The Other Ellis Island:  Jewish Immigration Through Galveston, 1907-1914

In the years before World War I, almost 10,000 Jewish immigrants came to the United States through the port at Galveston, rather than Ellis Island. From there, they fanned out across Texas and dozens of cities towns in the South and Midwest. This presentation by Dr. Josh Furman will explore the history of the Galveston Movement, the goals of the organizers, and the legacy of the project. We will also get to read (in translation) the advertising pamphlet that was used to recruit Yiddish-speaking Jews to make the trip to Texas in 1907!

Because of the recent uptick in COVID cases, we will meet for this program on Zoom.  Please register below to receive the Zoom link in your confirmation email. 

Dr. Joshua Furman, a native of San Antonio, is the founder and curator of the Houston Jewish History Archive at Rice University, where he also serves as Associate Director and lecturer in the Program in Jewish Studies. At Rice, Dr. Furman offers courses on immigration history, American Judaism, Black-Jewish relations, and Jewish food. His most recent publication is a chapter about Jewish Houston in the book Making Houston Modern: The Life and Architecture of Howard Barnstone, which was published in 2020 by the University of Texas Press. He also authored an essay on migration in American Jewish history for the volume Interpreting American Jewish History at Museums and Historic Sites, published in 2016 by Rowman and Littlefield. His article about Jewish immigration into Texas via the Galveston Movement will appear in the 2022 issue of the Southern Jewish History journal. Currently, he is working on a book project about the history of Houston’s Jewish community from the 1800s to the present. Dr. Furman received his Ph.D. in modern Jewish history from the University of Maryland in 2015.