Chicago
One of the centers of the Assyrian diaspora in the USA. The first Assyrians in Chicago in the 1890s were young men who had attended American mission schools in Urmia, Persia. By 1924, the population was reported to be 2,327; this reflected immigration after the displacement of Assyrians from Persia and Hakkari after World War I. The main Assyrian church was the Carter Memorial Presbyterian Church, but other Protestant denominations, as well as the Chaldean Syrian Church and the Ch. of E., were also represented. Newer immigrants, in considerable numbers since the 1950s, have been from Iraq, and Assyrians of Iraqi origin now predominate in the community. The patriarchatal see of the Church of the East was in Chicago 1940–54 (under Mar Eshai Shemʿon) and is so again since 1976 under Mar Denḥa IV. The 1990 census numbered Assyrians in Chicago at 13,387.
See Fig. 33.
Sources
- M. C. Sengstock, Chaldeans in Chicago (2005).
- V. Shoumanov, Images of America: Assyrians in Chicago (2001).
- D. Wolk, ‘Assyrians’, in Encyclopedia of Chicago, ed. J. R. Grossman et al. (2004), 86. (also at http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/86.html)