♪curious orchestral music♪ [Aymann VO] Ross, North Dakota.

Today, it's a sleepy town of some 90 people, mainly white and Christian.

But 100 years ago, it was home to a Muslim community of farmers from present-day Lebanon, then part of Greater Syria.

They built one of the first purpose-built mosque's in the country.

Their story is preserved in North Dakota's State Historical Society, in a set of interviews with community members conducted in the 1930s.

[Sarah VO] So here is Mrs. Mary Juma's interview.

[Aymann VO] Mary Juma settled in North Dakota in 1902.

She helped build that early American mosque.

"If I had my life to live over, I would have come to America sooner than I did."

[Aymann VO] The original mosque no longer exists.

But in the Arab American National Museum, a fragment remains... ♪♪♪ the mosque's door, connecting past and present, and giving me a whole new way of seeing the story of American Muslims, and a history of the American Midwest.

♪♪♪ Around the turn of the 20th century, millions of people migrated to the United States, drawn by the American dream of economic opportunity, of better lives, and greater freedom.

Among them were thousands of Muslims from the Middle East, subjects of the 600-year-old Ottoman Empire, ruled from Istanbul.

♪curious orchestral music♪ Some Arabic-speaking immigrants came to cities like New York, Boston, and Chicago.

Many traveled to Detroit, where jobs could be had at the Ford auto factories.

But others took a longer and less well-known journey farther west, onto the Great Plains, where some settled and lived out their lives in Ross, North Dakota.

♪♪♪ [Aymann] Yeah, I see here we have the Abdallah family.

They must have made that journey.

And we have Sam Jaha and family, and he also made the journey, born 1892.

[Nicole] This is my family down here.

My great-grandparents are back here.

[Aymann] God rest their souls.

[Aymann VO] Nicole Mattson's ancestors were part of the community Mary Juma and her husband Hassen established in the early 1900s.

Do you come here a lot?

You know, I don't come that often, and, in fact, I didn't even know about any of this history; I learned about it in college!

I was assigned to write a research paper.

I could pick any ethnic group in America; I chose Lebanese-Americans.

So, I went to the library, I checked out all the books on Lebanese-Americans, and I'm reading this book and it's quoting my aunt Lyla about the mosque!

[Aymann] What?!

[laughs] No way!

Yeah!

And I said, "Wait, a mosque?!

I didn't know there was a mosque anywhere!"

I didn't even know my family has been Muslim!

And so I called my grandma, and I said, -"What is this about a mosque?!"

-[Aymann laughs] And she said, "Oh, didn't you know about that?"

And I said, "No, I didn't know about that!"

[Aymann] "How am I supposed to know about that?!"

Nobody ever told me!

[Aymann VO] The story of the mosque and the community that built it begins a world away from North Dakota, in Lebanon's Wadi al-Biqa, or Beqaa Valley, Mary and Hassen Juma's home in the late 1800s.

[Aymann] Do we know anything about why they left the Beqaa Valley?

[Edward] There was push and pull.

People's livelihoods were changing.

The Ottoman Empire was modernizing, there were economic displacements going on, jobs were disappearing.

What's happening in Lebanon can't be really separated from what's happening in the United States at the same time.

In the late 1880s, the US is coming out of a depression, and there's a demand for more workers, so one of the things that's happening in Lebanon is promotional activity to recruit workers.

What they are hearing is the story of the land of opportunity, of this American Dream, where you can build this life that maybe was not available back home.

♪♪♪ [Aymann] "The people in our vicinity were migrating to America and kept writing back about the riches in America..." [woman VO, overlapping] Everyone wanted to move there, and we were a family of the many that contemplated leaving.

A big farewell party was given in our honor.

It was a sad farewell, as we left two daughters in the old country with relatives.

[Edward VO] Their plan, like a lot of people, was "We're gonna make a bunch of money quick, and we're gonna go back home to our kids."

It didn't turn out that way.

♪somber music♪ ♪energetic curious music♪ [woman VO] We went to Beirut, and caught a boat to France.

It took us about three weeks to travel through France.

♪♪♪ It took us three more weeks to come from France to Montreal, Canada.

