A guest post by commenter Jefe:
Chinese Americans in Mississippi under Jim Crow (1877-1967) were classified as “colored”. In the 1920s, when it started to affect the education of their children, they fought back. By the 1950s they were almost “white”.
What being “colored” meant for them:
- Employment: In the Mississippi Delta nearly all Chinese men became self-employed grocers to black sharecroppers, a niche whites did not want.
- Marriage and family: Anti-miscegenation laws added “Mongolian” and “Malay” as races that could not marry whites. Meanwhile the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 made it nearly impossible to bring over wives or brides from China. Most Chinese men remained bachelors, though some married black. After 1910 “Paper Sons and Daughters” began to arrive from China, through a loophole in the Exclusion Act created by the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.
- Education: In the 1920s their children were kicked out of white schools and forced to go to the immensely inferior coloured schools. Gong Lum of Rosedale, Mississippi took it to the Supreme Court. He lost: in Lum v Rice (1927) the Supreme Court ruled that any jurisdiction could classify a non-white group as “colored” as long as “equal” facilities were provided.
To fight this, Chinese Americans:
- Set up their own schools. By the 1930s Mississippi had dozens of Chinese schools.
- Contributed money to white institutions (churches, civic organizations, social clubs, politicians, etc.).
- Became Christians through Chinese missions opened up by white churches.
- Had white people witness them mimicking whites in their treatment of blacks.
It slowly took effect. Some churches closed their Chinese missions and let their congregations attend the white churches. Some districts could not afford schools for 3 separate races and eventually closed the Chinese schools. If one white school would not accept Chinese students, parents would send their kids to a school in another district. The acceptance to white institutions was not universal; it often depended on the whites in the local community.
One Chinese group was left behind – those who married black or were part black. Whites made it very clear that in order to let Chinese into any white institution, they must guarantee that they were full Chinese with no “Negro” blood.
By the early 1950s, the separate Chinese schools had closed and most Chinese children were attending white schools. Chinese had to work continuously to gain “white” status. Some contributed to the White Citizens Council to oppose segregation – while some also contributed to the NAACP to appease their black customers. They always had to walk a racial tightrope to please whites without offending blacks.
They would be “white” for some things, but not for others. They could attend the white schools, but could not be valedictorian or date any whites. They were not always permitted to move into white neighborhoods.
In 1954 Brown v Board overturned Lum v Rice.
In 1967 Loving v Virginia overturned anti-miscegenation laws.
By the 1960s, mechanization had replaced hand labour in the cotton fields. The Delta lost much of its black population in the Great Migration. With their customer base disappearing, most Chinese were leaving the Delta by the 1970s – after spending decades trying to be accepted as “white”.
See also:
- External links:
- The White Club
- Jim Crow
- Emmett Till (who was lynched in the Mississippi delta in 1955)
- James W. Loewen: Lies My Teacher Told Me
- The Nadir of American race relations
- American school resegregation
- Settlement of Asians in the Deep South (1763 – 1882)
- Chinese Americans in the Deep South after 1882
- Chinese Exclusion Act
- Paper Son
- The Great Migration
I,m really pissed off hearing about the things white americans have done to other people, thank christ I don,t live there, what a bunch of arseholes.
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Reblogged this on Acorns and Leaves and commented:
Spending time in South Africa I have become familair with the classification system used to separate people under the Apartheid racial classification system. I did not know that the Jim Crow laws in the South also had variations to allow for wider forms of discrimination.
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Another piece of history never discussed in the education system.
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“They would be “white” for some things, but not for others.” Jefe to what extent do you think this may be true today?
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^ In the case referred to in this post, it dealt specifically with how a 3rd race, one not viewed as either black or white by either blacks or whites or themselves navigate a binary racial segregation system such as Jim Crow in pre-civil rights Mississippi.
It is something that made sense 1920s – 1960s, but may look bizarre from a hindsight perspective today.
But I am sure people can see many examples how it operates in different forms today, e.g.,
– Asian-American owned business thrive in poor black neighborhoods, even in the 2010s (when both white and black owned ones would more likely fail).
– Asian-Americans sometimes still have a white surrogate image in the minds of some blacks
– both the Model Minority and Perpetual Foreigner stereotypes seem to coexist simultaneously, even though they technically contradict each other
– how Model minority stereotypes makes Asians and blacks the opposite of each other.
– how Asians even believe that they have to distinguish themselves from black (or sometimes brown) minorities to demonstrate that they are entitled to tidbits of white privilege not extended to blacks, when all along whites remind them that they can never truly be white.
