Armenian-American Culture In Massachusetts

Armenian Americans ( hy, ամերիկահայեր, ''amerikahayer'') are citizens or residents of the United States who have total or partial Armenian ancestry. They form the second largest community of the Armenian diaspora after Armenians in Russia. The first major wave of Armenian immigration to the United States took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Thousands of Armenians settled in the United States following the Hamidian massacres of the mid-1890s, the Adana Massacre of 1909, and the Armenian genocide of 1915–1918 in the Ottoman Empire. Since the 1950s many Armenians from the Middle East (especially from Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt and Turkey) migrated to the U.S. as a result of political instability in the region. It accelerated in the late 1980s and has continued after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 due to socio-economic and political reasons.

The 2017 American Community Survey estimated that 485,970 Americans held full or partial Armenian ancestry. Various organizations and media criticize these numbers as an underestimate, proposing 800,000 to 1,500,000 Armenian Americans instead. The highest concentration of Americans of Armenian descent is in the Greater Los Angeles area, where 166,498 people have identified themselves as Armenian to the 2000 Census, comprising over 40% of the 385,488 people who identified Armenian origins in the US at the time. The city of Glendale in the Los Angeles metropolitan area is widely thought to be the center of Armenian American life (although many Armenians live in the aptly named " Little Armenia" neighborhood of Los Angeles).

The Armenian American community is the most politically influential community of the Armenian diaspora. Organizations such as Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) and Armenian Assembly of America advocate for the recognition of the Armenian genocide by the United States government and support stronger Armenia–United States relations. The Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) is known for its financial support and promotion of Armenian culture and Armenian language schools.

History

Early history

The first recorded Armenian to visit North America was Martin the Armenian from Iran. He was an Iranian Armenian tobacco grower who settled in Jamestown, Virginia in 1618. In 1653–54, two Armenians from Constantinople were invited to Virginia to raise silk worms. A few other Armenians are recorded as having come to the US in the 17th and 18th centuries, but most moved as individuals and did not establish communities. By the 1770s over 70 Armenians had settled in the colonies. The persecution of Christian minorities under the Ottoman Empire and American missionary activities resulted in a small wave of Armenian migration to the US in the 1830s from Cilicia and Western Armenia. Hatchik (Christopher) Oscanyan, a Constantinople American missionary school student, arrived in America in 1835 to pursue higher education. He later worked for the ''New York Herald Tribune'' and became the New York Press Club president. Many Armenians followed him and went to the US for education.

During the Civil War three Armenian doctors—Simeon Minasian, Garabed Galstian, and Baronig Matevosian—worked at military hospitals in Philadelphia. The only Armenian known to have participated in hostilities was Khachadour Paul Garabedian, who enlisted in the Union Navy. A naturalized citizen from Rodosto, Garabedian served aboard the blockade ships USS ''Geranium'' and USS ''Grand Gulf'' as a Third Assistant Engineer and later an officer from 1864 until his honorable discharge from the Navy in August 1865.

The number of Armenians rose from 20 in 1854 to around 70 by the 1870s. According to official statistics, 14 Armenians immigrated to the U.S. in 1878. In the late 1870s, small Armenian communities existed in New York City, Providence, Rhode Island, and Worcester, Massachusetts. By the late 1880s, their number reached 1,500. Many of them were young male students of the American Evangelical Missions spread throughout the Ottoman Empire. About 40% came from the Province of Kharpert. Before 1899, immigrants were not classified by ethnicity, but rather by country of birth, obscuring the ethnic origins of many Armenians. After 1869, however, Armenians from the eastern regions of the Ottoman Empire were registered as "Armenian" in American records. The number of Armenians who migrated to the US from 1820 to 1898 is estimated to be around 4,000.

First wave of immigration and the Interwar period

Armenians began to arrive in the US in unprecedented numbers in the late 19th century, most notably after the Hamidian Massacres of 1894–96, and before, during and after the Armenian genocide. Before this mass migration to the US, the number of Armenians in the country was from 1,500 to 3,000. ''The New York Times'' talked of about 10,000 Armenians in the US in 1895.