[Salah VO] The journey people took typically involved three or four legs, and it was about a 20- to 30-day journey.

We do know that most of them traveled in steerage, which was below deck, of course, often three bunks.

It was the cheapest ticket they could get.

Around the time that Mary and Hassen came to the United States, many Arabic-speaking immigrants were being turned away putatively because of an eye disease, trachoma, but often times just because they were undesirable immigrants, for racial reasons.

It was easier to enter the United States on the northern border sometimes than it was to get in through New York, and that's what they did.

[woman VO] We moved further inland and started to travel over that country, with a horse and cart, as peddlers.

[Edward VO] So they start out in Canada.

Then, they go, around 1901, to Nebraska, and they peddle through Nebraska.

[Aymann] "Peddling" is just hustling.

-Just, like... -It's hustling!

-Buying and selling.

-You bet!

[Salah VO] I think there's a pejorative association with peddling as itinerancy.

On the other hand, I think, in Arab-American cultural history, we look at it as being... quite often, it's associated with pioneering, determination to survive and get by in a difficult world as an immigrant that actually helped to build the commercial routes of the modern United States.

So, the peddlers were always looking for places where people might have money but nothing available to them; there were no corner stores.

So, the idea is that that would take you westward.

[woman VO] In 1902, we came to western North Dakota.

It was at the time when there was an influx of people to take homesteads, and we decided to try homesteading too.

[Maytha VO] The Homesteading Act provided for 160 acres, if agreed upon, to cultivate this agricultural land if you lived on it for about five years.

It was this promise of land, and promise of a dream to... be able to feel stable and settled.

The catch was that it had just been taken away from Native Americans 10 years prior to the time when they're giving it out to anyone who's willing to settle it.

♪pensive ethereal music♪ [Salah VO] Homesteading was a policy of colonial settlement.

♪♪♪ [Maytha VO] The key was that the people you sent out there didn't really understand that they were the agents.

The migrants became buffers between the US government and the populations they were displacing.

[Salah VO] Arab-speaking immigrants at the turn of the century actually were caught up in this racial conflict.

♪♪♪ [Aymann VO] But this land wasn't available to everyone.

The Homestead Act required an applicant to be a US citizen, or to commit to becoming one.

To apply for US citizenship in the early 1900s, you had to be either a free white person, of African nativity, or African descent.

For people from the Middle East, this could be a challenge.

The issue was naturalization, and could you be a US citizen if you were Muslim, and if your first language was Arabic.

It didn't always line up to skin color.

Race didn't function in that way, because, in some cases, Syrians were struck down because they were considered parasitic peddlers, and that was not what a free white person would do.

[Aymann VO] But in the early 1900s, the rules were arbitrary, enforced by local judges.

Public records from 1902 show Mary Juma's husband applying for citizenship, and being granted a parcel of land he had five years to improve.

[Edward VO] Mary and Hassen are part of dozens of Muslims who are setting in this country, often times along the Great Northern Railway, which has four trains in and out of a town called Ross, which would become one of the most important Muslim towns in America in the early 1900s.

♪inspiring orchestral music♪ [woman VO] We started clearing the land immediately.

Within a year, we had a horse, plow, disk, drag, and drill.

We also had some cattle and chickens.

[shutter snapping] [Aymann VO] You know, it's one thing to read about Mary Juma.

It's another thing entirely to show up and see where she homesteaded, you know?

♪soft pensive music♪ You can be driving past this plot on the highway, and it just looks like a little slice of America.

[train horn blowing] But for someone like me, who's a Muslim American, this is so much more significant.

[Aymann VO] It's hard to imagine just how challenging life was for the Jumas when they arrived here.

In the winter, they would have experienced extreme cold for several months, and run a real risk of getting frostbite or hypothermia.

[Salah VO] Conditions would have been very rudimentary in terms of infrastructure and what was available to them to heat their homes.

They don't have electricity, they don't have running water, I mean, you gotta cut wood...

I mean, an extremely difficult rural life.

[Aymann VO] Six years after arriving in Ross, the Jumas received the patent for their land, after Hassen's citizenship had been approved.

[Aymann] Okay, so they were able to get some land.