I have seen all white exclusive country clubs that did not admit any Asians (not to mention any blacks or hispanics), even though some Asians should definitely be able to afford to join. They did admit Anglo-acculturated Jewish and Italian-Americans.
Americans are still eons away from accepting Asian Americans as President or in leading romantic film roles or as sports heroes or as heads of their corporations. There is still a colour line.
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I wonder if the model minority stereotype might someday lead to an enlargement of whiteness that includes asians. I’d say there are some similarities to how southern and eastern european whites were viewed as “not quite white but not as bad as blacks” by the (then northern european) whites.
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^ Not as long as the perpetual foreigner stereotype holds.
In any case, I think it might be better if the opposite happens – if white people are willing to give up their stranglehold on the concept of whiteness. Then there would be no real need for people to aspire to whiteness.
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You’re completly right. An enlargement of whiteness on asians might improve the life chances of asians in the US, but it won’t do anything to overcome white supremacy or to bring a more just society.
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[…] Chinese Americans in Mississippi under Jim Crow (1877-1967) were classified as “colored”. In the 1920s, when it started to affect the education of their children, they fought back. By the 1950s they were almost “white”.What being “colored” meant for them:click through to read […]
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@Jefe
Was the question of why Asians owned stores in primarily black neighborhoods every answered? Is it simply based on a market that whites do not want or is there more to it?
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Wow, they pledged allegiance to whiteness, but were still denied most of the benefits of whiteness. And this manufactured *antagonism* between Black and Chinese continues to this day. SMH.
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@Sharina,
We have not found any scholarly analysis of this, but I offered some rambling thoughts about this:
(https://abagond.wordpress.com/2014/06/06/chinese-americans-in-the-deep-south-after-1882/#comment-237656)
It seems that there are certain social and economic niches in the USA which seem to be best exploited by socially connected “3rd race” people who identify with neither the white mainstream nor the black community they serve as they are areas that neither whites (or even middle class blacks or native born Asian Americans) want to do and poorer blacks do not have access to, or have too many handicaps to succeed at.
Have you found any more information?
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Very interesting piece. It reminds me of some of the stories I heard from my family.
My father and Grandfather–Koreans–lived in the Tennessee during the tail end of this period. My grandfather doesn’t speak of that time of his life much, but my father remembers very clearly going to a public restroom as a child and seeing the “whites” and “negros” signs, looking at his hand, and having no idea which he was supposed to use.
During the 60s and 70s my grandfather said he never felt discriminated against, even when he was involved in clubs and school organization. My father was mostly accepted, though he was rolled up in the wrestling mats every year on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor.
The funny thing about racism is geographical location–state to state, urban vs rural, and even neighborhood to neighborhood–matter so much. I never ran into anything more malicious than pokes at my name on the East Coast or Pacific Northwest, but in the Rocky Mountain states I had people clucking their tongues at my wife for marrying an Asian and I’ve gotten dirty looks for being in the wrong neighborhoods of some cities.
I don’t know if there was a point to all of that, but I figured I share anyway. Good post, keep it up.
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@Jefe
Thank you for responding.
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Interesting stuff, now I can see why there is some animosity between Asians and Blacks in the South. Divide and conquer is the perfect strategy that the system of White Supremacy uses. Nice piece, jefe.
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@Kartoffel
At a huge price – they have to give up their Asian identities and replace them with white ones. At that point, having Asian ancestry would be like people who identify as white having Italian and Cherokee ancestry – something interesting that they don’t really identify with.
It is different from the person of Italian and Cherokee descent who actually identifies as Cherokee or ethnic Italian.
Perhaps some Asian-Americans are already whitewashed to that stage. It’s easy when you erase their history from the nation’s historical narrative.
I would love to see a USA whose life chances are not so dependent on how “white” you are.
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Never knew this. Thanks, Jefe.
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Interesting post. It’s almost like seeing the “model minority” stereotype develop in a historical context. The Chinese response to the racism also explains why we have ‘minority-specific’ institutions. Sometimes these are mentioned as evidence of ‘minority’ racism but it’s the smoke to the fire. The public institutions were not labelled as white-specific but they were so in reality. I can never come away from these posts without asking the foundational questions: why have whites been acting as a wedge disconnecting and separating all people?
The more I thought about it the less personally I took it. They hated each other too. They teamed up to resume preying on the rest of the world then went back to hating each other (WWI and WWII and likely more to come). They don’t have any more respect for the planet we all share than they have for the people they share it with. After they nuked Japan and basically occupied the country they (General Electric specifically) built nuclear reactors near the sea in an earthquake prone zone which, predictably, were damaged by the earthquake and tsunami in 2011 and continue to pollute the Pacific in 2014. (It’s a shame this story isn’t being reported more but the fact that NBC is part of the GE group says a lot about the conflicts of interest that exist) So yeah, I don’t take it personally. It’s just power-hungry destruction.
