American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [227]
For those wondering what a clothing maker has to do with immigration, Arrow created the slogan: “Ellis Island. Where the World Came Together and American Style Began.” Posters reinforced the link between Ellis Island, the American Dream, and the themes of family, opportunity, and freedom. Although Christian Slater’s ancestors were decidedly old immigrants from Ireland and England and it is not clear whether they came through Ellis Island, his poster reads: “Ellis Island represents our foundation—a place of possibility and new beginning.” To Kathryn McPhee, Ellis Island is about “the collective heritage of the American Dream.” For Joe Montana, it is about his Italian immigrant ancestors who worked in the mines of Pennsylvania to create opportunity for their family. “Triumph against the odds,” his poster reads. “That’s authentic American style.”
In a different context, the National Park Service’s superintendent of Ellis Island supported the restoration for just the opposite reasons. “It is haunting,” Cynthia Garrett said of the island’s abandoned south side, whose hospital buildings witnessed many tragedies of disease and death. “It tells us that our history isn’t all positive stories and success.”
Whether Ellis Island is a story of uplift and success or harrowing tragedies, it has evolved into something akin to a national shrine. In an editorial on the Supreme Court case, the New York Times referred to “Ellis Island’s sacred history.” In 2001, New York City’s mayor, Rudy Giuliani, summed up this trend when he said at a naturalization ceremony on the island: “Ellis Island is a wonderful place, it’s a sacred place, and it’s hallowed ground in American history.”
Such talk would no doubt have amused William Williams, Frederic Howe, and so many others who had worked at Ellis Island during its heyday. It would have baffled those immigrants who had to navigate the obstacle course at Ellis Island and probably saw little of the sacred in their experiences.
It was not preordained that Ellis Island should end up as a national shrine. San Francisco’s Angel Island holds none of the same allure for descendants of Chinese immigrants, who received a much harsher reception than European immigrants. The Hotel de la Inmigración in Buenos Aires, known as Argentina’s Ellis Island, pales in comparison to its northern namesake. Though it has also been turned into an immigration museum where modern Argentines can trace their ancestors who arrived a century earlier, it receives few visitors and is nestled off the city’s beaten path.
Having said that, each generation makes its own history and there is nothing wrong with the descendants of Ellis Island reclaiming a historic site that was created, in part, to exclude their ancestors. Too many critics, eager to score political points, ignore the ways that the memorialization of Ellis Island stands as a sharp rebuke to nativists, both past and present.
That said, the historical memory of Ellis Island, like all memory, has been created over time, and that memory will continue to evolve in the future. What exactly this historic site symbolizes can be a matter of debate even with the same family.
After visiting the restored Ellis Island in 2004, a woman sought out her grandmother’s name on the Wall of Honor. This successful New York professional called her grandmother, who had passed through the facility many decades earlier, to share the moment. “What are you doing there,” her grandmother testily responded from the other end of the phone line. The grandmother clearly did not share the same positive thoughts that her granddaughter associated with Ellis Island.
By the dawn of the twenty-first century, Ellis Island’s former life as an immigrant inspection station had given way to its latest incarnation as a national shrine and icon, a modern-day Plymouth Rock. As this transformation occurred, America was in the midst of