Over 12,000 Armenians from the Ottoman Empire went to the US throughout the 1890s. This period witnessed cultural contact between American and Armenian through Armenian nationalist dissident organizations within the Ottoman Empire and intense activity of American missionaries in the region who were sympathetic to the Armenian cause, making the long road of migration somewhat more bearable. With the exception of Fresno, California, which had land suitable for farming, the earliest Armenian immigrants mostly settled in the northeastern industrial centers, such as New York City, Providence, Worcester, and Boston. Armenian emigrants from the Russian Empire were only a minority in emigration from Armenian lands across the Atlantic (about 2,500 moved in 1898–1914), because Armenians were treated relatively better in Russia than in the Ottoman Empire. Once in America, some Armenians organized political parties to serve various causes in America and in the homeland. Turkish Armenian migration rose gradually in the first decade of the 20th century, partly due to the Adana Massacre of 1909, and the Balkan Wars in 1912–1913. Before the start of the World War I, there were already 60,000 Armenians in the US. As more Armenians fell victim to the genocide and more Armenians were deported, the Armenian American community grew dramatically.

According to the Bureau of Immigration, 54,057 Armenians entered the US between 1899 and 1917. The top listed countries of origin were Turkey (46,474), Russia (3,034), Canada (1,577), Great Britain (914) and Egypt (894). Immigrants were asked to indicate which state they were going to settle in; for Armenians, the most popular answers were New York (17,391), Massachusetts (14,192), Rhode Island (4,923), Illinois (3,313), California (2,564), New Jersey (2,115), Pennsylvania (2,002), Michigan (1,371). The largest Armenian American communities at that time were located in New York City; Fresno; Worcester, Massachusetts; Boston; Philadelphia; Chicago; Jersey City; Los Angeles; Troy, New York; and Cleveland.

According to estimates, around 77,980 Armenians lived in the US by 1919. An unprecedented number of Armenians entered the country in 1920, when the newly established Soviet Union forcefully annexed the First Republic of Armenia, but the Immigration Act of 1924 that restricted immigration from southern and eastern Europe as well as Asia barred many other Armenians from emigrating to the US. Most of the post-World War I immigrants were women and children, in contrast to the prewar immigration, which was predominantly young and male. Like Italians, for whom this practice was known as ''campanilismo'', Armenian communities were often formed by people from the same village or town in the Ottoman Empire. This practice almost entirely disappeared after World War II.

In total, 81,729 Armenians entered the US from 1899 to 1931 according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Second wave of immigration

A new wave of Armenian immigrants moved in the late 1940s, including Soviet Armenian prisoners of war who were able to make their way westward after being freed from Nazi camps. The Displaced Persons Act of 1948 allowed people displaced during the World War II to immigrate to the US. From 1944 to 1952, 4,739 Armenians migrated to the US, many with the help of George Mardikian's American National Committee to Aid Homeless Armenians (ANCHA).

However, the true second wave of immigration did not begin until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished national origins quotas. After the passage of that act, Armenians from the Soviet Union, Turkey, Lebanon, Iran and other Middle Eastern countries began migrating in large numbers, many fleeing political instability in their host countries. In the 1950s, most Armenian immigrants in the US were from Soviet Armenia and Turkey. The Istanbul pogrom in 1955 frightened the local Turkish Armenian population, which looked to the West for a safe and more prosperous life.

Soviet Armenians, on the other hand, were mostly genocide survivors who never fully integrated into Soviet life after their repatriation in the 1940s. The large-scale emigration of Soviet Armenians, mainly to Western countries, began in 1956. About 30,000 Soviet Armenians entered the country from 1960 to 1984, and another 60,000 moved throughout the late 1980s, during the Perestroika era. The total number of Soviet Armenian emigrants from 1956 to 1989, over 80% of them to the US, is estimated at 77,000.

