A group of immigrants traveling aboard a ship celebrate as they catch their first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island in New York Harbor. c.1910.
It’s 1910. The steamship is creaking under the weight of thousands of souls packed into third class—what they called “steerage”—the cheapest ticket money could buy. If you were lucky, you’d gotten a corner to yourself. If not, you were shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers, the air thick with coal smoke, sea brine, and the human scent of weeks-long uncertainty.
And then—someone shouts.
