This study introduces four Arab immigrant political organizations in the U.S. by drawing on sizable manuscript collections belonging to two individuals: Ameen Farah, who founded the first political organization in 1915, and who was active in each of the organizations under study; and Khalil Totah, the director of the Institute of Arab American Affairs which lasted from 1945 to 1950. The manuscripts of these two men are supplemented by a survey of primary and secondary sources for a chronicle of Arab nationalism, and the structures, impact, and activities of these mass political organizations. They are: Free Syria Society (FSS), 1915; the New Syria Party (NSP), 1926; the Arab National League (ANL), 1936; and the Institute of Arab
American Affairs (Institute), 1945. I argue that an Arab American self-ascribed identity was born in the course of establishing these organizations. I further argue that the formation of Arab American identity paralleled Arab national awareness from the point of migration in the 1890 and the establishment of the Arabic-language press.
Initially created to extend humanitarian aid to countrymen in times of crisis, each of these organizations reflected the Arab immigrants' cultural and political identity upon immigrating to the U.S. in discernible numbers in the 1890s. The political messages espoused by the immigrants paralleled the rise of Arab nationalist feelings in the Syrian provinces of the Ottoman Empire, an area encompassing Lebanon, Syria, and historic Palestine. Documenting these organizations challenges presently held assumptions on Arab nationalism and Arab immigrant political awareness in a U.S. context, namely, that neither existed before World War I and the Arab-Israeli war in 1967 respectively.
This study examines Arab nationalism before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, including an extensive survey of the political content of the Arabic-language press in the U.S., and discuses trans-nationalist affiliations around the Arab cause of independence. The period extending from 1890 to 1915, this study contends, was defined by articulate demands for sovereignty by the immigrants working in concert with nationalist exiles in Egypt.
The NSP, headquartered in Highland Park, Michigan was an early experiment in political organizing with branches across the U.S., Canada, and South America. The impetus for the founding of NSP was a revolt by Syrians against the French mandate. During the life of that organization (1926-1927), British colonialism in the southern part of natural Syria commenced after the British promised and implemented settlement of European Jews in Palestine in 1917.
A convergence of immigrant activists, including many who actively supported the revolt in Syria through NSP and the office of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husaini, yielded the ANL in 1936. This organization attempted to use its large membership, initially created to aid the war afflicted, to influence U.S. foreign policy until the looming Second World War hastened articulation of an Arab American identity. During the ANL's Fourth National Convention 1939 the immigrants declared their allegiance to the U.S. as Arab Americans, not Arabs in America, while at the same time expressing their loyalty for Arab independence.