Does that mean that they more or less succeeded in presenting as -white?

-Yeah!

They succeeded!

I have Hassen Juma's certificate of naturalization; he becomes a naturalized US citizen.

[Aymann] "On the fifth day of April in the year of the Lord nineteen hundred and seven."

Wow.

[Edward VO] You know, this is a really important date, because in 1908 and 1909, the Secretary of Commerce and Labor... was telling local judges not to naturalize Syrians because they're actually Asian, or "Oriental," or "Asiatic" -- they would say the term -- and not white.

[Aymann VO] Hm.

[Edward] What's interesting is that a lot of the local judges refused to cooperate with the federal authority on this.

-Really?

-Yeah!

Why is that?

Because for 20 years, these people have established themselves in places like Cedar Rapids, in Ross, North Dakota, in Michigan City, Indiana.

They know these people; these people are their neighbors!

♪delicate exciting music♪ [woman VO] In 1903, my son, Charles, was born.

He was the first Syrian child to be born in western North Dakota.

We were the first Syrians to homestead in this community, but soon, many people from that country came to settle here.

This is an atlas of Mountrail county from 1917.

The township is on 31.

[Aymann] Wow... [Sarah] So, here is... -Mary Juma.

-[Aymann] Mary Juma, yup.

Leila... We have Sade Abdelh... Hassan Farhart here... -we have Abdulah Omar... -[Sarah] What?!

[chuckles] -I have a uncle named Abdulah.

-[Sarah] Oh!

Yeah, I mean, usually, now, people think, "Oh, when the Abdulahs move in, there goes the neighborhood," but it seems like they've been there for a while.

[Sarah] For sure.

[Aymann VO] What's curious is that I can only find Mary's name on this map, not Hassen's.

[Edward] Hassen passed away in 1917, -the same year... -[Aymann] Oh, wow.

In which this plot map was made.

And some of the women, they were single and owned homesteads.

This was a very hearty group of women.

When Hassen would go peddling, he would leave the farm in Mary's hand.

She had to have a limb amputated; she had to use a wheelchair.

And she said, "I miss my work..." -[Aymann] Mm... -[Edward] "Inside and outside."

[Aymann] Yeah.

She wanted to be out there on those fields.

She was always a hard worker.

Arab and Muslim women are so often stereotyped as people who are sort of confined to the home, who have less freedom.

These women were the opposite of that stereotype.

[woman VO] Our home has always been a gathering place for the Syrian folk.

Not many parties or celebrations were held, except for occasions like a wedding or such.

Before we built our church, the mosque, we held services at the different homes.

We have a month of fasting, after which everyone visits the home of another, and there is a lot of feasting.

They're not the majority of the population, but they have a critical mass so that they're visiting each other, they're...

I mean, these Muslims, they're praying together, they're celebrating Eid together, somebody in the community plays their oud... -[Aymann] No way!

-[Edward] Yeah!

Somebody is really good at singing and, during the Prophet's birthday, the Mawlid al-Nabi, somebody is singing nasheeds -- or praise songs -- to the Prophet.

There is a robust history and life to Arab Muslims in this region, and it's a lot more... vibrant and diverse than we imagine it to be.

The Jumas are an illustration of that kind of social life.

♪delicate pensive music♪ [Aymann] There's something very spiritual about being out here that you can really feel, and I can imagine that Mary Juma's attachment to Islam only grew stronger, just for seeing the sunset and hearing the birds.

And it's that part of the story that you can't get unless you show up and you walk where she walked.

[Aymann VO] So there was a mosque in North Dakota.

-Can we talk about that?

-[Edward] Yeah.

'Cause I can't even picture one.

There were more Muslims in the Dakotas per capita than any other place in the United States among these Arabic-speaking immigrants, but this was unique in that it was the only community that built a permanent mosque.

What did that look like?

-[Edward] Let me show you.

-[Aymann] No way... [Edward] You ever seen a mosque like that?

[Aymann] Never.

It's sturdy; they built it well!

[Edward] Oh yeah!

[Aymann] Where I am in New Jersey, there's no purpose-built mosques at all.