The 15-year-long Lebanese Civil War that started in 1975 and the Iranian revolution of 1979 greatly contributed to the influx of Middle Eastern Armenians to the US. The Armenian communities in these Middle Eastern countries were well established and integrated, but not assimilated, into local populations. Armenians in Lebanon and Iran are even represented in the parliaments as ethnic minorities. Many lived in luxury in their former countries, and more easily handled multilingualism, while retaining aspects of traditional Armenian culture. This wave of newcomers revitalized the Armenian American community, especially in the Los Angeles area, where most second-wave Armenian immigrants settled. In 1970 about 65,000 Armenians resided in Southern California, and two decades later, in 1989, the number of Armenian Americans was estimated at 200,000. Although the 1980 US Census put the number of Armenians living in Los Angeles at 52,400, of which 71.9% were foreign born: 14.7% in Iran, 14.3% in the USSR, 11.5% in Lebanon, 9.7% in Turkey, 11.7% in other Middle Eastern countries (Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, etc.), and the rest in other parts of the world.

''The New York Times'' estimated 500,000 Armenian-Americans in the 1980s, including 50,000 in the New York metropolitan area.

Contemporary period

Immediately before and continuing into the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, waves of Armenians from Armenia and other former Soviet republics arrived for political reasons and economic opportunities, settling in older established Armenian communities across the country. The 1988 Armenian earthquake and the energy crisis in Armenia during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War caused an estimated number of 700,000 Armenians to leave the country, most of whom ended up in Russia, still others in the US, and some in Europe. Annually, on average 2,000 people from Armenia migrated to the US since 1994, not including ethnic Armenians from Middle Eastern countries. According to the 2000 US Census, there were 65,280 Armenian-born people in the US. Almost 90% had moved in the previous two decades (57,960) and lived in California (57,482). According to the 2011 American Community Survey, there were 85,150 Armenian-born people in the US, about 20,000 more than in 2000. The Armenian-born population grew to 101,757 by 2019. Meanwhile, Armenian immigration from the Middle East continues, contributing to California's distinction of having, by far, the highest Armenian American population of any state.

According to Dr. Anny Bakalian, "country of birth and childhood socialization, generation, and even cohort effect are important variables in understanding the behavior and attitudes of people of Armenian descent". The main subgroups of foreign-born Armenian Americans are ''Hayastantsis'' (Armenians from Armenia), ''Parskahays'' (Armenians from Iran) and ''Beirutsis'' (Armenians from Beirut, Lebanon). A 1990 University of California, Los Angeles study showed that by education and occupation, native-born and Iranian-born Armenians "tend to have the highest socioeconomic status... while those from Turkey have the lowest", although Turkish Armenians boast the highest rate of self-employment. In 1988, ''The New York Times'' article claimed that Middle Eastern Armenians prefer to settle in Glendale, California, while Armenian immigrants from the Soviet Union were attracted to Hollywood, Los Angeles.

Armenians from Lebanon, where they had effectively established an active community, are more politicized, while Turkish Armenians are mostly connected with the Armenian Apostolic Church. About 1/3 of all Turkish Armenians in America are self-employed. A group of Armenian Americans from Istanbul founded the Organization of Istanbul Armenians (OIA) in 1976, which claimed over 1,000 members in Southern California as of 2011. Iranian Armenians are known for fast integration into American society; for example, only 31% of Armenian Americans born in Iran claim not to speak English well.

Armenian American criminal organizations have received widespread media attention, such as during the 2010 Medicaid fraud. However, in the city of Glendale, California, where Armenians compose 27% of city's total population, only 17% of the crime in the city were committed by Armenians in 2006.

According to the 2000 US Census, there were 385,488 Americans of Armenian ancestry at that time. The 2017 American Community Survey estimate found 485,970 Americans with full or partial Armenian ancestry. Higher estimates of 800,000 to 1,500,000 are offered by many Armenian and non-Armenian organizations, media and scholars. The German ethnographer Caroline Thon puts their number at 800,000, a number also offered by Dr. Harold Takooshian of Fordham University. Prof. Dennis R. Papazian of University of Michigan–Dearborn claimed that there were 1,000,000 people of Armenian ancestry living in the US. ''Armenian Mirror-Spectator''
the German news website ''Spiegel Online'' and ''The New York Review of Books'' reported the estimate of 1,200,000, while the World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples, '' U.S. News & World Report'', and ''Los Angeles Times'' put the number at 1,400,000. The Armenian National Committee of America, ''The Armenian Weekly'', ''The Armenian Reporter'', and Reuters offer the highest number, at around 1,500,000 Armenian Americans.

