From the late 1800s through the 1950s, Boston was home to Little Syria, an Arab enclave in what is now Chinatown and the South End. Immigrants from Lebanon and Syria lived side by side with other new arrivals – Chinese, Italian, Jewish – in a flourishing Arab community that lasted for decades.
This and other little-known Arab histories are the subject of a new exhibit at the Pao Arts Center in Chinatown, “Arab Massachusetts: Building Community in the Commonwealth.”
“A lot of people don’t know about Arab history in Massachusetts and that it plays quite a significant role in our state’s history,” said historian Lydia Harrington, the co-founder of Boston Little Syria Project, a public history initiative that contributed to the exhibition…