A Journey of Survival
A photographic Exhibition of the early Lebanese immigrants in the U.S.A.

Najwa Nasr, PhD
Faculty of Letters
Lebanese University

back to the list
back to the Salzburg Seminar Home Page

Bashara K. Forzley, 14 year-old  Peddler 1898		 Towards the end of the nineteenth century, immigrants from Syria and Lebanon started to arrive at Ellis Island in New York colony from whence they spread across the American states from the East to the West and from the North to the South carrying their peddling packs on their shoulders.

They started peddling on foot before they bought one-horse rigs. Many reasons encouraged them to peddle; it was not a very demanding profession; no experience was needed, no capital, no advanced language skills, no worry about the "pink slip", no pressure of office hours; each one of them was his "own boss"; it was a job which provided fast profit and was open to all sorts of new enterprise.
However, this peddling job was not always a window to pleasant new ideas and ventures, as it might seem. The stories told by peddlers about their experiences on the road reveal their deep suffering and the bitter circumstances that cost many their lives. They suffered from scorching heat and biting frost; their clothes got wet and rotten; their moustaches froze, their limbs were numbed, they starved and were beaten with fatigue; they had to spend many nights in the open, on wet grass, or in barns; their feet sored from long walks; they were attacked by robbers and bandits; they were also chased by wild beasts.
Khalil Mikwee carrying his 100 pound peddler's pack in 1890

Faries Bros. groceries wagon		 The immigrants had their own social, cultural, and religious societies and clubs whose role was to strengthen the ties of solidarity among the members and help them preserve their cultural heritage, language, and tradition. They also helped the immigrants in learning the English language and coping with the demands of the new citizenship for survival. In 1930, there was about fifty different Arabic newspapers, magazines, journals, and periodicals all over the American states.

Members of the Phoenician Club in Birmingham		  
Lebanese Immigrants in "Jaret El Wady" restaurant,
Starved Rock Illinois, 1930

Gibran Kahlil Gibran’s
Message to Young Americans of Syrian Origin
Published in the Syrian World, July 1920

I believe in you, and I believe in your destiny.

I believe that you are contributors to this new civilization.

I believe that you have inherited from your forefathers an ancient dream, a song, a prophecy, which you can proudly lay as a gift of gratitude upon the lap of America.

I believe you can say to the founders of this great nation. "Here I am, a youth, a young tree, whose roots were plucked from the hills of Lebanon, yet I am deeply rooted here, and I would be fruitful."

And I believe that you can say to Abraham Lincoln, "The blessed Jesus of Nazareth touched your lips when you spoke, and guided your hand when you wrote; and I shall uphold all that you have said and all that you have written."

I believe that you can say to Emerson and Whitman and James, "In my veins run the blood of the pots and wise men of old, and it is my desire to come to you and receive, but I shall not come wit empty hands."

I believe that even as your fathers came to this land to produce riches, you were born here to produce riches by intelligence, by labor.

And I believe that it is in you to be good citizens.

And what is it to be a good citizen?

It is to acknowledge the other person’s rights before asserting your own, but always to be conscious of your own.

It is to be free in thought and deed, but it is also to know that your freedom is subject to the other person’s freedom.

It is to create the useful and the beautiful with your own hands, and to admire what others have created in love and with faith.

It is to produce wealth by labor and only by labor, and to spend less than you have produced that your children may not be dependent on the state for support when you are no more.

It is to stand before the towers of New York, Washington, Chicago and San Francisco saying in your heart, "I am the descendant of a people that builded Damascus, and Biblus, and Tyre and Sidon, and Antioch, and now I am here to build with you, and with a will."

It is to be proud of being an American, but it is also to be proud that your fathers and mothers came from a land upon which God laid His hand and raised His messengers.

Young Americans of Syrian origin, I believe in you.

Pilgrimage to the shrine of our Lady of Consolation in Carrey, Ohio on August 6,1927

Eye cosmetic (Kohl) brass container		 The Naff Arab American Collection

In 1962, Dr. Alixa Naff began to tape record the life histories of turn-of-the-century Arabic speaking immigrants across the United States. In 1984, and after two decades of research and field work a huge collection of socio-historical documentation on Arab Americans (Lebanese in great majority) was presented to the Smithsonian institution to honor Faris and Yamna Naff and their generation of immigrants.
The Naff Arab American Collection now consists of approximately 2000 photos and 500 artifacts classified in 225 containers occupying 120 cubic feet in the Archives center of the National Museum of American History in Washington D.C.

Prepared by:
Najwa Nasr, PhD
Faculty of Letters
Lebanese University
nn1212@ul.edu.lb
Brass coffee maker with wooden handle, brass coffee pot and cup
carried over to the USA by immigrants from Zahle around 1890
back to the workshop homepage