As with any archive, collecting material on early Arab Americans is, at least in part, an exercise of exclusion and silencing. While those with power (financial, religious, cultural, social and political) can give latter-day voice to their lives, the majority of subaltern groups leave little perceivable trail for historians. The challenge for any archive is how to gather material that lends voice to those marginalized and rendered ephemeral, and how to interrogate the silences of the records to achieve that goal. This presentation will focus on the efforts of the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, to archive the lives of subaltern groups.