Syrian in Sioux Falls

Episode 390

Produced and Narrated by Chris Gratien

Episode Consultant: Reem Bailony

Series Consultant: Emily Pope-Obeda

Script Editor: Sam Dolbee

with additional contributions by Akram Khater, Graham Pitts, Linda Gordon, Victoria Saker Woeste, Nadim Shehadi, and Mohamed Okdie

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In the years after the world war that ravaged the Ottoman Empire, Hassan left his native village in modern-day Lebanon to join his parents and siblings in the growing Midwest town of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. To do so, he had to sidestep the stringent immigration quotas newly implemented by the US. But years later, when the authorities learned that he entered and was living in the US illegally, he was threatened with deportation. Through Hassan's story, we'll learn about the experience of Arab migration to the United States and get to know the Syrian-American community that despite numbering in the hundreds of thousands by the 1920s, found itself repeatedly compelled to prove its worthiness to be included in a society where nativism was on the rise and being entitled to full citizenship often meant being considered white.



This episode is part of our investigative series Deporting Ottoman Americans.



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