For some reason (I have my theories) whites created a cultural form that values individualism and rationality whereas many other cultures veered towards valuing working together (kinds of collectivism) and some form of spiritual understanding of the world. I believe many older cultures intuited things that ‘science’ is just beginning to scratch but that’s a whole other topic. Anyway, individualism at the extreme leads to selfishness and RATIOnality leads to cold calculation (even treachery) due to sequestration of feeling or emotion. Put the two together and you have the engine of white behavior. This template puts individuals in a rather competitive or antagonistic relationship towards each other within the society but ultimately that must be tempered to maintain a functional culture. However, those defined as being on the outside can be completely destroyed or subjected to any brutality. Some who identify as white might not agree with the treatment but these are the outliers and they are often victimized as well in order to bring them in line with the cultural norm (eg. the white ‘freedom riders’ who were severely beaten).
It’s also interesting that the Chinese had to ‘become white’ on some level to be accepted. This meant becoming Christian and being racist. In addition to the division it created there was another very potent but subtle tool at work: mind control. It’s like the seasoning of slaves; it’s necessary to break them and let them forget who they were by implanting a false identity. Once you have a white head in that ‘colored’ skull they don’t have to worry about you. You’ll harm your own for being the part of yourself you’ve learned to hate. I forget who used the term “mentacide” but it’s really appropriate. Yet some of us are regaining sanity. Sleepers no more. Though they destroyed ancestral knowledge we’re recalling our source, spontaneously. Wow. All that for nothing!
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When a dominant and unrelenting population has this much power over other societies it becomes a “if you can’t beat the join them” scenario. I’m not blaming any party or individual but it’s a great social study case.
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They’re dominant because they were seeking dominance is a single-minded way that others weren’t. It’s like Pinky and the Brain: “What are we going to do tonight Brain”; “The same thing we do every night Pinky: try to take over the world”! For example, the concept of ‘claiming’ land was alien to some folks yet that’s what whites did everywhere they went. If a people are coming to destroy you and you don’t understand their mode of operation you’ll hand them advantages without realizing. When people finally got frustrated with the visitors it was often too late because their culture had been destroyed, their population might have been diminished by disease, some of their own had been raised in missionary schools, converted to Christianity and dare not displease their god, or they’d been given positions of authority within the colonial system which they wanted to keep etc. Since at the end of the process the people are transformed culturally, linguistically, spiritually, economically resistance becomes increasingly unlikely. In order to resist a torrent you have to be rooted in or attached to something beyond its influence otherwise you’ll be compelled to go with the flow. So at this point, the voices of dissent have been silenced and people, regardless of color, basically accept they way things are for lack of alternatives.
Yet the system absorbs everyone in order to subject them to racism. So as people imbibe the culture in which they are immersed they inevitably develop a nagging sense of dysphoria. What is valorized in white society is the destruction of people from whom they descended yet the society resulting from destruction is the only one they know. Being part of a society implies accepting the values of that society which, as the Chinese experience in America illustrates, includes racism. They were invited to be racist against black people in order to be accepted. Italian, Irish, Chinese, hate the n*g*r/a (really a most beauteous word: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=king http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=negus ) and you’re in. Who should black people hate in order to get in, themselves? Exactly. The buck stops with us. Black self-love is an act of resistance and is often understood as such even when we aren’t trying to make a statement.
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” Black self-love is an act of resistance and is often understood as such even when we aren’t trying to make a statement.”
“Who should black people hate in order to get in, themselves?”
*************
Answer: Yes! Themselves. Yet this only gains just a partial acceptance… it lasts only as long as one is being useful in promoting white supremacy. (The 5 Rules of Racial Standing are still intact)
The practice of WHITENESS is a demonic religion!
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@ Origin,
In Mississippi during Jim Crow, it was a little more complicated than you suggested. They depended 99% on a black customer base and were not accepted as white for everything. They focused on what was most important to them (i.e., schooling for their children) yet still had to maintain good relations with their clientele.
Of course, once they started going to school with whites, their children got exposed to white racist beliefs in the classroom and from the teachers. That is probably one reason this kind of niche occupation does not hand down well to the 2nd generation and scarcely any do it in the 3rd generation (although there are a few cases).
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@ Jefe, great post. I have always seen the grocery stores in the South as a mostly Jewish niche at that time. I had completely overlooked the Asian perspective. Truly, navigating that time period must have been hell for most minorities.
