Greater Syrian Diaspora at 78RPM: Assad Dakroub

posted on: Jan 27, 2021

By: Richard Breaux/Arab America Contributing Writer

What do you do when you find several dozen 78 rpm records all in Arabic and you can neither read, nor speak the language? You research the musicians and record labels and write about them.…at least that’s what Arab America contributing writer, Richard Breaux did. The result is bound to teach you something about Arab American history and heritage in the first half of the 20th Century. Arab America highlights some of the well-known and lesser-known Arab American musicians profiled on this series. This week’s article features Arab American music legend, Assad Dakroub.

When immigrants to the United States began to arrive from Greater Syria in the 1880s, their numbers were relatively small, but they were noticeable. As these numbers increased, and Ottoman and former Ottoman emigrants left in earnest, those who arrived were largely poor, on the verge of becoming poor, and primarily Christian (Orthodox, Melkite, and Maronite).

Arab Muslim immigrants to the United States represented only ten to twenty percent of new arrivals from the Levant, if that. Consequently, the majority of those musicians who recorded music in the 1920s and have been featured on the Midwest Mahjar identified as Christian, while a couple identified as Druze (Amer Kadaj) or Muslim (Prince Mohiuddin).

Assad Dakroub was a minority among minorities in the first wave of Arab immigration to the US – he was a musician or singer, Muslim, and educated. Some of the places he settled give us a peek into smaller Syrian/Lebanese Muslim communities built in the Midwest, and on the plains and prairie – Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Sioux City, Iowa, and Michigan City, Indiana, among them.

Dakroub’s story also includes the cities that came to have the largest concentration of Arab Muslims in the United States – the Detroit metropolitan area including Highland Park.

Assad Dakroub or Assad Deckroub or Assad Ali Deckroub (Dakroob, Dackroub) was born to Ali and Fatima Dakroub on either 2 June 1887, 7 July 1883, or 9 August 1885 in Tibnine, Greater Syria (now Lebanon) depending on whether one uses his Social Security claim, the death index, or his World War II draft card. Dakroub seems to have entered the US not through Ellis Island or Canada, but through Mexico. The entrance of Lebanese/Syrian immigrants via Mexico and Cuba began in the late nineteenth century, the number of those who took this route increased, especially after the passage of the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924. The Immigration Act of 1924 limited Syrian immigrants to 100 per year.

Dakroub seems to have entered the US at El Paso, Texas, in November 1906 as Ali Dakroub. Even in 1906, Dakroub declared Michigan City, Indiana, as his final destination with immigration officials. In 1907, Indiana had some 2,000 Lebanese/Syrian residents, and in Michigan City, Arabs immigrants, Joe K. Bodine and Mike Fairoh, each owed a general merchandise store at 225 Franklin and 740 W. 6^th Street.  Dakroub definitely had relatives in the United States, but evidence does not explicitly identify whether Tourfic Dakroub or Abraham Dakroub were brothers, cousins, or some other extended relative.

Documentary evidence about Dakroub is sparse. We get glimpses of Dakroub as he settled around the Detroit metropolitan area in search of work fitting his qualifications and skills. The 1920 Detroit City Directory, list “Assed Deckroub” at 513 Jefferson Avenue E.” Similarly, the 1925 Detroit City Directory, lists “Assad Dakroub” as a music teacher working and living at 1745 1^St Street.

The previous year, the United States Congress passed one of its broadest and most sweeping immigration restrictions in history and Canada was not too far behind. In fact, Canada excluded “any immigrant of any Asiatic race” except farm laborers and domestic servants including Turks and Syrians. Canadian authorities rejected Dakroub’s admission to the country from Detroit in October 1929. By 1930, “Assad Deckroub” took up residence with relatives Abraham and Maggie Deckroub. There was also another relative, a Samuel Deckroub, living at 154 Victor Avenue in Highland Park, Michigan.

Victor Avenue in Highland Park had been the sight of one of the earliest mosques in the United States built solely for religious worship for American Muslims. Although the press mentioned a mosque in lower Manhattan in 1892-93, word of a masjid emerged again in 1898. The Ottoman consul general rented an apartment at 17 Rector Street to Mehmed Ali Effendi from 1909 until around 1912 which served Muslim residents of New York used as a mosque. The structure at 17 Rector, however, was not built for the purpose of functioning as a mosque.

In 1921, the year after Assad Dakroub shows up in the Highland Park suburb of Detroit, the Kabroub brothers undertake a venture to establish one of the first purpose-built mosque in the United States.

The Highland Park mosque commanded front-page attention 11 January 1921 Detroit Free Press. The mosque occupied a 60-square foot lot and the structure built and designed by Theodore L. Degenhardt stood 45 by 30 feet at 241 Victor Avenue. It costs approximately $45,000 to construct, Mohamed Karoub financed the venture, and Hassan Koruob served as the Imam.

