The history of Arab immigration in Michigan, particularly the Dearborn and Detroit areas, illustrates similar challenges and experiences as those faced by other waves of immigrants in United States History. While the largest waves of Arab immigrants to the U.S. occurred during the 1870s, primarily from the region that is modern Lebanon, there is anecdotal evidence that some Arabs came to the United States with the Spanish explorers of the 1500s. Arab immigrants were largely concentrated in New York and migrated west because of trade. The waves of Arab immigrants in the 1870s were mainly single men who were employed as traveling tradesmen, serving primarily rural areas with ôsuitcases of notions, dry goods, and other small commoditiesö (Rignall, 2003, p. 2).
The more successful of these tradesmen eventually began settling in more urban areas like Chicago, Dearborn and Detroit. As their success in trade grew, many Arab immigrants sponsored the immigration of other friends of family members. Like other ethnic immigrants, Arabs chose to concentrate in various cities as a result of their growing economic success. Arab immigrants were a significant portion of the great migration of immigrants to the U.S. from 1880-1925. By the end of this wave of immigration, more than 200,000 Arabs would reside in the United States. In 1923, the first Arab mosque in the United States was constructed in Detroit, Michigan. In the 1960s, the Arab-Israeli war and in the 1970s the ouster of the Shah of Iran were responsible for driving Arab immigration to the United States. Additionally, whereas initial groups of Arab immigrants to the U.S. ôsought to assimilate by Americanizing names, language and traditionsö, beginning in the 1960s and 1970s this trend changed (Rignall, 2003, 1).
In large part, the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s fueled this change among the Arab immigrant community. According to a Michigan State University exhibit de...