Arlington’s Ethiopian community works hard to successfully integrate into the broader community while retaining and celebrating its traditions.
That was the view of panelists as a Black History Month program convened Thursday (Feb. 13) by the Arlington Historical Society.
Arlington proved “incredibly attractive” to refugees and immigrants from the African nation who arrived in the U.S. in the 1970s-80s, said Jerusalem Solomon.
Solomon is the U.S.-born daughter of two of those immigrants, and currently serves as communications manager for the Arlington Department of Parks and Recreation.
“People were really on the hunt for jobs and educational opportunities,” said Solomon. “We are a very hardworking people. We are proud of finding our place here.”
Changes to federal immigration law in the mid-1960s allowed more Africans to enter the U.S. Many from Ethiopia who made the journey did so owing to political upheaval in their home country.
The best estimate of the Ethiopian community in Arlington is roughly 3,300, based on a Census Bureau survey released in 2021. That’s about 1.4% of the Arlington population, a ratio in line with the broader D.C. region.
Currently, about 2.6% of students in Arlington’s public schools list Amharic — a major Ethiopian language — as being spoken at home, and Ethiopia is one of the school system’s top four birth countries for non-native-born students.
Author Essayis Lisanu Bezabeh said Ethiopians are connected to the broader African-American struggle for equality, and praised those who participated in civil-rights efforts before many from Ethiopia had arrived.
“Their sacrifice has paved the way,” she said. “We owe them not only our gratitude, but our commitment to carry forward their legacy.”
Bezabeh said Ethiopia, located in northeast Africa with a current population of more than 120 million, helped inspire American civil-rights leaders of the 19th and 20th centuries.
It was one of the few parts of the continent not to be colonized and exploited during the European “Scramble for Africa” taking place from the 1870s until the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
To Americans of African descent, Ethiopia has always served as a beacon, “proving that Africa had never been conquered in spirit,” Bezabeh said.
Also part of the discussion were Kidist Ebenezer and Mekdes Asrat of the Arlington-based Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC). Among its other services, that social-safety-net agency provides resettlement assistance not just to Africans but others coming to the U.S. as refugees.
While Ethiopians “traditionally do support one another,” they also benefit from support services, including economic empowerment, Asrat said.
And Ethiopians starting a new life in the U.S. are appreciative, she said, “not taking for granted the opportunities we have been given.”
Currently, ECDC faces “huge uncertainty, like all resettlement agencies,” Asrat said, owing to changes being implemented by the Trump administration.
The hour-long, online program was a chance to spotlight all the “wonderful contributions to Arlington” by the Ethiopian community, said Annette Benbow, who chairs the events committee of the historical society.
“We all learned an entirely different perspective on African-American history,” she said.