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Someone here mentioned the “Redemption of Cain.” That’s the ultimate trajectory for acceptance into the white continuum, but it’s not made easy, nor is it expected of blacks to migrate en masse this way. Probably because such an influx of bleached blackness would still give the white collective system a shock that even the swarthiest of European blood would not.
So black Americans have few, if any chances of “joining them” if they can’t beat them. Instead, mainstream white America prefers if their black counterparts remain the designated permanent underclass/scapegoat/punching bag and societal release valve, as is currently the comfortable status quo. Other than a few isolated “redemption” cases and a few blacks self-hating themselves and their own into an early, heartbroken grave, this is what the black community at large has to look forward to until something cataclysmic happens.
That “cataclysmic” happening may be just like what’s happening to Iraq: the country that was once held together largely by force of dictator and later broken courtesy of U.S. intervention is now fragmenting into the ages-old arrangement of tribal and sectarian distinctions, followed by tribal and sectarian, as opposed to Europeans drawing pretty little lines on a map. In this, you have the Kurds – a largely unified ethnic group that’s currently using the current chaos to carve out their own nation.
So how does this apply to America? Well, empires do fall, no matter how quickly or how slowly. After all, everyone gave undeserved permanence to the Soviet Union and that eventually fell. If America’s downward trajectory involves massive tribal/sectarian violence, then the black community will have to unite out of sheer necessity and self-preservation. Perhaps in the midst of that chaos will they be able to permanently carve out a chunk of territory where they stand sovereign and beholden to no one, just as the Kurds are doing.
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“So black Americans have few, if any chances of “joining them” if they can’t beat them. Instead, mainstream white America prefers if their black counterparts remain the designated permanent underclass/scapegoat/punching bag and societal release valve, as is currently the comfortable status quo.”
**********
AMEN.
An ever increasing number of blacks are beginning to wake up to the reality of this! The less confused of our number don’t want anything to do with embracing – whiteness.
Even Acceptable Negroes are not fully acceptable, and they never will be, no matter how acceptable/successful they become they’ll still have that identifying marker of blackness. Just ask Oprah, Skip Gates and Obama!
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[…] A guest post by commenter Jefe: Chinese Americans in Mississippi under Jim Crow (1877-1967) were classified as "colored". In the 1920s, when it started to affect the education of their children, th… […]
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@KOT
I think it has always been a “not quite white”, “not quite black” group of socially connected non-brain drain immigrants who operated grocery stores in black or other poor non-white neighborhoods for the past 130 years (ie, post reconstruction).
Jews would have done this in the North as Jews were more numerous there and could form community organizations (e.g, around synagogues). I bet many of the shop owners in Northern black ghettos were Jews during the first and possibly also second Great Migration.
Jews also did it in the South. Many Southern towns had very small Jewish communities that would have shared some community organization. You would have found some in Alabama and Georgia and even in Mississippi.
Other groups might have done this, e.g., Lebanese or Syrian Americans. Loewen found a few Jewish, Lebanese and Syrian grocers in Mississippi as well, but I suspect you would find more in Alabama and Tennessee.
What made the Chinese situation different was
* Chinese entered the South in 2 main areas in the 1870s – the port of New Orleans and up the Mississippi River (in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas) and the port of Savannah and up the Savannah river (in Georgia and South Carolina). However, whereas thousands went along the Mississippi River, only a couple hundred went along the Savannah river. When they fled the plantations, most left the rural South, leaving a few hundred along the Mississippi Delta and perhaps several dozen along the Savannah River. A small Chinese community was established in Augusta, GA, but in Mississippi, it spread all across the towns in the Delta and also to some towns across the river in Arkansas. Most small towns could afford at least one Chinese grocery store and the larger towns could handle 8-10 stores, Greenville even more than that.
* the Mississippi Delta had the highest concentration of blacks in the nation and highest concentration of black sharecroppers. This is the area that had the highest demand for “3rd race” entrepreneurs and just happened to be where most of the original imported Chinese “coolies” were brought.
* the Chinese men spoke the same dialect and shared the same social background. That was very helpful in getting them set up. that was their social connection — not religion. They formed social networks at that time.
There were probably only a few hundred Chinese men in the Mississippi Delta in the early 1900s, 1/3 of which were married to blacks. But after they started to bring wives and younger men over after 1910, the men had many kids – 5-8 kids was probably common. By bringing over 100-200 wives and a few more younger men, the population exploded to a couple thousand Chinese-Americans by the 1920s, mostly kids. And it continued to attract new entrepreneurs until the end of the 1940s.
