JR

[percussive music]

Ladies and gentlemen,
my name is Jacob A. Riis.

And this is how the other half live and
died in New York City.

[James Meigs] Jacob Riis is one of those
great American immigrant success stories.

He came to the U.S. as a young man,
impoverished, kicked around, worked

as a carpenter, all kinds of different
businesses. He was even homeless at a

time. But ultimately, he found
his way into the newspaper business.

He became something of a crusader,
and took advantage of a breakthrough

in photographic technology.

[Woody Norris] Photography had various
acetate films that sometimes could take

thirty minutes to capture an image.

Flash came along with
magnesium and phosphorous and other

materials because it created a bright
enough light

that you can take a picture in...

half a minute.

[music swells]

[James Meigs] So, Jacob Riis took this
new system and he took these cameras,

and he barged into tenements in the
Lower East Side, you know,

horribly overcrowded and dangerous
conditions where the poor immigrants live.

And it woke people up about the conditions
that so many immigrants lived and crowded

into these airless tenements, children
sleeping, literally, in stairwells,

terrible unsanitary conditions.

He really wanted to awake the conscience
of the country.

And he did it.

[solemn piano music]

[Tom Brokaw] On several fronts,
Mr. Riis's photographs were very

important to us.

[Brokaw] First of all, it demonstrated
that this country was not afraid of

self-examination. We weren't always
enthusiastic about it.

But it has always been a mark of America
that it's willing to look at itself.

And those photographs came out at a
time when America was saying to the

world, "This is the golden destination."

And what he demonstrated was that there
was another reality.

There were some deplorable living
conditions and this country was not

just forced to confront those conditions,
but then was moved to begin to deal

with them.