The Imam and his brother declared a muezzin tower unnecessary, but the structure included two minarets on either side of the domed roof which had a star and crescent mounted on its top. The Free Press noted the five times during the course of a day reserved for prayer and noted regular service on Fridays.

The mosque sponsored Eid al-Fitr although the building had not been completed when Ramadan ended in June 1921. Almost as soon as construction began controversy, not from the outside, but the inside ensued. Would the mosque serve as a community space, cultural space, or a space only for worship? After three conflict-filled years, the Karoub’s abandoned the project and the building fell into disrepair.

Although ethnomusicologist and researcher, Richard K. Spottswood only lists Dakroub’s “Anta And Rabiha (Meejena)” #200 Parts I & II” on Macksoud in his encyclopedic Ethnic Music on Record, Dakroub recorded at least Macksoud #203 A “Mookatabat El Shams (Meejena),” & #203 B “Woodah El Habib,” #206 A & B “Yamamy Aud Mohalhal (Meejena),” “  #207 A  “Yalom Hali Yalom,” #207 B “Atabh Harge (Meejena).” He recorded only on Macksoud, but he was certainly contemporaries of Wadeeh Bagdaddy, Louis Wardiny, and Salim Doumani.

Interestingly, Dakroub does not appear in the 1920 or 1930 US Census, but we know much more about him between the years 1932 and 1944 than we do any other time in his life. Detroit’s 1932 City Directory reversed his name and printed his first name as Dakroub and his last name as Assad. Once again, he moved to a new address. This time he resided at 9576 Dix Avenue and worked as a general laborer, but he didn’t remain in Detroit much longer.

By November 1934, the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Argus newspaper ran a story the announced Professor Assad Dakroub instructed 37 students, mostly Syrians, between the ages of 7 and 50 at a new school operated inside the “city polling place at Sixth Street and Nesmith Avenue” at 421 North Nesmith. After four months in operation, enrollment decreased to 25, but students founded the Junior Arab Society as an entertainment and scholarship group for enrolled students. Classes met six days a week.

Dakroub lived at 416 Nesmith Avenue in 1935, but listed only the school’s location of 421 Nesmith Avenue in the Sioux Falls directories for 1937 and 1938. His occupation – teacher or principal depending on the year.

Of the handful of newspaper articles that mentioned Dakroub by name, it was the 23 June Sioux City Journal, not the Sioux Falls Argus that confirmed that our Assad Dakroub and Macksoud’s singer were one and the same. The faintly reproduced, but still readable, clipping noted that Assad Dakroub, a teacher at the Moslem Arabic school in Sioux Falls had visited Sioux City, Iowa, to officiate a funeral and attended several other social and cultural events. At one event, he reportedly read from the Koran, but most revealing is the statement, “Mr. Deckroub is well known as a musician and has been a teacher for the past 11 years.”

For reasons unknown to us, Dakroub attended the 10^th Annual festival of the Lebanese American Club of Brockton, Massachusetts, in July 1939 with some 6,000 other guests. In one publicized set of events, the South Dakota-based Dakroub participated in a singing competition with Arabs and Arab Americans from across the United States. Nearby Syrian communities to Sioux Falls included Ross, North Dakota, Sioux City, Iowa, Mankato, Minnesota, and Omaha, Nebraska.

“Assad Deckroub” is most clearly identified in the 1940 US Census and on his World War II Draft Card. From the Census we learn Dakroub claimed to have finished four years of college education, continued to teach Arabic in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and had, at some point in the past, submitted his Declaration of Intent to become a U. S. citizen, but had not completed the naturalization process.

The circumstances which compelled him to move from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to Michigan City, Indiana remain unclear. What is clear is that Michigan City, like Sioux Falls, had a small Syrian Muslim community, in addition to its larger Syrian and Lebanese Christian community.

To be sure, St. George’s Orthodox was established in 1911 and consecrated in September 1914; also, in 1914 Syrian/Lebanese residents established Saint Anthony Maronite Society, and the Bader Elmoneer Society Muslim social club. The Muslim social club filed for non-profit status in 1924 as the Asser El Jadeed Islamic Center, completed a structure in 1933 (one year before the Mother Mosque of America in Cedar Rapids, Iowa), and this continues on as the Islamic Center of Michigan City, today, although the Asser El Jadeed building stood until 1969.

Dakroub’s Michigan City address in 1942 represents his last documentable place of residence. He appears to have filed for social security in April 1949 and died on 12 January 1952 in Eloise, Michigan. A combination mental hospital, poor house, and T.B. hospital occupied Eloise from 1832 until 1982. A number of well-known personalities spent their final years in the Eloise Infirmary or poorhouse. Sadly, Assad Dakroub was likely one of them.

Richard M. Breaux is an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse from Oakland, California. His courses and research explore the social and cultural histories of African Americans and Arab Americans in the 20th Century.

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