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@Kiwi
I suspect that was probably AFTER Rosa Parks but before the Civil Rights Act (ie, between 1956 – 1963). IT was at that time that whites needed Asian-Americans to obey the colour line.
If you remember, I have direct connection to the South,
* both my father’s older sisters married Chinese grocers in the Mississippi Delta after then came to the USA. Their kids grew up there, which would happen to be all of my first cousins who are older than me (they had 6 and 7 kids respectively). The oldest ones should be old enough to have gone to school with Bobbie Gentry and the kids of Byron De La Beckwith who shot Medgar Evans.
My own father and his 2 younger sisters also went to Mississippi one year to go with my grandparents to help my Aunt (their older sister) out. My father’s *younger sisters* (my younger Aunts) attended school there 1951-1952. So I have tons of close relatives who spent all or part of their childhood in Mississippi. I know that in 1951-1952, they were able to attend the white school. They also told me that a number of the Chinese men had married blacks.
I sometimes wonder if Morgan Freeman, BB King, Betty Everett, ex-Mayor Marion Barry and the family of Emmett Till might have patronized their stores as they lived and grew up in the same area at the time that they operated their stores.
* My father’s first cousin (female – Chinese-American born in New York) married a China-born man who was a Colonel in the US Army. 1960-1962 he was stationed at an Army base in, would you believe, my mother’s hometown in Alabama. So, I have Chinese-American cousins on my father’s side who went to the same Junior High School as my mother.
They were living there during the Freedom Rides.
Anyhow, I asked my cousins about their experience of being Asian-American in the South while there was still segregation (I was too young to remember). Before, they had lived in Washington, DC and New York, so segregation was new to them.
My cousin told me she and her sisters were very thirsty one hot summer and they approached the water fountains marked “colored” and “white”. They did not know which ones to use, and they were thirsty, so one went to one and one went to the other. A policeman walked up and tapped them on the shoulder and instructed them to use the white water fountain only.
Another time, she went to see a movie with her schoolmate and when they entered the cinema, she wanted to go sit upstairs, and her school friend told her NO, Upstairs was for “THEM”. They had to sit downstairs.
I could imagine that in the early 60s, whites would have been very angry if any Asian-American tried to use the colored facilities, as it was during the peak of white anger and violence towards anyone trying to desegregate public facilities. So, that story is probably true.
There were 2 other Chinese-American families in the town, one ran a restaurant and the other was a doctor. It turns out that (“white”) Grandmother visited the same Chinese-American doctor as my father’s cousin did in that Alabama town.
Still, my mother and father could not sleep together in the same hotel room in that town, and when my father came down there in the early 1960s, my mother stayed with her parents and my father stayed in a hotel. He could not stay in the same house with his wife. There were certain colour lines that you could not cross.
–
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My family line hails from Indianola, MS. and my great-grandfather was half Chinese. His father had come early on from working the railroad tracks out west. My paternal grandfather worked in one of the Chinese groceries as a boy and learned to speak some Cantonese. An interesting read is “Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton” by John Jung whom I had contacted to help trace my Chinese ancestry.
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@dorisjean23,
Thanks for sharing some of your family story. John Jung has been scavenging all sorts of information about the settlement of Chinese in the U.S. Deep South & is one of the best resources out there.
It sounds like you are descendant of one of the original Chinese plantation workers in Mississippi. Or did your great great grandfather go straight into opening a grocery (post-reconstruction)? I am glad that Abagond let me introduce a piece of this US history to his readers. Both of my father’s older sisters (my Aunts) married grocers in Greenwood and most of my cousins grew up there.
A plantation owner in Indianola is famous (unfortunately) for creating the White Citizens Council mentioned above.
Did your paternal grandfather retain his Chinese surname? Is your grandfather or any of your grandfather’s siblings still alive? They might remember their Chinese grandfather. They must also have grown up with B. B. King too. Have you been back to visit?
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Hi jefe – Yes this great grandfather retained the Chinese surname of Toy. None of his siblings I know of are alive and I have not tracked down any cousins as yet. I am still researching census records and found my great grandfather as a young boy, living in Mississippi from a 1920 census. I still haven’t tracked down his Chinese father yet and I don’t believe his father was a grocer, but you are right he may have been a plantation worker. I am going to look up that plantation owner you mentioned, Would you happen to know his name?
I don’t think any of my kin grew up with the honorable B, B. King.
jefe, you have given me a good lead!
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Hi dorisjean23,
Was just wondering if you had any idea how your great-grandfather’s father entered Mississippi in the first place.
