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Review
| Encyclopedia of Ellis Island, by Barry Moreno, Westport, NY: Greenwood Press, 2004. 321 pages. $75.00, cloth.
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| Barry Moreno has pulled together a great deal of information about the history of Ellis Island not only during its heyday, but also during the years before it was an immigration receiving station and after its development as a museum. This encyclopedia has statistics on the number of persons passing through, and it contains data on key individuals, laws, particular events, major social movements, and the detailed process of immigrating through Ellis Island. The most informative entries deal with key individuals running the immigration receiving station or working there and laws and events centering on Ellis Island. Some of the inclusions are obvious, such as the various commissioners in charge and important pieces of legislation affecting the flow of immigration. Also included is a long list of persons who worked at the post or who simply came through the New York immigration station and were there only briefly. These latter choices seem a bit arbitrary. Thus Moreno tells us that Bob Hope and many other famous Americans came to America through Ellis on their way to making impacts in American society. This does add color to the book. However, some persons covered were only spectators, such as H. G. Wells, who stopped at the station on his 1906 visit to the United States and wrote of his impressions. |
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Through individual discussions of the process of immigration, Moreno gives the reader a detailed look at how Ellis Island functioned during its heyday as the nation's leading immigration station. We learn how many passed through, about inspections, about holidays for those detained, and about why persons were detained or rejected as immigrants including what life was like for those who spent more than two or three hours in detention. There were classes for children who were held temporarily. The rational for the inclusion of broad topics is not always clear, but Moreno aims to give readers a variety of approaches in his desire to create a worthwhile encyclopedia. There are entries on the Cold War, graffiti, stabilization, World War I, landfill, and marriages. Fortunately the author gives many cross references through highlighting the text or telling the reader to see other entries. For example, the graffiti entry points to important buildings, and the Cold War section informs the reader of the impact of the Cold War on immigration and Ellis Island. |
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As noted, Moreno's discussion goes beyond the closing of Ellis Island in 1954 and its renewal as a museum. After detailing the many and growing immigration restrictions from the late nineteenth century to the quota laws of the 1920s, and their renewal with the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act of 1952, he notes that the 1965 law, passed after the closing of the island as an immigration post, removed the national origins quotas. However, he does not go beyond the 1965 law to include important laws passed in 1986 and 1990. There are several errors in his discussion of the 1920s legislation. The final quotas that went into effect in 1929 were based on the 1920 census, not that of 1890. He says the smallest quotas went to Asians; actually Asians had no quotas, for the most part they were simply barred. Several strong points of the Encyclopedia deserve mention. Moreno includes suggested readings as well as a bibliography at the end. To bring the process to life he has included excellent photos and long quotations (such as the one by H. G. Wells) about going through the immigration process at Ellis Island. Of course he had to make choices of which quotes to include, but on the whole he succeeds rather well in his selections and thus gives the reader a view of actual events and the operation of Ellis Island. The three appendixes are documents including the rules for the immigration station, a personnel report of 1909, and an especially informative report by Commissioner William Williams. |
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How can this book be used in teaching about immigration and American history? Clearly it is not a text, but rather is a reference work. For high school students who wish to learn about or to begin a research project on immigration Moreno's Encyclopedia of Ellis Island is valuable. If some of the selections seem rather arbitrary, the cross references, the entries about individuals, and thew many quotations make it a detailed source of information. Moreno's book surely belongs in high school libraries; for, in spite of some of my criticisms, I was impressed with the depth with which it treats the process of immigration. Even if most newcomers to the United States spent only a few hours there, the island made an impression, and it represents one of the nation's major historical traditions: immigration to the United States. |
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| New York University, Emeritas |
David Rheimer |
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