- [Announcer] Major funding for "The Arab Americans" is provided by the John Templeton Foundation, and by Lloyd Baroody and Zeina Mehio, and The John Victor Machuga Foundation.

Additional funding by The Levant Foundation, Basem Hishmeh, Ralph Rocco, Jay Hamad, Fred Nouri, Sr., and others.

A complete list is available from PBS.

[upbeat instrumental music] - [Narrator] In 1902, Nikola Rahall prepared to leave Kfeir, his village nestled in the fertile slopes of present-day Lebanon.

Gazing east, he would see the snow-dusted peaks of Mount Hermon, Jabal al-Shaykh, in his native tongue.

His steps, though, would carry him westward thousands of miles from his native land and his people to the coal-rich mountains of West Virginia.

With only a desire to work, he would join thousands of his compatriots who had already settled in America with the Great Migration.

They eventually came to be called Arab Americans.

[upbeat instrumental music] [upbeat instrumental music continues] [upbeat instrumental music continues] - The earliest historical reference to an Arab immigrant is around 1860 to 1870s.

There was a Chaldean Catholic priest from Iraq who actually came earlier than that, in the 1600s, and explored America.

But the real migration is from around 1880 to around 1924.

The early Syrian immigrants were actually from cities, Aleppo, Damascus, Homs.

The Lebanese were more rural, from the mountains of Lebanon.

- [Narrator] These areas were then under the Ottoman Empire, whose nearly 600-year reign stretched from present-day Istanbul, across parts of Europe, and at the peak of its power, as far west as Algeria in North Africa.

Only after World War I, Arab territories would fall under British and French mandates, effectively establishing colonial rule over former Ottoman subjects.

- The Arab world was marked by extraordinary degree of tolerance, that is, even with the dominant Ottoman Empire, for different religions, Jews, Christians, Muslims.

A lot of old-timers now in the Middle East look back on those old days when they all lived quite peaceably together, and they had a significant amount of religious autonomy, of political autonomy.

There aren't many places in the world that can go back that many centuries with that level of tolerance as their heritage.

[people chattering in foreign language] - [Narrator] But neighborly relations would soon yield to rising tensions, exacerbated by a stagnating economy and widespread famine due to locust infestations of valuable food crops.

These troubles served to trigger the first major wave of Arab migration to the United States, largely Christian, unskilled, and illiterate.

- Back in the 1870s, my dad's father and mother came from Lebanon.

They came on Ottoman passports in the Boston Harbor, and they had a small plot of land in the village of Douma near Beirut up in the mountains.

There was a considerable amount of ethnic violence that took place there, and it finally drove them out at a time when it was possible for them to be able to book a passage to the United States.

- [Narrator] In Greater Syria, a groundswell of resistance among young Syrians against the ruling Turks and a desire for greater opportunity spurred thousands to book passage to the West.

- My grandparents came from Aleppo because of religious, economic, and political reasons.

They had no rights, per se, in Syria, and they saw this as the land of freedom and opportunity.

So they had a strong desire to go to this land of milk and honey where the streets were paved with gold, which is what most immigrants thought.

- [Narrator] Immigrants disembarking at Ellis Island and other ports of entry for the first time found the experience a trial by fire.

Immigration agents might classify the bewildered newcomer from Syria or Palestine as Turkish, which he or she technically was as an Ottoman subject, or even as Greek, Armenian, or Asian.

Inaccuracies such as these forever obscured the actual number of Arabic-speaking immigrants entering the country before the Great War.

- My grandmother rode a donkey from Marjayoun to Beirut.

She caught a boat there.

She had gone with, I think it was her aunt, and they had gone to Ellis Island, but they got turned back.

I think her aunt had a glaucoma or a problem with her eye.

They were turned away, and so they ended up going to Mexico.

They got into Mexico, and then they literally crossed the Rio Grande.

They walked across the river and then settled in Texas and Oklahoma with her relatives who were already there.

- [Narrator] One final injustice scores of immigrants endured before reaching terra firma was the last-name change.

It was akin to severing another tie to their homeland, to one's birthright.

With rudimentary or no English-language proficiency, there was little chance of protest.

- My dad, Salim, came over with his brother, Amin, around the turn of the century.

They came from Jeb Jennine.

They went through Ellis Island, and they asked him, they said, "What is your father's name?"

which would be my grandfather.

And he said, "Farah," and they didn't let them finish the sentence.

His name was Farah Aboud, Farah Aboud.

So Aboud is really the last name.

The gentleman said, okay, "Farah, F-A-R-A-H." So that's how my dad got the last name, Salim Farah, and my uncle, Amin Farah.

- [Narrator] Young single men like the newly dubbed Farah brothers tested the waters first before encouraging relatives and friends back home to join them.

At the turn of the century, New York City and its boroughs claimed more than half of the Arabic-speaking population in America.