If your great-grandfather was a boy in 1920, then it seems unlikely that his father worked on the transcontinental railroad in the West, at least during the transcontinental period (1861-1869). Assuming your great-grandfather was born about 1910, then his father would have to be born around 1855-1885, probably not old enough to work on the railroad, but certainly old enough to enter the USA before the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882).
If your great grandfather had been born by 1900, then it would have been much more possible that his father worked on the railroad.
Chinese plantation workers were imported to the South, including the Mississippi Delta between 1869-1882. Your great great grandfather may have been old enough to be part of that group.
Or maybe there is another scenario (that I have read about and which is consistent with the case of my great uncle), e.g.,
– Your great grandfather’s grandfather came to work on the railroad as a young man in the mid-1860s, leaving a young toddler son back in China. When the railroad completed, he went back to China in 1870 to father more children, and to go get his son (your great grandfather’s father) which may have been old enough (ie, young teens) to enter as a labourer in the mid-1870s. They may have gone straight to Mississippi.
If your great-grandfather’s Chinese father was NOT a grocer, what could he have done in Mississippi before 1920? Well over 90% became grocers. There was little occupational choice for them. I didn’t read about any Chinese plantation workers in Mississippi past mid 1880s (but maybe John Jung knows more).
Your great-grandfather and even your grandfather should be able to remember when they had tri-partite racial segregation systems in the schools (1930-1950). Indianola was a bigger town then, so probably had a Chinese school serving Sunflower County.
If he entered before the Chinese Exclusion Act, he might have been able to enter using his actual family surname. That is unlike those who entered after the Chinese Exclusion Act, esp. after the 1906 Earthquake (ie, 1907-1943, even up to 1965) who entered the USA on false paper names.
The founder of the White Citizens Council was plantation owner Robert B. Patterson of Indianola. However, I read conflicting reports that the WCC was started in Greenwood or Indianola. You can easily find more information in Wikipedia, or in the links above.
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Just thinking a little further …
IF your grandfather had the surname Toy and his father was born in the USA (meaning that his father was in the USA before he was born), then that tells you some things itself.
– There is a high possibility that it is his original surname. Most (not all) Chinese who came to the USA after 1906 and before 1965 used paper names to get around the Exclusion Act (1882-1943) or the very strict quotas after being repealed (1943-1965).
– “Toy” is a fairly common surname and was the Sze-yap regional dialect pronunciation of the surname “蔡” in Chinese (Which is written as Choy/Choi/Tsoi in standard Cantonese or Cai / Tsai for Mandarin speakers or Chua for Hokkien speakers).
– 90% of 19th century US immigrants from China came from 2 counties in the Sze Yap (ie, 四邑 or “4 district”) region of Guangdong province, namely Taishan (台山, pronounced Toishan in standard Cantonese or Hoisaan in the local dialect), or Kaiping (開平, pronounced Hoiping in both standard Cantonese and the local dialect). Taishan changed its name at the beginning of the 20th century and was previously known as “Xinning” (新寧, pronounced Sunning in standard Cantonese or Hsin – nen in the local dialect). That would help you narrow down which counties in Guangdong Province your ancestor was probably from.
– The Toy family association (say in SF or NY) may be of great help. They probably can pinpoint which villages in China most of the Toys in the USA came from. If you recall from another thread, Paula Madison, an African American woman in New York City traced the home village of her grandfather and finally met up with her Jamaican-born Aunts and uncles and other cousins in China and brought her family over to know them. She got help from the Hakka Association in Toronto, but at least you have somewhere else to do some research.
– People like John Jung might have done some research already on the Toy family in Mississippi
– You might want to contact James W. Loewen, who wrote the book “The Mississippi Chinese: Between White and Black” published in 1971 (republished in 1988). He is still alive and working at the University of Vermont and has been referenced many times on this blog. He himself even posted a comment in the Sundown Towns post in this blog. He is no longer actively researching the history of the ethnic Chinese in Mississippi, but he DID research a lot in the late 1960s for his doctoral dissertation. In that, he interviewed many Black-Chinese families across many of the towns that were still there in the 60s, including Indianola. He may still have notes. This is something that John Jung has not done as much research on.
– The Delta Chinese Association has an annual reunion meeting in Clarksdale, MS. The next one is in October 2014. Collectively, they might be able to access information about your family. John Jung is attending that.
You are lucky, in a sense, since your great-grandfather retained his father’s surname and you have this family narrative to go on. There are probably hundreds of thousands of black and white Americans (or others who don’t identify as Chinese) whose 19th century Chinese ancestry has been lost or forgotten or replaced with a different narrative.