Geographic distribution

Most Armenian Americans are concentrated in major urban areas, especially in California and the Northeast, and to a lesser extent in the Midwest. The highest concentrations of Americans of Armenian ancestry are in Los Angeles, New York and Boston. According to the 2000 Census, the states with largest Armenian populations were California (204,631), Massachusetts (28,595), New York (24,460), New Jersey (17,094), Michigan (15,746), Florida (9,226), Pennsylvania (8,220), Illinois (7,958), Rhode Island (6,677) and Texas (4,941).

California

The first Armenian arrived in California in 1874 and settled in Fresno. Fresno and the Central Valley in general were the center of California Armenian community, but in the later decades, especially since the 1960s, when significant number of Middle Eastern Armenians arrived in the US, Southern California attracted more and more Armenians.

Los Angeles and the surrounding area is, by far, the most crowded Armenian community in the US. It holds a little less than half of all Armenians living in the US, making it one of the most populous Armenian communities outside of Armenia. The estimated numbers of Armenians of Southern California vary greatly: 250,000, 350,000, 400,000, 450,000, 500,000, although the 2000 census reported 152,910 Armenians in Los Angeles County. Just eleven years later, the 2011 American Community Survey one-year estimates put the number of Armenians in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana area 214,618, about 29% growth from 2000. The city of Los Angeles itself had an Armenian population of 64,997 in 2000. Several districts of Los Angeles have high concentrations of Armenians, particularly in San Fernando Valley: North Hollywood, Van Nuys and Encino. On 6 October 2000, a small community in East Hollywood was named Little Armenia by the Los Angeles City Council. The city council file on the adoption states that "the area contains a high concentration of Armenian businesses and residents and social and cultural institutions including schools, churches, social and athletic organizations."

Glendale, just a few miles away from Downtown Los Angeles, has a population of about 200,000, of which, according to some estimates, 40% is Armenian. According to the 2000 Census 53,840 people or 27% of the population identified themselves Armenian in Glendale. Glendale also home to the highest percentage of people born in Armenia. Other than Glendale and Los Angeles proper, significant Armenian populations reside in Burbank (8,312), Pasadena (4,400), Montebello (2,736), Altadena (2,134), La Crescenta-Montrose (1,382). The Armenian Genocide Martyrs Monument, the oldest and largest Armenian Genocide memorial in the US, is located in Montebello.

Dr. Seta Kazandjian described the community in her 2006 dissertation as follows:

Fresno, California was the first major Armenian community in the Western US. It was a major destination for early Armenian immigrants from the Ottoman Armenia, many of whom were engaged in agriculture. Armenians were the largest minority group in Fresno County. The city is also widely known as the birthplace of William Saroyan, many of whose stories are set there. Today, an estimated number of about 40,000 Armenian live in Fresno. According to the 2000 Census 9,884 Armenians lived in Fresno County at the time. The area around the Holy Trinity Church is called Old Armenian Town.

The Northern Californian Armenian population is not as populous as the Southern portion of the state. Armenians are mostly concentrated in and around the cities of San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland. The 2000 Census reported only 2,528 Armenians in San Francisco, but Hayk The Ubiquitous Armenian stated "the actual number is probably much higher since the census is usually lower than actuals."

Northeast

Armenians came to the Northeastern United States fleeing ethnically motivated violence starting around 1890. When the Hood Rubber Company (later joined with B.F. Goodrich) opened in Watertown, Massachusetts in 1896. Armenian, Syrian, Greek, and Italian immigrants made Hood Rubber the biggest producer of rubber soles in the US, and thus made Watertown, MA the first center of Armenian America.{{cite web, title= remembering the Armenian Genocide 100 Years Ago Holds Special Significance in Watertown , url= https://www.wbur.org/news/2015/04/24/remembering-armenian-genocide-100-watertown, access-date=07 November 2022

