I’m from Orchard Street. Are you? I have been told that over one in three Americans are from Orchard Street. Curious? Are you sure you are not from Orchard Street? If not, where is your Orchard Street?
For me, one of the most emotionally moving places in New York City is the Tenement Museum located at 103 — you guessed it — Orchard Street. This is the lower eastside of Manhattan and is probably a place where the Hop-On Hop-Off buses that fill the city with tourists don’t stop too often. (Schiller’s Liquor Bar is near. Sunday brunch is wonderful.)
The goal of the museum is to capture the stories of immigrants who started their lives in America on New York City’s lower eastside. The stories you hear begin in the 19th century. They are told while you tour tenement buildings that are across the street from the museum shop. You begin by walking up to the top story — usually four or five floors above street level — where your guide begins telling you about the first recorded family to live and work in the tenement. As you walk up you are going back in time. The rooms you visit are not restored but roughly/crudely returned to the way they were at the tenement building’s beginning. As you descend to another floor you move forward in time and learn the story of another family.
When you reach street level you see pictures of the current day descendants of the tenement’s residents. There you meet their descendants of today, the legacies of immigrants who found a place to work and live on Orchard Street. From what I remember, my maternal great grandmother, Margarette Emmel, knew Orchard Street before walking across the Manhattan Bridge to find Brooklyn Heights. Unless you are a Native American, you are a descendant of an immigrant. Where are you from?
The Statue of Liberty is iconic with the celebration of our freedom on the Fourth of July and any other day of the year for that matter. For me it is part of America’s holy ground. Beginning in 1883 it was probably the first amazing thing the future Orchard Street immigrants saw as they entered New York harbor. So, in some very real sense, as we celebrate our freedom with Lady Liberty, we should also celebrate being a nation of immigrants and the freedom of those who came to Orchard Street.
Emma Lazarus is the author of The New Colossus, the poem that is on the Statue of Liberty. These lines are well known beginning with “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” As a poet, she knew the right words to use. Lady Liberty calls to people who want to ‘breathe’ free. Emma did not say “be” free. I wonder if she deliberately chose the word “breathe” to say that freedom is not where we are (be); freedom is who we are (breathe). Like the air we breathe, freedom is part of our physical being and spiritual souls.
For those of you who know where I am going, I believe that criminals, murderers, drug dealers, pedophiles, etc. should be in jail regardless if they are immigrants or citizens. However, anyone who yearns to “breathe” free should be welcomed here. One of the problems with our current immigration system is that it is too difficult to enter legally. It is so difficult people need to enter illegally — they need to sneak in. People enter on one-week tourist visas knowing that they are planning to stay much longer, but there is no legal document that validates a longer stay. We need easier legal ways for people to get in. I suspect that if it is easier to get in, it will then become easier for people to return to their native lands knowing that they can come back.
Everywhere I go, I hear about labor shortages. Also, data clearly show that there are not enough workers paying into Social Security to support the future demands of retiring baby boomers. We have a growing economic constraint on our stand of living. It is a people problem. We need immigrants, seasonal workers, etc.
So, let us breathe our freedom today and let’s use our imagination to find ways to let anyone who wants to breathe with us come in and take a breath. Let us never forget the sweet smell of Orchard Street and the legacies created there — “I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Reg Murphy Center