Dearborn
What is significant about Dearborn’s population?
Why are there so many Muslims in Dearborn?
Is Dearborn under sharia law?
What role did the Ford Motor Company play in Dearborn’s development?
What was the Battle of the Overpass?
What cultural influences are present in Dearborn?
News •
Dearborn, city, Wayne county, southeastern Michigan, U.S. Adjacent to Detroit (north and east), it lies on the River Rouge. The birthplace of Henry Ford, it is the headquarters of research, engineering, and manufacturing of the Ford Motor Company. It is the only U.S. city with a majority Arab population. It also has the second-highest concentration of Muslims of any U.S. city after Hamtramck, Michigan, about 10 mi (15 km) northeast of Dearborn.
Ford River Rouge Complex
Settled in 1795, Dearborn originated as a stagecoach stop (called Ten Eyck and later Bucklin) on the Sauk Trail between Detroit and Chicago. A community known as Pekin developed there and was laid out in 1833 as Dearbornville (named for American Revolutionary War hero Gen. Henry Dearborn), which was incorporated as the village of Dearborn in 1893. Henry Ford, a Dearborn native who founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903 in Detroit along with 11 associate investors, began buying property along the River Rouge in 1915. Industrial development of the property began in 1917 when the U.S. government asked the company to build boats for the war effort in World War I; Ford employed architect Albert Kahn to design the factory. After the war the River Rouge complex was developed to process raw materials transported by river on lake freighters, and within years its facilities produced every component in the Model T. In 1927 it became an “ore to assembly” industrial complex (see vertical integration) when the original wartime plant began assembling the Model A. In 1928 the company’s administrative operations moved to the complex, which became the company headquarters.
After the United Automobile Workers (UAW) successfully unionized workers at General Motors (GM) and Chrysler in 1937, its union organizers set their sights on the automobile workers at the River Rouge complex. On May 26 the private security force employed by Ford attacked union representatives (most notably Walter Reuther) in what became known as the Battle of the Overpass. The bloody outcome was the first in a series of violent confrontations between Ford and UAW organizers, and the publicity garnered by each recurring incident culminated in a bargaining agreement between Ford and the UAW in 1941.
In the 1980s the Ford Motor Company moved away from its earlier strategy of vertical integration and began relocating or outsourcing many of the operations that took place at the River Rouge complex. In 1992 the company planned to end assembly operations at the complex, but an agreement with the UAW helped preserve production. A modernization project was commissioned in 1997. While ground was being cleared for a new power plant in 1999, a boiler exploded, killing 6 workers and injuring 14 others. Down from its peak of about 100,000 workers in 1929, employment at the Ford River Rouge Complex dipped below 6,000 employees during the 2008–09 automotive recession. Today the complex employs about 7,500 workers.
Arab American and Muslim American community
The booming industry in the city attracted migration from Europe and the Middle East, particularly in the aftermath of World War I. At a time when most Arabs arriving in the United States were Christians, Dearborn became a destination for some of the country’s earliest Shiʿi Muslim immigrants from southern Lebanon. Migrants from other regions, including Poland, Italy, Romania, and Christian towns in Lebanon, already had institutional centers elsewhere in the metropolitan Detroit area, but Dearborn remained an early population center for the Lebanese Shiʿah in southeastern Michigan.
Subsequent waves of immigration from the Middle East, particularly among Lebanese and Iraqi Shiʿah as well as Yemeni and Palestinian Sunnis, added to the proportion of Arabs in Dearborn. In the 21st century Arabs constituted a plurality of the city’s population; in the 2020s they constituted a majority. Arab-owned stores, restaurants, and coffee shops, and bilingual English-Arabic services line the main thoroughfares of Warren Avenue and Michigan Avenue as well as Schaefer Avenue, which connects them. Holiday decorations are commonplace among Dearborn businesses and residences for the Christian holiday of Christmas, the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, and the Shiʿi Muslim commemoration of Ashura. Celebrations of Arab culture and festival processions for Shiʿi Muslim observances are held in the city, although they are frequently the targets of Islamophobic protest.
Other museums and educational institutions
Henry Ford College (1938) and the Dearborn campus (on the site of Fair Lane, the former Ford estate) of the University of Michigan (1959) are located in Dearborn. The Arab American National Museum highlights the Arab American community and Arab culture in general. The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village feature exhibits of Americana. The Dearborn Historical Museum is housed in the former quarters of the commandant of the Detroit Arsenal (built 1833–37). Inc. city, 1927. Pop. (2020) 109,961; Detroit-Warren-Dearborn Metro Division, 4,392,041.
The trusted destination for professionals, college students, and lifelong learners.
SUBSCRIBE