New York was also a destination for Armenian immigrants in the early 20th century. The area between East 20th Street, Lexington Avenue and First Avenue, where a compact Armenian population lived and Armenian shops existed, was called "Little Armenia" until the 1960s. The area was mentioned in 1914 book ''Our Mr. Wren: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man'' by Sinclair Lewis (the 1930 Nobel Prize Winner).{{cite web, title=Armenians in New York, NY, url=http://www.hayk.net/destinations/new-york-ny/, publisher=Hayk the Ubiquitous Armenian, access-date=18 December 2012, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121223030027/http://www.hayk.net/destinations/new-york-ny/, archive-date=23 December 2012, url-status=dead Today, according to estimates there are 150,000 Armenians in the Tri-State area. Queens is home to some 50,000 Armenian Americans, Manhattan has 10,000 Armenian population centered in Gramercy Park, Kips Bay and Murray Hill, where St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral is.{{cite web, author=Hrag Vartanian, url=http://agbu.org/publications/article.asp?A_ID=65, title=Tracking Armenians in New York, date=1 April 2002, publisher=Armenian General Benevolent Union, access-date=21 July 2012, quote=Today, Manhattan's community has shrunk to 10,000 of the 150,000 Armenians in the Greater New York area. As the most culturally diverse county in the nation, Queens was and perhaps still is home to the bulk of Tri-State Armenians with today's population hovering around 50,000., url-status=dead, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101209200049/http://agbu.org/publications/article.asp?A_ID=65, archive-date=9 December 2010

Stepan Zadori, a Hungarian Armenian, is the first known Armenian to come to Boston, The Armenian community in Boston was not founded until the 1880s.{{sfn, Peroomian, Avakian, 2003, p=41 Today, estimates say that Armenians number from 50,000 to 70,000 in the Greater Boston area.{{sfn, Peroomian, Avakian, 2003, p=41 The Armenian Heritage Park, dedicated to the victims of the Armenian genocide, was opened in downtown Boston on May 22, 2012. Watertown, Massachusetts is the center of Boston Armenians, where according to estimates about 8,000 people of Armenian origin reside, though the 2000 Census put the number only at 2,708.{{cite web, title=Ancestry: 2000 All places within Massachusetts, url=https://archive.org/details/AllPlacesInMassachusettsAncestry2000_459, publisher=United States Census Bureau, access-date=22 December 2012 Worcester, Massachusetts was also a major center for Armenian immigrants in the early part of the twentieth century. The Armenian Library and Museum of America is located in Watertown. The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) is located in Belmont, and "starting in early 2018, NAASR will undertake top-to-bottom renovations...to transform it into a welcoming hub and first-class Armenian Studies research center for scholars and myriad others, Armenians and non-Armenians alike." Other towns in the area with significant Armenian populations are Worcester (1,306), Belmont (1,165), Waltham (1,091) and the city of Boston (1,080).

Other major northeastern cities with significant Armenian populations include Philadelphia and Providence. Like other Armenian communities in America, Armenian communities in these cities have their roots in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Currently, Philadelphia holds about 15,000 Armenian American population{{sfn, Peroomian, Avakian, 2003, p=45 and over 7,000 live in Providence.{{sfn, Peroomian, Avakian, 2003, p=45 There is also a small Armenian community in Portland, Maine; this community was founded in 1896 and is currently represented by the Armenian Cultural Association of Maine (ACAME). One of the ACAME's first projects (in 2003) was to build a monument dedicated to the victims of the Armenian genocide, located at the intersection of Cumberland Avenue and Franklin Arterial in Portland.

Other communities

Other sizable Armenian American communities exist in the Midwest and in the South, but in much smaller numbers than the Northeastern states and California.