In lower Manhattan, 3,000 immigrants had clustered around Washington Street, buzzing from dust to dawn with the sights, sounds, and aromas of the old country.

Little Syria's residents had, as one "New York Times" reporter quipped, "Just enough of their traits and dress to give the colonies they formed spice and a touch of novelty."

The neighborhood boasted a bevy of specialty shops where customers and merchants haggled over prices in their native tongue.

The country's first Melkite Church opened its doors to parishioners in 1889 and was eventually called St. George's Syrian Catholic Church.

Little Syria was also the logical home of Al-Hoda, "The Guidance" in English, the first Arabic-language newspaper in the country, published by Brothers Naoum and Salloum Mokarzel.

The Linotype machine they adapted to the Arabic alphabet aided in the growth of journalism in the Middle East.

In Manhattan's Syrian mother colony and across the river in Brooklyn, home to the oldest Syrian-Lebanese settlement in the nation, early entrepreneurs began sowing the seeds of success.

- The Syrian-Lebanese in New York City, their niche economy was textiles, and if they manufactured it in New York, they also distributed it throughout the country.

- [Narrator] As these merchants rapidly acquired wealth, over in New Jersey, the textile industry was proving equally lucrative.

By 1920, around 25 silk factories in Paterson and the nearby West Hoboken were Syrian-owned, giving a major boost to the local economy.

The round-the-clock din of machinery mingled with the tongues of many lands inside Silk City's smoke-belching cavernous mills, where scores of newcomers landed their first job.

[gentle banjo music] Right out of the 19th century, along with the first steady trickle of Arabic-speaking people into the US, the thriving enterprising pack peddler was a familiar site along America's dusty back roads.

Tendering an array of wears from a cloth knapsack, pots and pans, rugs and linens, even hard-to-get spices, this intrepid wanderer came to symbolize the spirit of adventure.

And as their numbers grew, peddlers created a coast-to-coast network that helped stimulate American trade.

- These immigrant peddlers often told the client, "These were made in the Holy Land."

As soon as they heard the Holy Land, they were more likely to purchase from them.

Little did they know that the Holy Land was Paterson and New York City and Boston and other major urban centers.

- Both my grandfathers walked from coal camp to coal camp selling linens off their back to the coal miners.

As my grandfathers traveled, sleeping under the stars or in whatever home they could find a place to rest their head, they very obviously encountered numerous difficulties along the way.

And the dust that would fly or the materials that would fly from trucks was often a very serious hazard as they walked these highways.

My paternal grandfather did that for 10 years, and he went back to Lebanon in 1912.

He got his wife, brought her to this country.

They settled down in southern West Virginia in my hometown of Beckley.

- [Narrator] A promise of marriage fulfilled.

Peddlers created permanent settlements along trade routes, accounting for their early presence in rural communities across the nation.

Their young brides, in a strange country for the first time and without the security of their families, often found the experience traumatic.

- My grandmother's from Aleppo.

She was engaged to her then husband, who was about 20 years older than her.

He came here first to get settled, to get to know America, to find a place to live, and then send for her.

And she talks about being about 13 or 14 years old and very new to this country and being pregnant with her first child and being really afraid.

And her husband moved her to Brooklyn to the Syrian Jewish community.

Slowly she met friends and met people in the community and had her family and got really comfortable here in America.

- [Narrator] By the late 1800s, nearly 500 families from the village of Kassin in present-day Lebanon had settled in Waterville, Maine with its booming shipyards and textile factories.

Many women did piecework at home or entered the mills as silk weavers, often earning a low wage to support growing families.

- My mother was born in 1902 in Lebanon in a small village, Kassin, and south central Lebanon.

She and her niece boarded the S.S. Leopoldina in Le Havre, France.

And then my mother went directly to Waterville, Maine.

She bent most of her adult life, about 40 years, working the night shift in textile mills.

During that time, she raised five children.

Every morning when we got up, she was there to get us off to school.

She put us to bed at night, and then she left for work.

[upbeat banjo music] - [Narrator] It wasn't only the textile factories in the East that gave immigrants a chance at a new life.

Newcomers with a sense of wanderlust were striking out on their own in one-horse towns on the Midwestern plains and beyond.

Oil had brought wealth to Oklahoma, and by 1920, some 200 Syrians called this untamed, shoot-'em-up frontier state home.

- It was still a very rough-and-tumble area, a little bit lawless, a little bit rugged.

And I have to say the people who immigrated at that time in my family were pretty rough people themselves.

And they were working in the oil fields.

They were doing grocery stores.

Today you still will hear Arabic names in some of the smallest towns in the state.

It really wasn't a sense of keeping as a community, but rather spreading out into this kind of Oklahoma fabric.

- My dad and his brother Amin went out to Montana of all places.

Why Arabs would wanna go there?

You'd think they want to go to Arizona where there's desert, [laughs] but they went to Montana.

