In 1985, Anthony Ramey sat in his New England home reminiscing about his mother. “She worked before she married my father, because almost everybody worked [in the mills].” Ramey was talking about the Arab American working class experience in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in the early 1900s. However, his mother's history reverberates beyond Lawrence, encompassing the lives of at least one-third of Arabic speaking immigrants who came to the United States between the 1870s and 1970s, and who worked in America’s mills, factories, farms, and mines. Yet, both scholarly and popular narratives of this period are largely silent about their stories. They are partially hidden by the peddler myth which suggests that most immigrants upon arrival in the United States took to mercantilism: from selling goods out of a qashé (suitcase) or jizdan (handbag) to opening stores, and ascending quickly into the middle classes. On the other hand, mainstream American labor histories and archives also contribute to this elision by ignoring Arab American workers and keeping them out of their narratives.
This project reclaims the hidden stories of the Arab American working class. It sheds light on their rich history and their struggles to become part of the United States, securing their families’ livelihoods amidst difficult (and sometimes deadly) working conditions, labor activism, racial animosity, economic turmoil, and the fast changing landscape of America’s industrial cities and agricultural farmland. In so doing, this project invites us to rethink the prevalent narrative of Arab immigration, and to move beyond its one-dimensionality to include the richer—and more complicated—diversity of immigrant experiences.
In five parts, this project crosses the breadth of the United States and spans the years between the 1890s to the 1970s to explore the lives and labors of Arab Americans who worked in garment factories, coal mines, automobile factories, entertainment, and farming. While the majority of the stories focus on the first wave of Arab Americans (whom we know today as Lebanese, Palestinian, and Syrian), part five, "Farm Workers," departs from that and looks at the lives of Yemeni farm workers in California. In our terminology we use the overarching terms "Arab" and "Arab American" to discuss the totality of the history. However, we also use "Syrian" as a term that encompassed the earliest Arab American immigrants, while at other times we defer to "Lebanese" and "Yemeni" when speaking about particular communities who self-identified as such. ( You can read more about these terms here .)