“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

These lines are inscribed on a bronze plaque inside the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor which has welcomed immigrants from around the world since 1886. Written by Emma Lazarus a few years earlier as part of her sonnet “The New Colossus,” these words expressed the sentiment of a nation that understood that it was built on the shoulders of immigrants.

Most of us have family trees that give testimony to the simple truth that we are an immigration nation. However, many of us do not like to admit that the United States was created at the expense of indigenous peoples, like the Muscogee and the Cherokee, and with the forced labor of millions of slaves, especially in the South.

The Valdosta Daily Times recently ran a story celebrating the 135th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty which unbeknownst to many displays at its foot a broken shackle and chains to symbolize the end of slavery. French abolitionists like Édouard de Laboulaye not only raised funds for this unusual gift to highlight the friendship between the two nations, but also to celebrate the end of slavery, something Europe had already achieved decades earlier.

According to the historian Edward Berenson, an earlier model of the statue by the sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi envisioned Lady Liberty holding broken shackles and chains in her left hand. However, at some point the decision was made to replace them with a tablet that displays the date of the American Independence, while the broken shackles and chains were moved to her feet, effectively out of sight.

We may never know if this change was caused by political considerations or a Freudian slip. What we do know is that even today ideals like liberty and justice do not equally apply to every shade of the human race.

It should be noted that Emma Lazarus not only wrote her famous lines to help raise money for the construction of the Statue of Liberty, but as a Sephardic Jew, she was also keenly aware of the pogroms that took place in Tsarist Russia at the time. To her, the Statue of Liberty resembled a beacon of hope for those fleeing Europe.

A generation later, in 1937, Abel Meeropol, who was born to Russian-Jewish immigrants in the Bronx, wrote his poem “Strange Fruit” to express his horror at lynchings that took place throughout the South. Two years later, Billie Holiday for the first time gave voice to his poem at a nightclub in New York City as she sang with a haunting voice:

“Southern trees bearing a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.”

Louis Armstrong, who was born in racially segregated New Orleans and never knew his father, found a second home with the Karnofsky family who he worked for at times. The Karnofskys were Jewish immigrants who had escaped anti-Semitism in eastern Europe and had moved into his neighborhood. As happened in other parts of the country, a kinship evolved between those who were on the receiving end of racism, a “comradeship of excluded peoples” as some call it.

The Karnofskys not only employed Louis, but they also helped him fight through and rise above the racism of the time while supporting his musical talents and instilling in him a sense of a shared humanity. For many years, he wore a necklace with a Star of David to express his deep gratitude to the kindness he had received. And years later, he sang a song that may not have been possible without that experience:

“The colors of the rainbow, So pretty in the sky, Are also on the faces, Of people going by, I see friends shaking hands, Saying how do you do, They’re really saying, I love you.”

Perhaps the most striking example of an unexpected camaraderie is the friendship that developed during the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin between Jesse Owens, one of the most successful African American athletes, and Luz Long from Nazi Germany. At a critical moment, Luz Long, who was a competitor in the long jump event, offered his advice to Jesse Owens, who was about to foul out.

Following Long’s advice, Owens was able to qualify for the final and eventually won gold, while Long grabbed silver. The German competitor was not only the first to congratulate Owens, but the athletes walked together around the stadium, arm-in-arm, to celebrate. This was not just a display of sportsmanship but also of camaraderie and brotherhood.

As Owens later stated: “It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me. You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn’t be a plating on the 24-karat friendship I felt for Luz Long at that moment.”

There are so many in our society, even today, “yearning to breathe free,” but they can’t. As if the words we connect with the Statue of Liberty, or for that matter, with our Constitution (“liberty and justice for all”) only apply to one portion of the human race.

Thus, depending on who you are, you are more likely to get arrested, to receive longer prison terms, to have a lower life expectancy, and to get paid less. It may also be more difficult for you to vote, to get a loan, and to receive a decent education.

Driving along Barack Obama Boulevard the other day and reflecting on the changes I have seen in our community, I couldn’t help but smile.

Change never comes easy, but there is a growing camaraderie. However, this time it is not among excluded peoples but among people who realize that we are all God’s children, no matter what colors our faces may have.

As we keep working together on becoming Martin Luther King’s Beloved Community, we will see other streets renamed in our city and, yes, a memorial to our history of racial violence, to never forget. But only if we walk together, arm-in-arm.

Dr. Michael G. Noll is with the Valdosta Coalition for Peace and Justice (https://vcpj.org/) and is a member of The Valdosta Daily Times editorial board.