Eventually they settled in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

My grandfather was a grocer and had a general store in Cedar Rapids.

We used to visit them there, and they had wooden sidewalks in the front of the store and a hand water pump in the kitchen.

[laughs] But I'm the only one born in Toledo, Ohio.

- [Narrator] By the early 20th century, Boston's dodgy South End boasted the second-largest Syrian population in the nation.

It was here where a brooding, dark-eyed boy named Kahlil Gibran lived with his sisters and widowed mother, who earned her bread as a lace peddler and seamstress.

Her son's budding talent would eventually lead him out of the slums to become one of the greatest poets in history.

A different fate awaited other neighborhood kids.

- My father was born in Washington, D.C. around the turn of the century, and he spent most of his time growing up in Boston.

My grandfather, he passed away at a relatively early age, left my grandmother and several kids to fend for themselves in difficult Boston neighborhood.

But the kids got jobs at a very early age because the family needed the money, and everybody had to work hard.

But they were determined to be part of the American experience.

- [Narrator] However rough the road traveled, however tough the sacrifices, first-generation immigrants were resolved to stay the course.

The bonds of a common culture, language, and faith helped ease their entree into larger society, and at the same time, ensured the growth and stability of their communities.

Nowhere was this more evident than in their religious institutions.

Houses of prayer were the foundation of Arab enclaves.

Where they were built was a surefire sign they were there to stay.

In Beaumont, Texas, Orthodox settlers lured by the oil-rich lands, saw their wood-frame church consecrated in 1908 by the Bishop of New York.

And to the north, Muslims founded what is believed to be the first mosque in the nation, built on the windswept prairie near Ross, North Dakota.

Outside these smaller pockets of settlement, families with no access to clergy of their faith sometimes took drastic measures as a means to nurture the spirit.

That sense of home carried by voices united in worship had served to bolster the Arab presence across the country.

The community's steady climb upward had caught the public's eye, albeit with a kind of bewildered admiration.

What little Americans knew about these colorful settlers rested largely on conjecture.

- The biggest misunderstanding of the Syrians was their religion.

Everybody assumed, Americans in general, that people from the Middle East were Muslim and Arab, et cetera, which are not synonymous with one another.

They thought of themselves in terms of their religion, but that didn't work.

So you had to create a secular ethnic identity, and they eventually became Syrians.

They weren't persecuted, as such.

The news coverage of the Syrians was very good in the early 1900s.

They were entrepreneurial.

They were unique to look at.

They were like an interesting ethnic group to visit and to study, but that didn't last forever.

- [Narrator] Even as thousands of compatriots prepared to make the journey, a groundswell of protests stood poised to curtail the arrival of those considered to be racially inferior and undesirable.

For those resolved to reach America's shores, another blip along that road lay just ahead.

[guns firing] In July of 1914, the outbreak of war in Europe sent shockwaves around the world.

The nearly four-year conflict had cost over 10 million lives and initiated the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

For the 15,000 Syrian-American doughboys who fought for the Stars and Stripes, their former ruler's demise closed the door on the old way of life forever.

By the early 1920s, organizations like the Syrian Young Men's Association and the Aleppian Fraternity performed good works in the community, but they also served as vital social networks where members could relax, do business, and exchange news of the old country.

Everyone looked forward to the blowout festivals these groups organized during the warmer months.

Mahrajan drew scores of revelers from far and wide to celebrate their shared heritage.

- They needed a way of bringing all the people together across their Syrian-Lebanese identities, their local township identities, and their religious identities.

So they created these events called Mahrajan.

They were huge outdoor picnics with thousands of people coming from all over the United States, but especially the Northeast, to these festivals in which they would literally eat, drink, and dance for three days.

But the real purpose was as a marriage market, where all the young kids, unknown to them 'cause they were going through a big picnic, would meet one another, and hopefully there would be marriages.

The pressure was on you to marry within the ethnic group.

- You say for nickel, you had a cup of coffee at Nader's and 10 minutes of political conversation.

My father loved to debate people.

He literally affected tens of thousands of people.

It was a lot of fun because there were a lot of ethnic jokes which are taboo today.

And so the Polish Americans had an ethnic joke against Italian Americans, who had an ethnic joke against Irish Americans.

And it was just something we expected.

Oh, here comes big Bill Doyle.

I wonder what invective he's gonna hurl against my dad.

My dad would laugh.

It was actually a way to diffuse any tensions and to make the interaction a happy time.

[upbeat jazz music] - [Narrator] Rising tensions on the national stage now threatened carefree times.

With immigration on the rise in the wake of the Great War, its most vociferous opponents were once again demanding greater restrictions.

Drawing heavily from sham scientific theories based on the racial superiority of Nordic peoples, the passage of the Johnson-Reed Act in 1924 accomplished just that, setting strict quotas based on nations of origin, including for Arabic-speaking regions.