Perhaps not as fortunately, as mentioned above, many of the Chinese families felt forced to distance themselves from the mixed / part-black Chinese families in the 1920s-1940s. This probably caused some of the family narratives to split apart.
Whatever the case, if you pursue this research further, your experience might serve as an inspiration and help others who might be interested in learning about their own family history.
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Dear jefe. this information is enlightening and inspiring to me and I thank you so much for this precious information. As an African American it is often difficult tracing various parts of the family tree. Looking for an enslaved African ancestor is hard for us at best let alone an Asian ancestor which I found at first to be incredulous. And there are all sorts of twists and turns with this Asian ancestor, because his wife, my great great grandmother was Cherokee. I have had to go to many diverse records trying to track these individuals and it often gets confusing. My grandmother, his daughter has passed on and my mom and I her trying to piece things together. With the accurate time line you are giving me I should be able pin point him more accurately in the records. Also with the variations of Toy I can also dig deeper into the research. I may need to look more closely at the Cherokee woman he married because somehow she along with her mother had left Oklahoma to return to the South, and the Chinese husband was NOT listed on that 1920 census.
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The Census records and birth records are NOT accurate as census takers reclassified people to fit social norms at the time. Even my birth certificate is wrong.
Cherokees are mostly from further East (from Southern Appalachia), not mississippi. But of course many were relocated to Oklahoma in the Trail of Tears. Did your great great grandfather meet his wife in Oklahoma or Mississippi? Did he bring her to Mississippi, or did she come first with her mother before meeting him? So, your great-grandfather who was half Chinese was not part African?
You have a tremendous challenge with African, European, Native American and Chinese ancestors in the USA, but I hope when you do find what you are looking for that you share it with others. People may be interested to learn about your journey.
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It is indeed touching to read the history of Chinese in Mississippi centuries ago. I, as a Chinese from China, moved to MS in 2005, 40 years after they left. Same land, but different world.
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@Dayong Sun
Not really that long ago (not centuries, at least) – many of the students that attended segregated Chinese schools in Mississippi are still alive today. Some of their descendants still live there and a few even operate grocery stores. They erected the historical marker in 2012 for the school featured in this post and many of the students who attended the school also attended that ceremony.
There is a Mississippi Delta Chinese Heritage Museum in Cleveland, MS. You should visit it:
(http://www.deltastate.edu/academics/libraries/university-archives-museum/ms-delta-chinese-heritage/)
There was also a reunion event for the Mississippi Delta Chinese just two months ago in Cleveland.
(http://mississippideltachinese.webs.com/apps/blog/show/42500939-ms-delta-chinese-heritage-reunion-oct-24-25-2014)
I am sure if you look around, you can find out about the 150 year history of the Chinese in Mississippi. It is good that there are some people there still trying to preserve that history and heritage.
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Found an online summary analysis of the relationships between Chinese and whites and Blacks in the Mississippi Delta during Jim Crow:
Race Relations in The Delta During the Jim Crow Law Era
“Excerpts from “Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton,” Chapter 7 ”
http://mississippideltachinese.webs.com/racerelations.htm
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As a Chinese American who will take a job in Jackson, MS, I am saddened by this piece of history. Still, hope remains.
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http://mississippideltachinese.webs.com/racerelations.htm
This is an excellent link jefe! Thanks.
Kiwi must be spinning in his dark vampire’s coffin! lol
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An interesting interview with a man who grew up in segregation in Mississippi and how he came to terms with it in retirement.
Stan Lou: Journey to Becoming Chinese American
Stan Lou, who grew up in the 1940’s-50’s in Mississippi, relates overcoming obstacles to full acceptance of his identity as a Chinese American.
https://storycorps.me/interviews/stan-lou-journey-to-becoming-chinese-american/
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[…] economic success—for instance, the quicker social mobility of Asian-American former sharecroppers compared to southern blacks in the late nineteenth century led to resentment predicated upon this […]
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From the post above:
Cleveland, Mississippi made the national news this past week over school integration.
In 2016, the school district was ordered (again) to integrate their schools (62 years after Brown v. Board).
In 2016-2017, a black student earned the highest GPA, but the school required that she share the title with a white student with a lower GPA.
The parents are suing the school district.
Cleveland, Mississippi is also on record from taking valedictorian titles from Chinese students in the 1950s after the white schools first started to admit them.
