the Atlantic Ocean. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have fit in the ship that brought her to America. <span style="FONT-FAMILY: Georgia, serif">However, the Americans were facing problems of their own. They realized the statue would need somewhere to stand, and something to stand on. They began building a pedestal on Liberty Island, but ran out of money before the project was finished. No one wanted to donate money to the pedestal, and nobody had any idea how they would ever get enough to finish the foundation. Later, a newspaper publisher named Joseph Pulitzer used his paper to get people to donate. He criticized the higher class, questioning why they were not using their money for the pedestal fund. He printed that it the lower class, who did not have as much money, were counting on them to give money to complete the project. This motivated the higher class, and Pulitzer raised more than $100,000. The pedestal was made from granite and marble, and was surrounded by a star-shaped wall,<span style="FONT-FAMILY: Georgia, serif">and is a total of 89 ft. tall. <span style="FONT-FAMILY: Georgia, serif">After the pedestal was completed, they could finally place Lady Liberty on Liberty Island. The opening ceremony took place Wednesday, October 25, 1881, where a minister and a man by the name of M. Laboulaye delivered a speech. Then, the moment all of America had been waiting for. The statue was uncovered, and Liberty’s torch was lit for the first time. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"> There are 154 steps inside the statue, from the pedestal to Liberty’s head. The torch was closed and can no longer be visited since the “Black Tom” explosion in 1916, and the crown was closed also after the 9/11 attacks. The whole structure weighs a total of 450,000 pounds, or 225 tons, and her face measures more than 8 feet tall. Her tablet 23’ 7” tall and 13’ 7” wide, and she has a waistline of 35 feet. She was restored in 1986, and the torch was covered with thin sheets of 24K gold.

<span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">The Statue of Liberty is a very important landmark of America, because it symbolizes our freedom and democracy, as well as America’s friendship with France. The broken shackles at her feet represent the oppression and tyranny that America has been through, and broken out of. The seven spikes on her crown represent the seven continents and seven seas. America welcomed one of the most important landmarks of all time over 200 years ago, on July 4, 1776.