-- [applause] >> interested in american history tv? visit our website at c-span.org/history. you can view our tv schedule, and ew upcoming programs watch college lectures, museum tours, archival films and more. history tv, at c-spa c-span.org/history. ext on american history tv we learn about muslim and arab culture in detroit. sally howell, at the center for arab american tudies at dearborn and the islam," f "old rediscovering the american muslim in the past. it's just over 15 minutes.

sally teaches history at the university of michigan in dearborn but is also the for the center of arab american studies. how long has detroit, and in particular, michigan and in a more general sense, being a for arab population? >> for the arab community, s.ting back toll 1890 >> what started it? >> people were coming to the united states at that time. hardship in nomic the mountains of lebanon which is where most of the early mmigrants came from and the silk economy collapsed, basically, and so people had to go off in search of other and they were moving sort of west. they started on the east coast like most immigrants did and hey started moving west a lot of them were pedaling, that was the way the very early mmigrants got their economic footing, and detroit was a center of pedaling for ohio, for so there was a pedaling enclave there. mostly christian arabs, but

muslims followed. >> a very different climate for to.m to adjust >> i still say this all the time. why here? why michigan. the community really grew after 1914, when henry ford had the auto k day and industry took off and that's when a lot of the muslim immigrants came. so both communities, the christian and arab community and had m arab community have more than a century in michigan now. arab, not just lebanon? > yemen, morocco, palestine, the big groups in detroit are iraq, lebanon, toes are the big palestine and yemen. >> is it, in fact, largest native arab of people in the united states? -- o michigan does not have michigan as a state does not have the largest population. look at, a city like dearborn, which is roughly a hundred thousand "people" half americans or ab

there is a smaller city, which s the majority muslim, it's yemen, bangladesh and bosnian, majority in some places and muslim majority in some places, there is g else in america where you see of intense type concentration like you see in detroit but numerically, other states, new york and california larger numbers. >> and detroit, of course, has been struggling economically for number of years now with the decline of the auto industry, and i read in some of your work phenomenon eresting that's happening is that the population overall is going down is the arab population increasing. >> yeah. this is what i'm looking at now. project. yeah, so, i mean, arabs have been leaving michigan. you are some communities, know, it depends on which part of the community you're from, how long you've been in the there is one community estinians. in the 1980s and 1970s, they were a big community in detroit ut they saw the success the

lebanese were having in detroit getting into the gas station usiness, and the lebanese seemed to have a monopoly on gas tation ownership so they went to cleveland and copied what the lebanese had done in detroit and young people are leaving for in chicago and other parts of the country, but you're absolutely right. if you look at the city of has been, elf, which you know, continually losing population, really since the s, but, you know, in the dramatically so, between 1990 and 2000, and then 2000 and 2010, the neighborhoods where you saw actual population growth happening in the city, the only saw population growth, were in the spaces that immigrants, mostly arab, muslim immigrants are moving into. > detroit has also long been a majority african-american population. what's been the intersection of two wo populations, the cultures over time? go back to the teens

and 1920s, the new migrants to city, whether they were from india, pakistan, lebanon, or they he american south, had a lot in common in the sense that they were generally not well-educated. skilled workers, moving to the city's four rural areas. the shock of being in a city that was a new cosmopolitan city was something they all had in common. the air of immigrants in particular in the early period, they had to fight to qualify for naturalization. there were a number of landmark legal cases that took place between 1907 and 1926 where of error -- arab americans were arguing they were whites, because in order to be eight naturalized citizen, you had to be a free white person. they legally had to make this case that they were white to be considered it. this is a big deal for the community. a lot of the air of americans lived in white, working-class neighborhoods. they grew up and assimilated among other immigrants that had come from europe. there was a solidarity that

people found between themselves. and south asian immigrants to the city and african-americans. some of the first mosques, if you look at the people who attended them, witnessed what was going on, they always commented on how it was a diverse crowd. the religious leaders also made a point of saying this, that in churches, churches are segregated. this place is not. people are equal coming regardless of their geographical and racial origins. this is part of the appeal. that islam had in that early period to african-americans. historically, the communities might have lived separately, but they collaborated them especially on religious -- in religious zones and on political zones, sort of fighting

