Person Record

Metadata

Name

Hassen, Aliya

Other Names

Aliya Al-Ogdie, Aliya Ogdie Hassen, Aliya Ella Ogdie Hassan, Ella O. Weldon

Born

1910

Birthplace

Sioux Falls, South Dakota, USA

Deceased

25 May 1990

Deceased where

Detroit, Michigan, USA

Places of residence

Sioux Falls, South Dakota, United States of America
Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
Dearborn, Michigan United States of America

Nationality

American

Education

Whittier School, South Dakota
Bancroft School, South Dakota
All Saints School, South Dakota
Washington High School, South Dakota,
Briggs School for Girls-Cass Tech, Detroit
University of Detroit (two years college credits)

Notes

Born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota to Shiite Muslim parents Ali and Fatima Ogdie, who were originally from Qaraoun in modern-day Lebanon. She went to live with her aunt and uncle, Fatima and Mohammed Ogdie in a working class neighborhood in Dearborn, Michigan where she enrolled in the Briggs School for Girls. Shorly after, however, at just 15 years old, her mother arranged a marriage to a fellow Syrian, Nijabe M Kadoura. The couple was married 9 September, 1925, but by the 1930 census, Aliya is recorded as living in the home of her parents, with the estranged couple's young daughter, Amelia. She later divorced him in October 1932 on the grounds of extreme cruelty.

A month after receiving her divorce decree, she married Ernest O. Weldon, a veteran of World War I and II who also worked as a salesman in Detroit. Unfortunately, he died of advanced pulmonary tuberculosis in 1948 at a Veterans Hospital in Outwood, Kentucky. Sometime before the 1940 census, though, she and her daughter Amelia were renting a residence on Howard Street in Detroit without him, suggesting that the interfaith couple had already separated.

By 1950, Aliya and Amelia relocated to Brooklyn, where they resided on Clinton Street. During her years in New York, Aliya emerged as a leading intellectual figure in the Federation of Islamic Associations in the United States and Canada (FIA), writing pioneering popular scholarship on Muslim women’s history for the FIA Journal. She also worked to further “interracial, international, and interethnic solidarity among Muslims in the United States and abroad.” During this period, she also worked as a private detective where she was licensed until at least 1965.

She got married for a third time, in the early 1950s, to Ali E. Hassan, an Alexandria-born Egyptian who entered into the merchant marine during World War II. He went on to work as a machinist in an embroidery factory. Together the couple established the Egyptian Arab American Seaman’s Society to spread the message of Islam to the wider public and support Arab-American Muslims

Occupation

Activist, Community Organizer,
Homemaker, Exports Manager
First Aid Instructor, American Red Cross
Secretary, Juvenile Delinquency Board
Member, New York Police Athletic League
Lt. Colonel, Civil Defense