The mosque that I used to go to growing up was a commerce building.

This is like an American mosque.

[Maytha VO] The Jumas wanted to create a center for community, for cultural community activity.

And the mosque is not just a prayer space; the mosque is a gathering space.

And I think for the non-Muslims, probably it was received both ways; it was received as a commitment to the community -- "These people are here to stay, we want them to be here, they're contributing, we need them" -- but for others, it was probably perceived as a concern -- "Are they gonna assimilate?

Are they gonna become American?

Or will they remain these outsiders with their strange religious practices?"

It was also a way of becoming American!

Now, this may surprise people, 'cause you think, "Well, isn't assimilation about forgetting that difference?"

No, no, no, especially not in the Midwest.

In order to be a good American in the Midwest, you need to have a religious congregation; everybody has one!

Ashkenazi Jews have one, Sephardi Jews, the Lutherans, the Polish Roman Catholics, you name it.

And so they build theirs, and add it to the tapestry of the Dakotas.

[Aymann] That totally changes my idea of what North Dakota might have been like.

People have the wrong idea, in particular about the Midwest.

[woman VO] We were always able to make a very good living by farming and raising livestock, until the death of my husband.

Now, the depression has made living hard.

My family worshipped at the original mosque site, and other families did as well.

They weren't there for all that long.

The depression hit right after they had started construction, and a number of families left the area.

It was really hard living then, and they couldn't make a living here.

So, the building fell into disrepair, and in the 1970s, it was torn down.

We have a lot of stories of resilience in Muslim America in the 20th century, but in this case, it was a story of a place that just couldn't sustain a community over the long haul.

They had been brought out there, and they had been given this promise that if you'll just till it deep enough, you'll unlock the moisture -- it was called "dry farming."

Well, this land was not meant to be intensively farmed, so it couldn't sustain all these small farms.

[Aymann] They were set up to fail, in a sense.

[Edward] Absolutely.

[Aymann] Did Mary also leave Ross?

No, no, she stayed for the rest of her life.

Her death in 1947 coincides with the decline of the community.

[Aymann VO] The few people who remained, like Nicole Mattson's ancestors, gradually intermarried with the surrounding community, until, for some people like Nicole, memories of their Muslim roots were all but lost.

It seems like not a lot of people know that there's a mosque here, or was a mosque here.

How does that factor into the history of this country, do you think?

I think people need to know that Muslim people have been in this country since before it was even a country.

People have really no idea; they think that Muslims are new and they're the other, when, in reality, these were your grandparents' neighbors.

♪spirited curious music♪ Of the people who left Ross, some returned home to the Middle East.

Others stayed in the United States, many joining growing Arab-American communities in cities across the Midwest.

With them, they brought fragments of their lives on the Great Plains, including the door of their mosque, now preserved in the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, as a treasured reminder of this forgotten history.

It's a perfect metaphor.

It's like a doorway to the past.

[Aymann VO] Back in Ross, as descendants like Nicole have rediscovered their past, they've worked hard to make sure it's never forgotten again.

In 2018, they managed to get the old cemetery listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

And that's not all.

[Nicole VO] My great-grandmother's dream was to have another mosque built on the site of the original building.

[Aymann] Wow.

My grandmother and her brother and sisters took on that project, and it took them a fair number of years to get this built -- they did a lot of sourcing of materials from, honestly, all over the world -- and, finally, they were able to finish it, but unfortunately not before my great-grandmother passed away.

[Aymann] Ugh...

So, this is the mosque that was built in 2005.

[sighs] You know, I was born here, I never lived anywhere else, and it just means so much to me to know that over 100 years ago, there were Muslims here, and they built a mosque.

It feels cool to know that I can come to a place as remote, and still find a place to pray.

This is cool.

♪spirited curious music♪ -[Edward VO] It is lazy... -[Aymann VO] Mm-hm.

[Edward VO] To think that the rural Midwest has always been white, or that its roots are white.

Its roots are multicultural, and mutlireligious, and if we want to honor the lives of these people, we've got to rewrite our history to include them.

I just can't shake that image of early American settlers playing their oud, and singing in Arabic.

And play baseball; they did both!

[laughs]