Statue of Liberty Rededication

Exactly fifty years later the statue was rededicated after a a year-long event full of educational activities.  The Celebration on the 28th featured a grand parade, flotilla, banquets, fireworks and speeches.  The weather was much better and Franklin Delano Roosevelt who was in the process of campaigning for reelection was able to give a rousing speech. He declared “It has not been sufficiently emphasized in the teaching of our history that the overwhelming majority of those who came from the nations of the Old World to our American shores were not the laggards, not the timorous, not the failures. They were men and women who had the supreme courage to strike out for themselves, to abandon language and relatives, to start at the bottom without influence, without money and without knowledge of life in a very young civilization."  Roosevelt went on to be reelected President three more times.