That law reduced immigration from the Middle East and North Africa to a trickle over the next two decades.

At decade's end, disaster struck with a vengeance.

Stock market prices spiraled downward into a free fall that triggered a global economic crisis.

From the corporate boardroom to the factory floor, no one was immune to the devastating impact of the Great Depression.

- The Great Depression definitely had an effect, especially upon my grandfather.

I would hear him tell stories about it and how he just kept going on and on and didn't let any of the roadblocks stand in his way.

And it was determination, sheer gut, and that true American spirit to be a fighter.

- [Narrator] Even as the nation slowly emerged from the crisis, the American-born children of immigrants sought to open the doors wider into the white-collar world.

Those aspiring to upward mobility saw their career plans thwarted in unexpected ways.

- My father and my uncle, they didn't have any trace of an accent in English.

They tried getting jobs on Wall Street.

This is after they graduated.

This was in the late '30s.

They couldn't get jobs there 'cause everybody thought they were Irish with a name like McLoof, which is, I'm sure, a result of the gentleman on Ellis Island, whose name was probably O'Leary or Mulligan, making my grandfather's name of Maalouf into an Irish name.

Everybody assumed he was Irish.

So back then, "Irish need not apply," was a very typical slogan that would be over the doors of Wall Street firms.

- Even if the ethnicity of second-generation offspring was harder to pinpoint outside their neighborhoods, many adopted a more fluid approach to their identity in their public and private lives.

- Around the Second World War, we had the emergence of the second and third generation in this country.

By identifying more with American society through, say, joining the military, through success in business, through the decline of language, through marriage, they became more integrated into the dominant society.

- My father never really spoke Arabic around the house, and even today, he only speaks it when he's around other Lebanese people.

And it's funny because everybody says he speaks the language of his mother, you know, the slang of 18, or 1900, you know, early 1900 Arabic, not current modern-day Arabic.

Obviously we knew we were Lebanese, but the culture was never that much pushed on by him to us.

- Arabic became the private language between my parents when they didn't want us to understand.

American civic identity and cultural acceptance and acculturation into American life was really predominant in the minds, I think, of these immigrant parents.

It was much more important that their children spoke English with no accent and that they were not belittled or embarrassed when they went to school.

So that's a period when you find that some of the names got anglicized, and the language really did start to drop away.

- [Narrator] On the home front, the erosion of their ancestors' language and culture now appeared inevitable.

Assimilation had become something to aim for, a final destination.

If there was any hesitation about where the community's allegiance ultimately stood, what laid just ahead would erase any trace of doubt.

[aircraft engines humming] On December 7th, 1941, the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor trumpeted the nation's entry into the Second World War.

About 15,000 Arab-American men and women answered the call to arms to defeat the Axis powers, serving with distinction in every branch of the armed forces and at the highest levels of command.

- My dad joined immediately after Pearl Harbor, went into the Navy, was a chief motor-machinist mate, fought a bit in the Atlantic on anti-submarine patrols, fought in the Pacific.

Serving in World War II and seeing the world was a high point for him, and his talk about that really focused me on wanting to be an officer in the armed forces of the United States.

- [Narrator] Just as Arab Americans joined in the defense against tyranny, the spirit of patriotism was everywhere in evidence on the home front.

Victory gardens and food and clothing drives to benefit the war-weary overseas united the community in a common cause while waiting for the safe return home of loved ones.

- Everybody had the stars in the window, and we knew everybody that was in the service.

Mr. Baz, Tom Baz, Sr., I remember he had a corner grocery store on LaGrange and Erie Street.

And he had a son who was a paratrooper, Joe, and Joe was reported missing in action.

And then one day we got the sad news that we thought Joe Baz had died.

He was killed in action, and the entire neighborhood mourned.

Months later, we were going by Mr. Baz's store, and on neat wrapping paper in the window it says, "Joe is alive and is coming back.

Free ice cream bars for all the kids."

[laughs] That's the way it was in the neighborhood.

- [Narrator] Flush with optimism, the nation now turned its attention to the business of living.

Syrian and Lebanese enclaves, Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, Toledo's Little Syria, the East Side of Dearborn, Michigan, and the growing community in Orange County, California have become part and parcel of post-war America's ethnic tapestry.

- Well, the best way to end up in Utica, New York is to start off in Utica, New York, and that's where I was born.

This is hometown for me.

We were tight as a community, but it was a predominantly ethnic community.

And we had a typical kind of relationship with Italians and Poles and Irish.

We grew up with fights on the playground, fights in Little League, resentments, but that was on one hand.

On the other hand, we all kind of loved each other.

- Growing up in East Toledo, being Lebanese was really a non-issue because everybody was something.

If you've heard of Tony Packos, and you hear Jamie Farr on "M#*A#*S#*H" talking about Packos, well, that's over in the area I grew up in.

So, everybody was something.

It really was not an issue whether you were Lebanese or Arab or Muslim.