The early Armenian immigrants in Detroit were mostly laborers. In later decades, particularly since the 1960s Middle Eastern Armenians immigrated to Michigan. The Armenian community has been described as "highly educated, professional and prospering."{{cite web, title=Armenians in the Metropolitan Detroit Area, url=http://www.umd.umich.edu/dept/armenian/papazian/detroit.html, work=Ethnic Groups in Michigan, Vol. 2 of The Peoples of Michigan, publisher=The Ethnos Press, access-date=18 December 2012, author1=Dennis Papazian, author2=Carolyn Sirian, location=Detroit, pages=12–17, year=1983, url-status=dead, archive-url=https://archive.today/20120805180914/http://www.umd.umich.edu/dept/armenian/papazian/detroit.html, archive-date=5 August 2012 Today, they number about 22,000.{{sfn, Peroomian, Avakian, 2003, p=41 Chicago's Armenians also first settled in the city in the late 19th century in small numbers, but it increased through the 20th century, reaching about 25,000 by today.{{sfn, Peroomian, Avakian, 2003, p=44 As of 2003 more than 8,000 Armenian Americans lived in Washington, DC.{{sfn, Peroomian, Avakian, 2003, p=40 The Armenian Genocide Museum of America is also located in the capital. Since the turn of the century there been a trend towards an increase in number of Armenians living outside of traditional settlement areas. For instance, the number of Armenians in Nevada increased from 2,880 in 2000 to 5,845 in 2010, Florida from 9,226 to 15,856, and Texas from 4,941 to 14,459.{{cite web, title=Total ancestry categories tallied for people with one or more ancestry categories reported by states 2010 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, url=https://archive.org/details/AncestryIn2010ByStates, publisher=United States Census Bureau, access-date=27 December 2012

The Pacific Northwest has a growing Armenian community as well, primarily centered around the Seattle Metropolitan area which consists anywhere from 6,000 to 8,000 Armenian Americans, along with a church. Many of the Armenian Americans in Washington State immigrated to the area in the 1990s and have since established a sizable community, especially in and around the Eastside.

Culture

Language

As of 2000, 53% of the Armenians living in the US speak the Armenian language. For comparison, about 6% of Italian Americans, 32% of Greek Americans and 70% of Albanian Americans speak their ancestral language.{{cite web, title=Ancestry: 2000, publisher=United States Census Bureau, access-date=17 December 2012, url=https://archive.org/details/Ancestry2000

The Armenian language has two distinct standardized forms: Western Armenian and Eastern Armenian, both widely spoken among the Armenian American community. Armenians from Lebanon, Turkey, Syria and few other countries speak the Western dialect, which was spoken in Turkish (Western) Armenia, the eastern regions of Turkey with historical Armenian presence. Eastern Armenian is primarily spoken in Armenia and Iran, though the Iranian Armenians have their own dialect; in the United States, speakers of Eastern Armenian are primarily immigrants from the former Soviet Union who mostly arrived during the 1990s, or their children. Furthermore, Western and Eastern Armenian use two different spellings. In Armenia, the reformed orthography is used, while most Armenians in the diaspora (including Lebanon, Syria, Turkey and Iran) use the classical orthography.{{sfn, Adalian, 2010, pp=397–398

Between 1910 and 1970, the language of only the foreign-born population in the United States was taken into account. In 1910, the number of Armenian speakers in the US was 23,938. It grew up to 37,647 in 1920, 51,741 in 1930, 40,000 in 1940, 37,270 in 1960 and 38,323 in 1970. According to the 1980 US Census 100,634 people in the nation spoke Armenian, 69,995 of them were foreign-born.{{cite web, url=https://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/language/data/acs/Table2.xls, title=Languages Spoken at Home: 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2007, publisher=United States Census Bureau, access-date=6 August 2012 The 1990 US Census revealed 308,096 people of Armenian ancestry at the time and 149,694 people who indicated Armenian as their native language. A majority of Armenian-speakers (115,017) were foreign-born.{{cite web, url=https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0029/tab05.html, title=Language Spoken at Home for the Foreign-Born Population 5 Years and Over: 1980 and 1990, date=9 March 1999, publisher=United States Census Bureau, access-date=18 December 2012

