A story is told in the Arab-American community about a Yemeni sailor from Aden, working as a merchant marine on the Great Lakes, who had a chance encounter with Henry Ford, the automobile mogul, in the early 1900s. That chance encounter is said to have started a chain migration of Yemeni Arabs to Dearborn, Michigan. As part of the oral history of Dearborn’s Southend, there are several versions of the story about Henry Ford and the Yemeni sailor. In one version, Henry Ford actually is said to have sent a ship to Yemen to pick up workers and bring them...

Although Arab immigrants in the United States have come from all of the twenty-two Arab-speaking countries, including the Occupied Territories, the majority of Arab Americans have come from the Levantine, or Fertile Crescent area (Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq), and Yemen.²¹The five major groups of Arab immigrants to the United States are: Lebanese (both Christian and Muslim), Iraqis (including sizable numbers of Christian Chaldeans, Christian Assyrians, and Muslims), Palestinians (Christians and Muslims), Muslim Yemeni, and North Africans (mostly from Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria).

A map of the Arab world or Southwest Asia and North Africa (swana) States shows...

In general, Arab Americans came to the United States by chain migrations.²⁸In this type of migration, the first member of the family to arrive (usually a male family member) will attempt to bring his or her immediate family, other relatives, and friends to the United States. As noted in the author’s research, often Arab-American males have brought their parents to the United States, in order to care for them in their old age.²⁹Brothers, sisters, and cousins often followed. Most immigrants to the United States have shared this pattern of chain migration. Periodically, U.S. Immigration laws and various push...

Syrian/Lebanese immigrants started arriving in Flint in the early 1900s. Hani Bawardi, in his thesis, recounts the story of three brothers from the Marjayoun area in Southern Lebanon who founded three separate dynastic families in Flint: the Joseph, Salim, and Barakat families.³⁹However, Palestinian Christians from the town of Nazareth were also among the early Arab immigrants to Flint. Ameen Farah, a Nazarene, arrived in Flint in 1914, by way of Egypt and Syracuse, New York.⁴⁰Ameen Farah was an important political activist who attempted to mobilize the Arab-American population against the Ottoman Turks during WWI and to raise their...

Although the two historical staging areas for Arab migration in Metropolitan Detroit (Dearborn’s Southend and the Seven Mile/Woodward area) date back to the original founding of the Arab and Chaldean populations in Detroit, there has been considerable fluidity in the settlement patterns within the tri-county area over the last century of Arab migration. In the Metropolitan Detroit tri-county Arab-American population, Arab regionalism and nationalism (country of origin), kinship, and to some degree religion all have influenced the settlement patterns. The socioeconomic status of the immigrants and access to employment, however, have often outweighed these other considerations as to choice of...

The climate and environment of Michigan differ greatly from those of the original homelands of Detroit’s Arab immigrants. The climate of Detroit, with its cold, snowy winters and relatively mild, humid summers, is a radical departure from the Mediterranean climate. Many Arabs complain that they dislike the cold and snow and miss the mild climate that allowed them to walk outside year-round.⁷⁹

Detroit is a highly urbanized, industrialized city. Although massive efforts have been made to help the financial recovery of the city, Detroit has been severely affected by the cutbacks in the auto industry since the 1980s.

While many...

From the first early Syrian/Lebanese seeking work in door-to-door sales and the first Yemeni to encounter Henry Ford and work in the automobile factories to the most recent Arab immigrants, Arab Americans have been a part of Michigan history for over a hundred years.

The tragedy of September 11, 2001, unfortunately caused many Americans to become suspicious of the Arab-American community, while the shock of the attacks caused trauma in an Arab-American community already full of refugees suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. For Arab Americans who saw America as their safe haven from the problems of the Middle East, the...