I was in Girl Scouts, and we had our meetings at a church, and growing up, you were just a kid.

- If the stern look didn't work when we were misbehaving, my parents disciplined us with very wonderful little proverbs that just hit the right point at the right time.

When we'd be too rambunctious, one proverb is, [speaks in foreign language], which means the more you go to excess, child, the more you're subtracting from yourself.

We were bequeathed the wisdom of the ages.

- [Narrator] And the second-generation translated that wisdom into flourishing businesses.

An ironclad work ethic that saw immigrants through the first rocky decades in America became another stepping stone to success for their children.

Many a modest business evolved into a major commercial enterprise.

- Both my grandfathers worked hard.

They lived by the rules.

My paternal grandfather developed a five and 10 cent store into a very fashionable ladies' dress shop.

It became known as Rahall's, downtown Beckley.

But my father parlayed the proceeds from the ladies' dress shop into a radio station.

He and his brothers then used the proceeds from that radio station to develop a chain of radio and TV stations known as Rahall Communication Corporation.

So it's really the American dream come true.

- My grandfather had two jobs.

He worked in the steel mill in the blast furnace, and he peddled.

I was admitted to college in 1953, and to help pay for the tuition, I worked the mills.

The mills really helped shape me in a way that I was able to interact with a lot of blue-collar workers.

We were blue collar, you know.'

[elegant jazz music] - [Narrator] The roles of women had also moved beyond traditional career paths.

A second-generation Lebanese American from Kentucky, who loved Shakespeare, went from a $23-a-week copy girl to become one of the most distinguished and outspoken journalists of her generation.

The late Helen Thomas chalked it all up to her family's unwavering support.

- My parents really believed in education.

They couldn't read or write, but they instilled in us the most important thing was to be educated.

And they made sure that every one of the nine children went to college.

Really, I think that I grew up in an era where women were coming of age.

I never was told by my parents that it was a man's world, that I couldn't go into any profession.

So I had it made in the sense of the kind of encouragement that you need.

- [Narrator] As gender roles soared beyond traditional boundaries, so did early ethnic settlements, literally.

Millions were abandoning their inner-city neighborhoods for new housing developments springing up across the nation.

In many ways, the move raised the quality of living, fresh air, good schools, expansive space, but it also drastically curbed access to their native culture.

- My dad's family, because he was born and raised in the Syrian community of Brooklyn, it was much more of an ethnic experience.

My mother grew up in New Jersey.

That's when the real Americanization kicked in.

- [Narrator] Even as the American lifestyle rapidly overshadowed Arab culture, those who remained in the original Arab-American neighborhoods sought to strengthen their ethnic ties.

With three generations now firmly rooted in the United States, the concept of an Arab-American identity began to take shape as a new influx of immigrants from the Middle East settled.

Between 1948 and 1966, generally considered the second wave of Arab immigration, some 80,000 migrants entered the United States, the majority ethnic Palestinians displaced in the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli War.

By 1965, immigration restrictions enacted some 40 years earlier had loosened, beckoning thousands to take a chance on a new life.

Many hailed from Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, where revolutions and coup d'etats had forced those countries' educated and professional classes to flee newly installed regimes.

This new group, predominantly Muslim, highly-literate, and more skilled than previous generations, eagerly embraced the freedoms denied them in their homelands.

- I remember becoming a citizen was very traumatic.

It was giving up a major part of your soul, you know, your connection to a land, to a space, to a people.

And so to give that up, it has to be worthwhile.

For me, the values of this country, what it's stood for, is not just a place.

It's an idea that I felt very connected to and wanted to be a part of.

- When my mom and dad came here, it was just a totally different time.

Here's this man who comes to America with basically nothing and builds his own mini empire, putting his wife through college so that she gets to live her dream.

And he has four daughters who go to college.

[gentle string music] - [Narrator] Marriage outside one's religion or ethnicity may have been taboo back home but was a rising phenomenon here.

The offspring of a mixed union often found themselves engaged in a delicate, at times, humorous, dance between two cultures and two faiths.

- When I was growing up in Lodi, New Jersey, there were two groups.

You were either Italian, or you were my father, and my dad came to the United States from Palestine in 1956.

And shocking to my family, he married an Italian Catholic woman.

My dad would come to church on Christmas and Easter, and one time, he took communion.

I'm not sure why, but he did.

And I said to him, "So what's it like?"

And he goes, "It needs more salt."

My dad was actually I think the Christopher Columbus of the Obeidallah family.

- [Narrator] The Americanization of hard-to-pronounce names had been the special purview of immigration agents at every port of entry, and the new arrival had no choice but to yield.

On the home front, though, the naming of a newborn could prove to be the ultimate tug of war.

- So my name is Fatina, and my dad my whole life wanted me to go by a more Anglo name like Tina.