According to the 2000 US Census there were 385,488 ethnic Armenians living in the US, and 202,708 people identified Armenian as 'Language Spoken at Home'. The overwhelming majority of Armenian-speakers lived in California (155,237). Other states with significant number of Armenian-speakers were New York (8,575) and Massachusetts (8,091).{{cite web, url=https://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t20/tab05.pdf, title=Detailed List of Languages Spoken at Home for the Population 5 Years and Over by State: 2000, date=25 February 2003, publisher=United States Census Bureau, access-date=18 August 2012 About 2/3 of Armenians speakers call Los Angeles County home.{{cite book, last=Bedevian, first=Harry Sahag, title=Student, Staff, and Parent Perceptions of the Reasons for Ethnic Conflict Between Armenian and Latino Students, year=2008, isbn=978-0-549-60688-8, pages=5–6 The 2009–2013 American Community Survey estimates put the number of Armenian-speakers at 237,840.

A 2007 study showed that 16% of Armenians born in Lebanon, 29% in Armenia (including Soviet Armenia), 31% in Iran and 36% in Turkey are not proficient in English.{{sfn, Samkian, 2007, p=102 Many foreign-born Armenians are multilingual, speaking at least one language other than Armenian and English. For instance, Armenians from Armenia or the rest of the former Soviet Union might know Russian, those from Lebanon and Syria may know Arabic and French, almost all Iranian Armenians speak Persian and Istanbul Armenians speak Turkish.

A 1999 paper delivered by Bert Vaux described Armenian as "severely endangered" in the United States.

Education

{{see also, List of Armenian schools in the United States
Early Armenian immigrants were one of the most literate ethnic groups to enter the US with 76% literacy. In comparison, 46% of southern Italians, 74% of Eastern European Jews and 99% of Finns were literate.{{cite book, last=Sisson, first=Richard, title=The American Midwest: an interpretive encyclopedia, year=2006, publisher=Indiana Univ. Press, location=Bloomington, Indiana, isbn=978-0-253-34886-9, page=320 As of 2007, 41% of US-born Armenians had at least a 4-year college degree. The rate is lower for foreign-born Armenians.{{sfn, Samkian, 2007, p=102

The first Armenian Sunday school in the US was founded in the late 1880s in New York by Barsegh Vardukyan.{{sfn, Peroomian, Avakian, 2003, p=51 Since the 1960s many Armenian bilingual schools have been established in communities throughout the country. Ferrahian Armenian School, founded in 1964, is the oldest Armenian daily school in America.{{sfn, Peroomian, Avakian, 2003, p=51 Besides this, there are over 100 Armenian schools that operate on weekends only. Mashdots College in Glendale, founded in 1992, is the only Armenian higher education institution in the country.

Armenian Americans constitute a highly educated community. Of the 339,732 Armenian Americans who are 25 or above, 26% are with a college degree, and 26.1% hold a bachelor's degree.

Religion

Most Armenian Americans are adherents of the Armenian Apostolic Church, the largest Oriental Orthodox church in the US.{{cite book, last=Laderman, first=Gary, title=Religion and American cultures, year=2003, publisher=ABC- CLIO, location=Santa Barbara, Calif., isbn=978-1-57607-238-7, page=302 It possesses over 90 churches throughout the nation.{{sfn, Peroomian, Avakian, 2003, p=38 It was reported that 80% of Armenian Americans are Armenian Apostolic, 10% are Protestant (mostly Armenian Evangelical) and 3% are Armenian Catholic Church, Armenian Catholic.{{cite book, title=The encyclopedia of New York State, year=2005, publisher=Syracuse University Press, location=Syracuse, NY, isbn=978-0-8156-0808-0, author1=Eisenstadt, Peter R. , author2=Moss, Laura-Eve , page=118

The Armenian Apostolic Church is the oldest national church in the world, and had a major role in protecting the Armenian identity through the centuries of foreign domination.{{sfn, Peroomian, Avakian, 2003, p=46 Many Armenian communities in the country are concentrated around churches that serve as community centers. The first Armenian Apostolic church in America, named Church of Our Savior, Worcester, Church of Our Savior, was built in 1891 in Worcester. The American Diocese of the Church was established in 1898 by Catholicos Mkrtich Khrimian. In 1916 there were 34 Armenian parishes with 27,450 members with a predominantly male population. The top states with Armenian church followers were Massachusetts, Michigan, California and New York. The Western Diocese was established in 1927.

