From the early-20th-century photos of Lewis Hine to movies such as The Godfather Part II, images of crowds and faces from all over the world enduring long journeys by ship to build new lives in America have been associated with a particular destination: Ellis Island. When the facility on an island in New York Harbor first opened its doors to receive hopeful immigrants—”your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” in the words of poet Emma Lazarus, which grace the nearby Statue of Liberty—in 1892, the first…
