Ellis Paul Antoon was born October 30, 1930. His father was born in the Syrian village of Dahr Safra near Baniyas, and his mother was born in New Rose, Louisiana, although her father was also from Dahr Safra. His grandparents on his mother’s side met and married in Mississippi.

Once Antoon’s father, Farris Asper Antoon, arrived in America, he, along with his brothers, peddled wares in towns and communities in Mississippi before his brothers settled in Greenwood and opened a clothing store, which became Antoon’s Department Store. Ellis’s father opened F. Antoon Grocery and Market on the corner of Gibbs and Howard Sts., and he ran the store for more than twenty years.

When Antoon was young he worked in his father’s grocery store. His parents spoke Arabic in the home and sometimes in the store, “but mainly they tried to limit the talk to English, because they were living in the Untied States,” Antoon remembered. The neighborhood where he lived was multiethnic, with other Syrian-Lebanese, Jews, and Italians living side by side, although Antoon’s parents “didn’t do a lot of socializing outside of the Syrian and Lebanese circle.”

After graduating from Greenwood High School, Antoon spent twenty-one months in active duty in Korea during the Korean War and attended college at Mississippi State University, transferring to the University of Alabama after two years in Starkville. He majored in business administration.

This interview took place on November 10, 2017, in the home of Ellis and Jo Ann Antoon in Greenwood, Mississippi.

Audio clips

Ellis Antoon's father's and grandparents' origins and arrival in America

The beginnings of Antoon's Department Store and Ellis's Americanization as a child

His father's grocery stores and the African American community that traded there

The family's social circle and Lebanese community celebrations

Some ways in which the Syrian-Lebanese community was reminded they stood outside the white society

“All the Lebanese and Syrian in Greenwood, pretty much, were Catholic. And just about all the Italian families were Catholic. The Immaculate Heart of Mary.”

“My mother told my present wife—this is before we married—she said, ‘Now, you know, you ruined all my plans.’ Because they even had the young [Lebanese] lady picked out that I was going to marry. She was from Tchula, which is twenty miles outside of [Greenwood]. Bless her heart. Real sweet thing, too.”

“We don’t know this for a fact, but my father, he used his birthday as the Fourth of July. They tell me that probably happened in the immigration situation. They asked him his date of birth. Back in Syria, I don’t know whether they kept a record of your date of birth or not. But anyway, he evidently said he didn’t know. So they said, ‘How about the Fourth of July?’ He said, ‘That’s good.’ So, his birthday was Fourth of July.”

—Ellis Antoon