Ellis Island
Between 1905 and 1914, an average of one million immigrants per year arrived in the United States. Immigration officials reviewed about 5,000 immigrants per day during peak times at Ellis Island. Two-thirds of those individuals emigrated from eastern, southern and central Europe. The peak year for immigration at Ellis Island was 1907, with 1,004,756 immigrants processed. The all-time daily high occurred on April 17, 1907, when 11,747 immigrants arrived. After the Immigration Act of 1924 was passed, which greatly restricted immigration and allowed processing at overseas embassies, the only immigrants to pass through the station were those who had problems with their immigration paperwork, displaced persons, and war refugees. Today, over 100 million Americans—about one-third to 40% of the population of the United States—can trace their ancestry to immigrants who arrived in America at Ellis Island before dispersing to points all over the country.
Evelyn Ellis
Ellis directed "Horse Play" in 1937 and then put on the play "Little Woman" in 1938 with the junior department at the Negro Little Theatre. Her most notable work as a director as well as an actress is in the all-black production of "Tobacco Road" in 1950. She played the role of a starving mother which the "New York Times" singled out as “truthful elements that left a lasting impression”. Through her directing of a youth play and her creation of the drama school, Ellis was active in getting younger kids interested in the art of drama.Ellis made her last Broadway appearance in 1953 and ended her acting career in 1955 with her final film "Interrupted Melody". Two years later, she died from a heart ailment on June 5, 1958, at the age of 64. She was hospitalized from December 1957 until her death at the Variety Club’s Will Rogers Memorial Hospital in Saranac Lake, NY.