Mississippi School Gets First Black Valedictorian, With an Asterisk
https://www.courthousenews.com/mom-says-mississippi-school-couldnt-stomach-first-black-valedictorian/
Black valedictorian forced to share honor with white student, lawsuit says
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/03/us/cleveland-mississippi-student-valedictorian-lawsuit/index.html
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This essay discusses how Chinese dealt with the remains of the deceased in the Jim Crow South.
To Live and Die in the South: The Chinese Story
by JOHN JUNG
http://southwritlarge.com/articles/to-live-and-die-in-the-south-the-chinese-story/
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This video has been circulating a lot lately on social networks – I have seen dozens of people sharing it, so I will share it here.
(https://youtu.be/2NMrqGHr5zE)
The Untold Story Of America’s Southern Chinese
There’s a rather unknown community of Chinese-Americans who’ve lived in the Mississippi Delta for more than a hundred years. They played an important role in the segregated South in the middle of the 20th century. Join us as we get a taste of Southern Chinese food and learn about the unique history of the Delta Chinese.
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@ Jefe
Great video, thanks!
At one point they mentioned the families lived in the back of the grocery stores because the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited Chinese from owning property. Wouldn’t this also mean that they couldn’t own the stores, either? Until the end of the Exclusion act, were all the Chinese grocers renting their stores and forbidden to purchase the buildings and land outright?
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@Solitaire,
I believe that it might be somewhat misleading to say that the Chinese Exclusion Act itself prevented Chinese from owning property. The Chinese Exclusion Act prevented immigrants from naturalizing (ie, permanent aliens ineligible for citizenship) and Alien Land Laws did the rest.
After US v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), their US born kids could theoretically own property and some parents might have put the property in their kids’ names. Still, this would not be able to circumvent the restrictive convenants which inserted racial exclusions into deeds.
I think this may be one explanation why many lived in the stores. They rented the store and lived in it as it was difficult to find housing otherwise. The stores were likely not classified as colored or white (unlike residential houses).
After the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed, I think many owned their stores or their houses. I believe my Aunts’ families owned theirs, but they settled there towards the end of WWII. My cousins from my eldest aunt told me that their store and their house was in the black neighborhood, but my 2nd aunt’s family had their store on a commercial street (patronized by both blacks and whites) and they lived in a house not classified as colored or white (one of those neutral areas).
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@ Jefe
Thanks for the reply; that was very informative.
Early in the video, one person mentioned that their family owned two stores across the street from each other, one of which catered to whites and the other for blacks. It would have been interesting to know which store the family lived in. Or it might have been the case that they had family members living in both stores.
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Interesting interview with E. Samantha Cheng and the documentary she produced two years ago about the Chinese in the Mississippi Delta and her documentary, “Honor and Duty: The Mississippi Delta Chinese” which also includes many of the stories of the men who served in the US forces during WWII.
There are many photos from the schools and churches during the Jim Crow period.
E. Samantha Cheng: Discovering the Mississippi Delta Chinese Legacy
(https://youtu.be/Pkn_YrEbtMM)
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I read about this photographer last year, but it seems CNN has another profile on his work.
The desexualization of the Asian American male
https://us.cnn.com/style/article/andrew-kung-asian-american-men/index.html
His story falls into two parts.
One is about the photographic odyssey he did about “The Mississippi Delta Chinese” .
Part two explores the two extremes of stereotyping of Asian Americans, ie, fetishization for females and desexualization for males.
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Oh yes. I explored my Chinese American ancestors in Mississippi and was pleasantly surprised how they opened up corner stores in the backwoods of Indianola to the sharecroppers and took black and Native American women for wives
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@dorisjean23
I am still looking forward (one day) to complete a novel that involves the story of a Chinese grocery store owner and a black woman who fall in love with each other during Jim Crow in Mississippi as a backdrop to the civil rights movement in the US. I hope that I could learn more of your personal story one day for some more background.
When we learn about race relations in the USA, it is almost entirely about the relationship between white people and everyone else. What do we learn about the relationship and interplay among Asians, Natives, Blacks and Chicanos? I guess it is something white history book writers have no interest in, but the stories at least need to be told.
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I eagerly await such a long overdue book to give a voice to our history. Right now this “melting pot” of a nation ignore how it got this way and they need to know our stories.Another reason I look forward to it is I am greedy for the research you will dig up – I am willing to contribute towards it (financially) and whatever more help may be needed. Please let me know Jefe. thank you!
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Black Women’s History (Kissing the Asian Guy): Chinese and African American Marriages in the Mississippi Delta
https://www.beyondblackwhite.com/36184/?fbclid=IwAR3aYYJGXgbvVFnzwOz1IC9zX3vnzE2-5cCzRHbcgyVmDHNav6QCqUakjG0
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