Ellis Island strives to tell more complete immigration story

The Ellis Island Immigrant Museum and the new center opening in 2011 tell the stories of people who entered this country as immigrants. My ancestors among them. DP

By Charisse Jones, USA TODAY

usatoday.com: NEW YORK — For 62 years, millions of immigrants passed through the corridors of Ellis Island on their way to becoming Americans. Their journeys, however, are only part of the story.

What of those immigrants who came before and those who continue to come long after? What of the Africans who came not of their own free will and the Mexicans who through annexation suddenly found themselves Americans?

A new center on Ellis Island soon will tell those stories, too.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and other officials are scheduled to unveil plans today for The Peopling of America Center. It's an expansion of Ellis Island's Immigration Museum that will chronicle the years before the historic portal opened in 1892 and the evolving face of immigration since it closed in 1954. The center is slated to open in 2011.

"There were other ports of entry," says Stephen A. Briganti, president of The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, "but there's none as symbolic as Ellis Island, so we think it's important we tell the story of everybody, even the many people who didn't come through Ellis Island."

The new $20 million center will illuminate other eras in immigration history, such as the arrival in the mid-1800s of more than 4 million Irish, Germans and Scandinavians, the nation's first mass migration, says Alan Kraut, a history professor at American University. The National Park Service has contributed some of the funds, but the rest will come from private donations.

"It's very important that we tell in the fullest way possible the story of the peopling of America, and that's much larger than the Ellis Island experience," says Kraut, chairman of the foundation's history advisory committee. "We're talking about slaves who were part of a forced migration, Mexicans who were literally engulfed by the United States; the earliest arrivals, of course, Native Americans. … Then in the later period, especially since 1945, we're looking at waves of Southeast Asians (and) Latinos."

About 2 million people visit Ellis Island annually, and some have said that they did not see a reflection of their own family's experience there, Briganti says.

Salju Thomas, 28, who came to the USA from India when he was 4, is one of a dozen people who will become a U.S. citizen during today's presentation. A former Marine who is a student at Hofstra University, he said it's important that the museum recognize newer immigrants.

"America is changing," he said, and the museum "definitely needs to reflect that."

In the new center, maps, videos and interactive exhibits will help visitors understand the challenges immigrants faced as they traveled to and reshaped a new land.

Those who are creating the center say it won't shy away from the topic of illegal immigration.

"That's part of the story," Briganti says. "There's always been controversy. .. about who was being let in, and that continues today."

Ultimately, though, the center will honor the nation's diversity, Kempthorne says.