“The New Colossus” (“Give me your tired, your poor, …”) was not mainstream American sentiment when Emma Lazarus wrote it in 1883 (one year after the Immigrant Act and the Chinese Exclusion Act). Indeed, it was somewhat radical, and she was inspired by the work she did with the despised refugees who were flooding the U.S. in her day (Jews from the Russian Empire). Slate history maven Rebecca Onion talks with Lazarus biographer Esther Schor about the poem and how its reception has changed over the decades. – Slate