Enslaved and Muslim in Early America

Sidedoor

Smithsonian Institution

Museum, Air And Space, Society & Culture, National Museum, Tony Cohn, Sidedoor, Natural History, African American History And Culture, Postal Museum, History, American History, History Of The World, Exhibits, Art19, Pop Culture, Smithsonian, The Smithsonian, Science, Washington, National Zoo, Zoo, Dc, Exhibit

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2018

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

Today, the US population is about 1% Muslim, but in the late 1700s that number was likely closer to 5%. Who were these early Muslim-Americans, where did they go, and why didn’t we all learn about them in school? In this episode, we search for American history's missing Muslims, and explore their experience though the words of Omar ibn Said, an enslaved Muslim man in North Carolina whose one-of-a-kind autobiography still resonates today.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is I Doer, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX.
0:13.6	I'm Tony Cone.
0:15.0	Hi, Sidorians.
0:20.6	Are we trying to make that a thing now?
0:21.8	Sidorians?
0:23.0	I don't know.
0:24.0	Okay, so we've been working on this week's story for a while, and to kick it off, I brought Side Door
0:28.5	producer Justin O'Neill, say hello again, Justin.
0:31.8	Hey guys. To play a bit of audio for us.
0:34.4	Okay, so Justin, what are we hearing?
0:46.5	So I recently visited this mosque and it was a bit of a drive
0:49.3	so I got there just before the midday prayer.
0:51.5	And what we just heard was their call to prayer.
0:53.9	And that's how they start their prayers.
0:55.4	Can you like paint the picture for me a little bit?
1:01.1	Yeah, so this mosque or Masjid which just means mosque in Arabic.
1:05.0	It was a small easy to miss building off the side of this really fast moving two-lane
1:11.7	road like you know the kind that the speed limit
1:13.7	like should be 20 miles an hour lower than it actually is. That was this one.
1:18.0	What does that even mean? Well it means I drove past it twice. And so once I got to the building and got inside because there
1:26.0	times the charm. Their time's the charm. Pleasure to meet you.
1:28.6	Pleasure to meet you. And the visit was really nice. It was fun. They seemed
	...

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