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American Muslims: A History Revealed
From Slavery to Freedom: The Untold Story of America's First Muslims
Season 1
Episode 12
Even before the United States was founded, tens of thousands of Muslims were already here, captured in West Africa, and brought to colonial America in chains. Host Asma Khalid tells the surprising story of one of these people, a Muslim man named Mamadou Yarrow, who, after 45 years of enslavement and negotiated his way to freedom.
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23:46
Discovers how Muslim groups helped working-class Black Americans resist the confines of race.
24:45
A federal immigration file shows how early border laws shaped the Muslim experience in the U.S.
24:43
Host Aymann Ismail explores how Muslims shaped the imagination of America’s founding generation.
24:45
A photograph reveals the rise of Black Muslim life in northern cities during the Great Migration.
23:39
Asma Khalid travels to the American South West to tell the story of early South Asian migration.
24:45
A Lebanese homesteader recalls the building of one of the first mosques on the Great Plains.
22:24
Malika Bilal tells the story of an immigrant with a 200-page pension file detailing his experiences.
24:45
A Civil War pension file reveals the story of a Muslim man who fought for the Union.
24:45
How Islam figured in debates about religious freedom and citizenship in the early Republic.
22:01
How Muslim homesteaders constructed one of the first purpose-built mosques in the country.
24:44
A 1819 portrait of a formerly enslaved man reveals the presence of Muslims at the nation’s founding.