More Ethiopians live in the Washington, D.C., region than any other urban area outside of Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank. A Census Survey put the Ethiopian population in Montgomery County at 18,000, the largest concentration in the region. From its hub in downtown Silver Spring, it’s hard to miss the vibrant Ethiopian presence.
Radiating outward from the Silver Spring Civic Building at Veterans Plaza, the central business district is populated with Ethiopian-owned restaurants, bars, dance clubs, coffee shops, grocery stores and hair salons. Ethiopian lawyers, doctors, dentists, bankers and accountants work in the office buildings. The community's influence is deeply woven into the fabric of Silver Spring.
A Hub of Culture and Commerce
On most mornings you’ll find Abeba Tsegaye behind the counter at Kefa Café on Bonifant Street, serving a local clientele. After college in Ohio, and a year at a brokerage firm in Indiana, she joined the family business in Silver Spring, that opened in 1996. “We made that place just like our home. We want people to feel like they [were] in their living room,” she said. That coffee culture is strongly tied to daily life in Ethiopia, where friends and neighbors roast and drink coffee together, sharing stories and family concerns. Tsegaye watches closely as Purple Line construction has closed shops around her. “We haven’t given up yet,” she said. “This is our baby."
Tsegaye’s life came full circle in Kefa Café with the aroma of fresh Ethiopian coffee. Like back home, conversation is ongoing and friendly, a place where customers become friends, and baby pictures cover one wall. Activists have launched political campaigns and nonprofits from these small rooms. They’ve stood by when it was the only shop on the block, and through a fire that destroyed the building, and the pandemic.
Years before, her aunt Marta Gabre-Tsadick, Ethiopian’s first woman senator, was forced to flee after the military takeover in 1974, and escaped to Fort Wayne, Ind. There she founded Project Mercy, a nonprofit to help Ethiopian refugees, which helped Tsegaye and her brother get to the United States after over a year as a refugee in Sudan.
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Tsega Haile's immigration story began with a stroke of luck. He won a Diversity Visa, and in 2008 headed to Silver Spring, where he had family. Haile opened Kaldi’s Social House on Silver Spring Avenue in 2014 with four employees. He built outward, taking over an auto shop, and upward, securing a bank loan to remodel a second floor and expand on to the roof. “From the moment we opened the door, I [saw] a lot of traffic,” he said, which led him to where he is on this day, a year into transforming yet another location, a pizzeria on Georgia Avenue into Citizens and Culture, a 15,000-square-foot sports club with wraparound bar, flat panel LED screens, and a second floor with lots of space for seating, and walk-out balcony overlooking the tree lined thoroughfare.
Haile’s business acumen doesn’t stop there. “It can be art, it can be music, it can be anything. Our doors are open to everyone, from all walks of life to use our space,” he said. “Here I work freely. I speak freely."
Silver Spring Ethiopian Market is a Family Affair
Preserving Culture Through the Arts
Alemtsehay Wedajo at Tayitu Cultural and Educational Center in Silver Spring, the base of her operations in the United States. Alemtsehay Wedajo’s first job in America was at Vie de France, a bakery far from center stage at the Ethiopian National Theater in Addis Ababa where she had worked for 17 years. “All my life I [had] been acting, writing, producing and directing,” she said, reflecting on her career as an acclaimed actress and the country’s first female stage director.
But, Wedajo was also an outspoken government critic. “I wrote plays about that,” she said. “I wrote many poems about that,” explaining that those works were turned into propaganda and used against her. In 1991 she fled, seeking asylum in the United States with her two young children. Despite this detour, her passion for the arts never faltered. “Art is an addiction to me."
“We produced 60 plays in the last 20 years,” she said. Tayitu also is a conduit to tutoring English as a second language for new arrivals, and hosts acting workshops in the arts for young people at the Silver Spring Civic Center. “I want them to work hard to keep the dream going,” she said. “I want them to keep on going, to feel proud of themselves."
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Media and Community Connection
Around the corner from Tayitu on Silver Spring Avenue is the Ethiopian Broadcasting Service. EBS is the brainchild of Mussie Fissehazion and his two brothers, who began the operation in 2011. Fissehazion was an exchange student in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, attended college in Missouri and never returned to Ethiopia.
“We started with a little cell phone shop called Clear Communications,” he said. “From there we got into the satellite business.” They worked as retailers for DISH Network, a major player in the direct-to-home market that had international satellite channels. “[We saw] a big gap in the Ethiopian [diaspora] community. Our goal was to fill that gap,” he said.
As EBS chief technology officer, Fissehazion aggregates content and its distribution. He envisions EBS growth into a pan-African network, “We want to tell the African story, our story,” he said. “I’m [also] proud to be an American. But always, I have a soft heart for Ethiopia."
Historical Context and Contributions
Ethiopians have come to the United States in successive waves, says Getachew Metaferia, a political science professor at Morgan State University. Many, like him, were encouraged by Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie to study abroad. Metaferia began his journey in 1973. “The [idea] was to study, go home and help to build a well-developed democratic society,” he said.
A military coup in 1974 overthrew the Ethiopian emperor and derailed those plans. It would be 30 years before Metaferia would return to Ethiopia. “I had to keep a low profile there,” he said. What initially attracted Metaferia and so many others to the Washington area was the large population of African Americans, and education at historically black colleges and universities.
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“Ethiopians have contributed to the social, economic, cultural and political life in the United States,” Metaferia said. Hundreds of Amharic-speaking people came to the Ethiopian New Year Festival in Silver Spring in September.
| Name | Business/Organization | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Abeba Tsegaye | Kefa Café | Owner/Operator |
| Tsega Haile | Kaldi’s Social House, Citizens and Culture | Owner/Entrepreneur |
| Alemtsehay Wedajo | Tayitu Cultural and Educational Center | Founder/Director |
| Mussie Fissehazion | Ethiopian Broadcasting Service (EBS) | Chief Technology Officer |
| Getachew Metaferia | Morgan State University | Political Science Professor |