colonialism. thatarious communities saw they had a lot in common in terms of their anti-colonial attitudes. that is maybe more in the early period. because of the fact people were livihengndity became more polarized racily in 1930's and 1940's in terms of housing and stuff, the community had separate trajectories mid century. in the 1960's and 1970's when the new left rose up, use our you saw new solidarity being created between blacks and arabs in particular. today, it depends on who you talk to. some people see there's incredible solidarity across these natural divides. other people see just polarization. it depends on where you are situated. >> if you were to walk through neighborhoods, would you see mostly arabic on shops lines or is there a simulation? sally: there is almost no place where you would see only arabic. english will be the primary signage, but a lot of businesses have arabic.

it is a community that is more than 100 years old, but also majority immigrant. if you talk about the arab community. the south asian community in michigan is the fastest-growing population in the state. they are basically a post-1965 migration. you have a lot of immigrants in the community. it depends on where you go. dearborn, you see a lot of arabic. although a lot of american arabic business owners there, my food is about hello food. i am amused that when you're in dearborn, when you first drive on to michigan avenue from detroit, to the east of dearborn, one of the first businesses you see is a strip club that has a big sign on the roof that says hallal chicken. that sign is in english. on the other side of town there is a hipster hamburger place with a green wall, just all

recycled wood, and if earnings and -- and the furnishings and a rethink. they tell you where all of the ingredients come from. it is a hallal restaurant, but it doesn't say it. the ethnic enclaves, use the arab signage, but you see entrepreneurs taking their wares into the mainstream. those both coexist. >> part of your scholarship changed after 9/11. i know you have been involved in studying what has been happened with that community. what can you tell us about the changes that have happened to them and the overall u.s. culture since 9/11? sally: obviously, it has been a challenging period. it has gotten more challenging in recent years. if you look at some of the

studies that were done immediately after 9/11, it has been sort of up and down. there was a rise in hate crime, rise in anti-arab, and increasingly anti-muslim sentiment that followed. also, you had the liberal establishment reaching out to the arab and muslim community, and a lot of major foundations and universities and big mainstream institutions were trying to fight these crimes. and fight the prejudice that followed the attacks. if you did studies of public opinion, you would find a lot of americans had better opinions of islam in 2012 than they had in 2010. something had moved there. the population became more aware of this community. there was a lot of sympathy for the community, but more recently, we, especially with the rise of trump, but it didn't begin with trump. we have seen this incredible rise in islamophobia.

in the last year, the number of hate crimes across the country, affecting muslims in particular, also jewish americans, other minority communities have skyrocketed. this is a problem and threat. >> what can you tell me about arab and muslim participation in the political process? sally: i was going to answer, if you think about how things change, that is how society views these populations. but the impact on these communities of being viewed in this negative way or being thrust into the mainstream in a new way in the last 17 years has driven incorporation for these populations, driven a political participation, driven some of the economic participation that i was just talking about. people cannot sit on their laurels, sit and wait for america to come to them. in particular the last couple of

years. just like you see women running for office and minority candidates running for office, it's amazing we have a muslim , arab running for governor of michigan right now. he is doing very well. he has raised close to 2 million dollars already. he has spoken to people in every county in the state. he has raised money and every county. he is really going out there and doing his research. we have two women running for congress, both arab muslim women. one is the daughter of a hallal butcher. another is running in an upper-middle-class suburb to the north of the city. she is running a great campaign. another woman just announced she is exploring running for the seat that john conyers just vacated. she was a state representative for detroit for many years. both of these women are very dynamic. they are not running as arab americans. they are running because they are well connected to their

district and the political issues of the district they represent. we also have -- we only have one arab muslim in the state legislature right now. but i have a feeling that is going to change in the next couple years. we have quite a few more people running. dearborn for the first time has an arab-american majority on its city council. many of the people in these starter positions politically are they moving on to run for state offices. there is a lot happening in michigan in terms of representation. michigan is a microcosm of what is happening national. i can speak to the examples of detroit, but there are many people running all over the country. >> we have just a couple minutes left with you. does your work with the center have you intersect with state and local government and the federal government in any way? do you service a consultant in