My mom, whose name is Elizabeth, interestingly enough, wanted me and my siblings to have more Arab names.

I mean, she wanted that.

That was part of the design.

So as my mom, who was born and raised in America, that was very much rooted and appreciated aspects of Arab culture, and my dad, who immigrated here, really wanted us to assimilate to the extent that we were able.

And I think, you know, Mom won.

- Their children went to schools, went to colleges, and entered into every American institution or field.

- [Narrator] But troubled waters lay just ahead.

As the curtain lifted on turbulent times, Arab Americans would find themselves at a critical moment, their very loyalty held up to public scrutiny.

In spite of all they had accomplished, many asked, would it ever be possible to proudly proclaim their heritage when it troubled so many others?

[solemn music] By the mid-1960s, anti-war protests and lunch-counter sit-ins were in full swing across the nation.

Caught up in the spirit of the times, thousands of Arab-American students descended into the street to demand justice.

These unsettling times marked a moment when they were seeing themselves and the world through a different lens.

- I was an anti-war civil rights activist, and I was the anti-war leader at the college I went to, Le Moyne College, and I'd go to Syracuse University to the demonstrations and help lead the demonstrations.

And the radical Black students come up and say, "Hey, Arab, hey, brother."

And then, you know, I'm a schmuck here from Utica.

Oh, that's cool.

You know, I guess I never looked at myself that way.

- It was a time of a lot of turmoil in this country.

The Vietnam War was heating up.

Two years after I was here, Martin Luther King was assassinated.

Bobby Kennedy was assassinated.

There was a lot of stuff happening here in the Washington area, and I was introduced to American politics and race relations and all these things at an early age and really started questioning what is this America that we've heard about that we watch in movies as I was growing up?

What is this America all about?

- Whenever there was an event of national importance that came from the Middle East, and I went to work, my professional colleagues, other educators, would ask me, "Phil, what's going on in Egypt?

What's going on in Syria?"

And I had to answer their questions as the representative voice from the Middle East.

- [Narrator] Building a positive Arab-American identity and navigating comfortably between two cultures was easier said than done.

For decades, the media had held firm sway over the public's perception of the Arab world, and by association, of Arab Americans.

- Ally-kazam.

- I had a wonderful career teaching core courses in media at Southern Illinois University.

And then one day, one Saturday morning, that's the only time my children could watch television, they came running up the stairs, "Daddy, Daddy, they have bad Arabs on TV."

- You will learn to love me, my little pigeon.

- And I began to monitor detective shows, sitcoms, documentaries, and eventually that turned into an article in 1975 called "The TV Arab."

Some of my colleagues began tagging me the Arab Professor, turned down the proposals, called it Arab propaganda.

- [Narrator] It was shocking enough that labeling would take place in the hallowed halls of academia.

Truth was no one, not even those fighting against terrorism, was immune from the chilling effect of ethnic profiling.

- In our culture, our people have come to the conclusion that when you say the word Arab, the next word that you would associate with it is terrorist, and that just didn't start on 9/11.

And as an Arab American, it's always interesting getting on an airplane.

You never know when you're gonna be moved over into the special search line.

It happened to me as a retired four-star general that led our forces in the Middle East.

And so these sorts of things we have to work our way through.

We have to not be offended by 'em.

On the other hand, we've also gotta tell our own citizens that this is a problem we all need to work on together.

Don't categorize.

- I think it's easy to define people in very flat terms.

Arabs are no different than other communities that have come through this country.

Just as we saw America abroad as defined by Hollywood, being this one-dimensional country that has cowboys and Indians, good and bad guys, and the good guys always win, not everybody wants to take the time to go deeper beyond the first image that they perceive.

- [Narrator] For Arab Americans born in Arabic-speaking countries, returning to their native land for the first time since immigrating was not only about reawakening sensations that had remained dormant for decades, but appreciating the opportunities America had given them and their families.

- When we were kids growing up in Maine, every day my mother said to us, "You should see Lebanon.

It is so beautiful, the mountains, the sea, the cedars.

The flowers smell so beautiful."

Over and over again we heard it.

Many years after that, after my father passed away, my sister decided to take my mother back to Lebanon for the first and only time she ever again visited her homeland.

And there was a celebration of neighbors and relatives welcoming her back to her village.

Someone asked my mother to say a few words, so she got up, according to my sister, and she looked around at her relatives, and said to them, "You should see America."

She said, "The mountains, the forest, the ocean.

Even the flowers smell beautiful in America."

So we all realized that we'd had the best of both worlds.

- [Narrator] As momentum continued to build around an Arab-American identity, Arab-American women were taking the lead in challenging notions at times misleading, sometimes downright vicious, on how society saw them and how they viewed society.

- I didn't always wear a hijab.

In fact, I began wearing a hijab before my mother, and it was a kind of self-searching time in my life, which is college.

