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Humanities and Social Sciences 
Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies

Counting Lebanese-Americans

Introduction

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.

  • While we only provide our research results online, researchers and the general public can visit the center to use raw data. For more information, please contact lebanesestudies@ncsu.edu.

essays produced using u.s. census data

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?

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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 over-simplified story.
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