Skip to main content
NC State Home
Humanities and Social Sciences
Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies

Counting Lebanese-Americans

How many immigrants were living in the United States between 1900 and 1930? Where did they live? How many of them were women? How many were married, single, or divorced? How many children did they have, if any? What was their average age?

Until now, researchers did not have reliable answers for these demographic and social questions about Lebanese immigrants in the United States. Most information compiled by researchers was based on rough estimates that, more often than not, provided wildly divergent numbers, leaving one more perplexed than informed. Recognizing this pressing need, the Khayrallah Center launched a project in 2015 to provide reliable population data for first-wave Lebanese-Americans from 1900 to 1930. The Center mined decennial U.S. Census data from 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930 to create a comprehensive profile of the earliest Lebanese-Americans and to share this information with the public.

essays produced using u.s. census data

Questioning Assumptions: Gender & Lebanese Immigration

At the entrance to the Port of Beirut, there stands a statue of a man in 19th-century village attire, looking out to the seas. In Arabic, it is titled “The Lebanese [Male] Emigrant: From Lebanon to the World.” The statue embodies the established tale of Lebanese immigration to the US (among other places) of single men who ventured from their villages, some alone and many in small groups. Yet, recent research indicates that Lebanese immigration to the US challenges this oversimplified story.

Read more

Counting the Lebanese in the U.S.: 1900-1930

How many immigrants were living in the United States between 1900 and 1930? Where did they live? How many of them were women? How many were married, single, or divorced? How many children did they have, if any? What was their average age?

Read More