But I remember thinking this is really the ultimate kind of expression of feminist perspective for me, who I wanted to be in terms of my understanding of humility and my understanding of my own relationship to myself and to the universe.

You meet people on the airplane.

It's really like [clears throat].

You know, they give the [clears throat], and you don't know if that's like, do you wanna talk, or do you not wanna talk?

And you begin to just learn to navigate these experiences.

Wearing a head scarf makes you very visibly open to the spectrum of perspectives.

It's often the woman who covers her hair that is the last woman to be questioned or asked about why she's covering her hair.

Non-Arabs or non-Muslims talk about, you know, the veiling.

Let's maybe ask the actual community who participates in some of these practices their perspective.

- [Narrator] By the 1980s, over three million Arab Americans traced their ancestry to the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf, and boasted a presence in every state in the union, with the greatest concentration settled in New York, Detroit, and Los Angeles.

They had risen to achieve success in every professional field, from the sciences and medicine, to business and engineering.

Resilience, a fierce work ethic, an entrepreneurial vigor, the triumvirate of old-world values passed down from parent to child formed the backbone of remarkable present-day success.

- My dad raced purely as a hobby, goes to war, comes back, goes to college, starts racing.

So I got involved through him.

I think the things that I get from my dad are obviously a passion.

You know, we can sell.

You know, I think we, you know... You know, because when I started... For you to race, you have to be able to find the sponsorship.

So I was pretty successful in that as well as just driving the car.

The number of times you hear no are far greater than the number of times you hear yes.

So you really have to have a resilient kind of character, and I think I got that from my dad.

- [Narrator] If there was any one entertainer who paid society back in spades, it was the late Danny Thomas.

Thomas was so proud of his heritage that he introduced audiences to his Lebanese Uncle Tonoose and to the traditional music of his ancestral homeland.

- That was nice, Daniel.

Now play a Lebanese song, eh?

[Danny chuckles] - Oh, wait a minute now.

[soft piano music] - Ah!

- [Narrator] Thomas was born Amos Muzyad Yaqoob Kairouz to Lebanese immigrants in Deerfield, Michigan and was raised in Toledo.

- What's daddy playing, Uncle Tonoose?

- Oh, that beautiful old song, beautiful, as old as our people, that song.

- [Narrator] As a struggling young actor, he prayed to St. Jude Thaddeus, patron saint of hopeless causes.

"Help me find my way in life, and I will build you a shrine."

The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

In 1957, Thomas created the American Lebanese-Syrian Associated Charities with the sole purpose of raising funds to establish and operate St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

Built on a prayer and a promise, Danny lived to see his little hospital grow to become an international beacon of hope for children and families around the world.

Thomas set the stage for another young actor from the old neighborhood, whose unforgettable role as the cross-dressing Sergeant Klinger paid comical homage to their shared heritage.

- When I was called in to do "M#*A#*S#*H," we need to put food on a table and pay the rent, so I showed up, and there were Women's Army Corps clothing, and he had these huge high heels that day.

I put those on, and they started feeding me the few lines that I had.

Well, it just seemed to work.

Danny was one of the first big-name comedians that bought jokes from Larry Gelbart, who created the character.

I think that was sort of a payback to make my character Lebanese from Toledo, Ohio, et cetera, because Danny had purchased those jokes from him.

- [Narrator] But there was one field to which Arab Americans were latecomers.

It was only in the post-Vietnam years that Arab Americans recognized the need to fully emerge from the shadows and strengthen their political voice on the national scene.

- Well, I believe Americans of Arab descent are perhaps a little late in becoming politically active because they came here, like my grandfathers did, wanting to work, wanting to make a place for their families.

They did not become involved in a political scene.

- Just before I entered the Senate, I had the privilege of serving as a United States District Judge.

What I enjoyed most was when I presided over what are called naturalization ceremonies.

They're citizenship ceremonies.

A group of people who'd come from every part of the world gathered before me.

And by the power vested in me under our Constitution and law, I made them Americans.

It was always a very emotional time for me because my mother was an immigrant.

My father was the orphan son of immigrants.

My parents had no education.

They had no money.

- In 2001, I was president of the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo.

We had just finished a fantastic international festival.

It was our first big international festival in August, and it was well attended, and it was just beautiful.

I remember heading downtown, hearing it on the radio, that a second plane hit.

I thought, "A second plane?

What are they talking about?"

They said, "It hit the World Trade Center."

I thought, "Didn't the pilot see... How could two planes...

Didn't they see those buildings?"

And then they were talking about terrorism, and I was numb.

- [Narrator] More than any single event in modern history, 9/11 shook America and the world to their very core.

That crisp autumn morning that quickly turned into the unthinkable, the deepest, darkest nightmare of human loss and devastation, seared into the collective memory of the nation.

- You know, I kept thinking during the course of those events as they were unfolding before all of our eyes, that this, I hope, is not a black mark forever upon people from the Middle East, that it's not a black mark forever upon Muslims or any segment of our population.