-- do you serve as a consultant to them in helping them to understand policies for the population or for the government erstanding culture and anti-terror movements? sally: our center is somewhat new. they were trying to create a center befor9/11 hpened at the university of michigan oddly, theut, politics made the center a challenge. this is my second year being a director -- being the director. they were waiting for us to get tenured. [laughter] i think a lot of us who do arab-american studies have done consulting. i have worked with the census bureau. i work a lot with state people more than with federal people. right now, the group i am working with is the intermediate school district. there are a lot of new families coming from yemen because of the war. they are coming under duress. they don't have a lot of money,

so the various school districts in michigan, the lower income districts are seeing this mushrooming of the yemeni population. they don't have chairs in their classroom. they don't have enough bilingual teachers to help with the program there. they don't know how to communicate with families. one of the things we have been doing recently is working with school districts to make sure they understand the demographic patterns so they can plan for the future. we are working in some of these communities with realtors to try and steer yemeni families to communities that have space in their schools as opposed to neighboring districts that are overcrowded. you know what i mean? there is planning going on in trying to accommodate the populations. yes, we do consulting as a field. a lot of us work with different parts of the government, depending on our specialization. for us in the center, we are

skilled because we are nascent. we're still dealing more with local government. >> how did you find yourself in this line of scholarship? sally: when i first graduated from college a long time ago, i moved to michigan for personal reasons. i had worked with nonprofit organizations in washington, d.c. that worked in the middle east. because they had connections in the arab community, when i came to michigan, people suggested i go work for the central service agency in dearborn. when i got there, i grew up in louisiana, so i am a southern girl. dearborn is a home to a factory, which was the world's largest industrial facility, over 100,000 employees. this is where the hunger march took place.

so many things happened right by this factory. when i got to michigan, i moved into this arab neighborhood. mosques and yemeni men and palestinian women wearing their traditional dresses. what struck me as interesting and exotic about that space was the working-class history. the fact that the neighborhood had historically been so multiethnic and now was an arab neighborhood. how did that transition take place? that is what led me on this journey. >> thank you for telling us about the new center and your work. we have learned more about detroit's history by talking to you. thank you so much. sally: thank you. >> you're watching american history tv, 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span3. at c-spanon twitter history for information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news.

>> monday night on the communicators, former fcc chair tom wheeler talks about the end of net neutrality. he is interviewed by david mccabe, technology reporter for axis. >> conversation around neutrality has shifted to legislation or there are some on the hill who would like it to shift to legislation. do you think it is possible to legislate this issue? >> the republican issue all along during my term was this is something congress has to decide and now when congress has an opportunity to decide with the congressional review act that passed the senate in a bipartisan way and is now pending in the house, republicans in the house and industry also a know, congress should not decide. look, if the chairman of the fcc has the courage of his convictions that what he has and is right for america

will stand up to a vote in the congress, you got to pick up the phone, call speaker ryan, and say schedule it for a vote in the house and let's see what the representatives, the american people say. >> watch "the communicators" monday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span two. >> next week, life coverage from the u.s.-north korea summit between president trump and north korean leader kim jump in. then join "washington journal" tuesday and wednesday morning for analysis and your comments. -- north korean leader kim jong-un. tom reilly talks about his vietnam war service, including his time as army radio operator and war correspondent for the "stars and stripes"

newspaper. he also describes his close encounters with a land mine and a hand grenade. the witness to war sundays and conducted this interview, which is a little over an hour. -- the witness to war foundation conducted this interview. emily: all right. today is august 14, 2012. this is emily carle. i'm here in brookhaven, georgia, with tom reilly, that's r-e-i-l-l-y, and mr. reilly was in the army in the 199th light infantry brigade, third battalion, seventh infantry, company c first platoon, first squad. and mr. reilly, where are you from originally? mr. reilly: originally i call myself an atlanta native, to be honest with you, yet i was born in michigan because of world war ii. my family has been here in the atlanta area since 1931. by world war ii, took us out of the city just long enough for me to be born in kalamazoo, michigan, and w