After the Soviets took over Armenia in 1920, the Armenian American community was divided into two camps: one supporting Soviet Armenia (mostly members of the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party, Hunchak and Armenian Democratic Liberal Party, Ramgavar parties), another one against it (mostly made up of Armenian Revolutionary Federation, ARF members). During the Century of Progress, 1933 World's Fair, Leon Tourian, the primate of the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America, refused to give a speech because the Flag of Armenia, Armenian tricolor of the First Republic of Armenia, 1918–1920 Republic was hanging behind him, while Etchmiadzin, the seat of the Catholicos of All Armenians, was in Armenia that was then part of the Soviet Union and used a different flag. This upset the Dashnak members present in the ceremony. The conflict reached a crisis on 24 December 1933, when several members of ARF assassinated Archbishop Tourian during the Christmas Eve service in New York's Holy Cross Armenian Apostolic Church (New York City), Holy Cross Armenian Apostolic Church.

On October 12, 1957, during the peak of the Cold War, a number of parishes of the Armenian Apostolic Church in America, which were unaffiliated since 1933, came together under the Holy See of Cilicia with the headquarters in Lebanon, close to the Armenian Revolutionary Federation.{{cite book, title=Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches 2012, year=2012, publisher=Abingdon Press, isbn=978-1-4267-5610-8, author=National Council of Christ in USA, chapter=Armenian Apostolic Church of America , chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5DWeLz28b88C&q=Western+Diocese+of+the+Armenian+Church+of+America&pg=PT136{{cite web, last=Kouymjian , first=Dickran , author-link=Dickran Kouymjian , title=Armenians in the United States , url=http://armenianstudies.csufresno.edu/faculty/kouymjian/articles/us_armenians.htm , publisher=California State University, Fresno , access-date=7 December 2012 , date=December 1992 , url-status=dead , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130718205010/http://armenianstudies.csufresno.edu/faculty/kouymjian/articles/us_armenians.htm , archive-date=18 July 2013 After the World War II, Archbishop Tiran Nersoyan led the church through a second founding, which saw the framing of by-laws to govern the diocese, the creation of a nationwide youth organization. the initiation of a project to build an Armenian cathedral in Manhattan and the entry of the Armenian Church into the ecumenical movement. The middle 1950s saw an uptick in immigration and a building boom of Armenian churches, with new communities proliferating across the US. A generation of leaders born in America also began to exert itself. The first American-born Armenian priest was ordained in 1956. In 1961, St. Nersess Armenian Seminary was established in Illinois (later, it would move to New York). A spirit of renewed vigor was embodied by Archbishop Torkom Manoogian, who governed the diocese as primate from 1966 to 1990. The period saw a large influx of Armenian immigrants. These developments refocused the priorities of the Armenian Church in America. The need for humanitarian relief to the Armenian homeland, as well as outreach to refugees settling throughout the US (concentrated in New York and Los Angeles), led to the creation of the Fund for Armenian Relief—through which the church delivers material and medical aid to Armenia.{{sfn, Peroomian, Avakian, 2003, p=46

Today, more than 120 Armenian parish communities exist on the continent, with two-thirds operating as fully organized churches with sanctuaries. Archbishop Khajag Barsamian is primate of the Eastern Diocese (since 1990); Archbishop Hovnan Derderian of the Western Diocese (since 2003). The dioceses maintain strong connections to the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, and the current Supreme Patriarch, Karekin II, the 132nd Catholicos of All Armenians.

Armenian Evangelical Church, Armenian Evangelical form the second largest denomination among Armenian Americans, with 1 out of 10 being a follower. As of 1993 there were 28 Armenian Protestant Churches.{{sfn, Bakalian, 1993, p=93 A small number of Armenian Americans are followers of the Armenian Catholic Church. Their number is estimated to be around 25,000. In 1990 there were 6 Armenian Catholic Churches in the United States.{{sfn, Bakalian, 1993, p=93

Media

The first Armenian-language newspaper in the US, named ''Aregak'' (Արեգակ, "Sun"), was published in Jersey City

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