After all, all of the above perished in 9/11.

I could see that there were gonna be difficult days ahead with stereotyping, with racial profiling, and that that greatly worried me.

President Bush, much to his credit, said that this was not gonna be a war against Muslims or against any ethnic group.

This was a war against those terrorists who targeted America.

- One of the small windows up here had been shot at a couple of times, some high-power rifles.

A Christian radio station here in Toledo contacted me and said, "We wanna call people on the airwaves and call them out to your center and hold hands and surround your center and pray for your protection."

And it was a beautiful fall evening.

We had about 1,500 people who showed up to circle our center.

It was really a beautiful coming-together.

- The residual effects of 9/11 and the feelings of intolerance and suspicion that surrounded Arab communities, that's a challenge that will continue to face us.

- September 10th, I went to sleep a white guy.

September 11th, I woke up an Arab.

You know, my world had changed and so many other Arab Americans.

On some level, it was an awakening of me getting in touch with my own Arab-American heritage.

You know, before 9/11, I was never involved in any Arab-American organizations.

I didn't even have Arab-American friends, to be honest.

But after 9/11, I began to get more entrenched in the community.

I think for many of us in our community, we felt under siege.

- [Speaker] Our failure to address terrorism.

- [Narrator] On the media front lines, Arab Americans are bringing greater nuances to their discussion about the Arab world in their effort to bridge the divide between nations and strengthen bonds between their ancestral and native-born identity.

- There's a role that Arab Americans play in trying to make sense of the region that we do share ties to.

At the same time, we're Americans, and sometimes we can...

In some ways, we can put a foot in both places.

We're dealing with two regions whose faiths are inextricably linked.

And you know, 9/11 is what has defined that.

I think it becomes more important, more important now than ever, to try to bridge some of those gaps.

- How many Arabs are here in Philly?

I wanna know.

- [Narrator] Bridging those gaps under stage Lights was a new group of outspoken Arab-American performers unafraid to tackle the most taboo of themes with humor and make no apologies for who they were.

- Oh, you're an Arab.

Wow, I love hummus.

[audience laughs] - After 9/11, Dean Obeidallah and I got together and started working doing standup because we wanted to change the image of Arabs as being others.

Every time you saw a story in the news, we weren't referred to as Americans, as fellow citizens, and it was kind of frightening.

- A year ago, I sat on the stage and said to you guys I was a Palestinian Muslim virgin.

I expected one of you to swoop me up.

- I remember being in a hospital recently, and you know, once someone said to me, "Well, geez, I didn't know this family was Christian.

They had crosses on, and I was wondering why."

And I said, "Well, you know, there are people who are Middle-Eastern Christian, and that's the land where Christ Himself walked."

Christ was a dark-haired man.

He wasn't blond hair and blue eyes like you'd imagine.

- [Narrator] By now, Americans had become familiar with Arab food, heard favorite stories about the old country.

And when they missed the mark on the origins of Arab Americans, hilarity often ensued.

- I knew I was Palestinian before I even knew I was a girl.

And then when I got like a little bit older, my girlfriends used to take me to church with them for midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

And they would show me off to their friends, and they'd be like, "She's from where Jesus was born."

And my friend Tina was really confused and totally thought that meant I was Italian.

And I told her, "No, you know, I'm Palestinian."

And she was like, "No, Jesus was born in the Vatican."

- One day when I was about 10, I came home from school, and my father said to me, "What'd you learn in school today, Ralph?

Did you learn how to believe, or did you learn how to think?"

Just think of the succinct wisdom of that kind of offhand expression.

And it was that kind of interaction that a lot of immigrant groups brought to this country.

- We are not a monolith.

We treasure American values and how much they are a part of Arab-American values.

The same things that Americans hold dear, we do too.

And we are fiercely patriotic.

- [John A.]

We are citizens that not only want our country to be great, but we also wanna bridge this gap between the culture that we love here in the United States and the culture that we love in the Middle East.

- [Anthony] I am proud of being Arab American I think because it's ever more important for us to actually help shape those notions, those ideas, that sensibility about who we are.

- When I left to go to college, I had just turned 17.

I was young, naive, insecure.

But my father said to me, "You're a smart young boy, and I know you're gonna do well.

And when you do, don't you ever forget where you came from."

[gentle instrumental music] [gentle instrumental music continues] - [Announcer] "The Arab Americans" is available on DVD.

To order, visit shoppbs.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.

[vocalist singing in foreign language] [bright music] - [Announcer] Major funding for "The Arab Americans" is provided by the John Templeton Foundation and by Lloyd Baroody and Zeina Mehio, and The John Victor Machuga Foundation.

Additional funding by the Levant Foundation, Basem Hishmeh, Ralph Rocco, Jay Hamad, Fred Nouri, Sr., and others.

A complete list is available from PBS.