Water Tossing Boulders

by Adrienne Berard

  After making their arguments, the lawyers told Franklin that all he could do was wait. They were under the assumption that the Supreme Court would not hand down a decision until the end of its term in June.

  On the afternoon of May 17, 1954, Franklin received a call to his office at Howard. His wife, Aurelia, a librarian at a local public high school, was on the line.

  “Have you heard what the decision is?” she asked.

  “No,” Franklin replied.

  “Well, the Supreme Court handed down its decision today.”

  “What was the decision?”

  “Linda Brown can go to an integrated school in Topeka, Kansas.”

  Franklin froze. Hearing the words of Chief Justice Earl Warren, he was overcome with disbelief. “We conclude,” read the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision, “that in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.”

  The professor hung up the telephone and stood at his desk. Then, as if moved by a higher power, he walked out of the university and into the street. Along the crowded blocks of row houses, the students, the people, were dancing. For a lifetime, Franklin would hold on to that moment.

  “We felt,” Franklin said, recalling the memory, “that maybe the long and hard work in which we had been engaged was worthwhile.”

  AFTERWORD

  EARL BREWER WOULD NOT live to see his words cited in the briefs for Brown v. Board of Education. He never witnessed Thurgood Marshall use the equal protection clause, as he once had, to win a verdict that would call for the end of state-sponsored segregation. On March 10, 1942, Brewer died at a hospital in Jackson. His wife and youngest daughter were by his side. The next day, his body was laid in state under the dome of the Mississippi Capitol. Citizens throughout the South came to pay their respects to the former governor. Brewer is buried beside his mother at Oakridge Cemetery in Clarksdale, the town in which he drafted his greatest case.

  Martha and Berda Lum graduated from high school during the height of the Great Depression in 1933. Following graduation, Martha enrolled in a teacher’s program at Arkansas State University. By 1934 she could no longer afford her tuition and dropped out of college to help her parents at the grocery in Wabash. When the United States entered World War II, Berda and Martha moved west. The sisters joined a growing number of women who secured manufacturing jobs during the war. Berda and Martha found work building bombers for the Douglas Aircraft Company in Long Beach, California.

  After graduating high school, Biscoe found a job at a grocery in Marianna, Arkansas. On October 16, 1940, he registered with the local draft board and entered the service after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Biscoe served overseas as an army medic throughout the course of the war. In the fall of 1943, he was transferred to China, where he worked at a field hospital in western Yunnan Province. He wrote nearly every day to his father and mother from their native country.

  At the end of the war, Katherine drove from Arkansas to Houston, Texas, to stay with her daughter Berda, whose husband had recently earned a degree in architecture from the city’s Rice Institute. Jeu Gong soon sold the store in Wabash and followed his wife to Houston. There they opened a grocery and purchased a home at 508 Milwaukee Street. Martha moved into the house and married Henry Gee, who worked as a butcher at the family store. Together they had two children and spent the rest of their lives in Houston. Berda and her husband, Charles Chan, raised two daughters and a son in Houston. Biscoe returned from war and joined the postal service in Houston. He married and had three daughters. Jeu Gong died of cancer in the summer of 1965. Katherine followed him in 1988. They lived long enough to send their grandchildren to the nation’s first generation of integrated schools.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THIS BOOK WOULD NOT have been possible without the support of a staggering number of people. I will begin by thanking the Lum family for their gracious support throughout the entire process. They opened up their homes, dinner tables, and churches to me. This work is a testament to their kindness. I also wish to thank Minnie and Claudia Brewer. While neither woman lived to see her father represented in this light, their words and images are deeply present throughout the narrative. My research and writing was supported by multiple grants from the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, the Lynton Fellowship in Book Writing, the Mississippi Delta Chinese Heritage Museum, the Mississippi Humanities Council, and the King’s Daughters and Sons Circle Number 2 of Greenville, Mississippi.

  A stalwart supporter from day one, Emily Jones, the archivist at Delta State University, allowed me to live in her guest room, dig mercilessly through her archives, and write from a makeshift den on the top floor of her office. She is a saint, as is her husband, Matt, for putting up with a journalist in the house. Other supporters from Delta State are Frieda Quon, Sally Paulson, Janet Horne, Laura Orsborn, Conor Bell, Whitney Carter, and Matthew Hancock. The Delta Chinese community was exceedingly helpful to me throughout my work on this project. I owe my gratitude to Dorothy Chow, Paul Wong, John Jung, and Bobby Joe Moon for their interest and help with the research.

  Sam Freedman has been in my corner since the book was only a seed of an idea. Without his guidance, it would not exist in this form today. My agent, Anna Ghosh, and editor, Gayatri Patnaik, patiently steered me through the writing of my first book. My mother and her parents shared with me their world of the Mississippi Delta. I have come to know and love them more than I could ever convey in print. There were dozens of librarians who guided me through the research. They are the unsung heroes of this profession. One in particular stands out, because I am lucky enough to spend my life with him. To Jesse Kelley I owe a world of gratitude.

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  (1) “Of all the kinds of people . . .” Chan and Gee, 1992; Morganti, “Recollections of Rosedale,” 11.

  (1) “Word had filtered back . . .” Minute Book H, Board of Supervisors, Bolivar County, June 1, 1924, p. 367, located at Bolivar County First District Courthouse; Walter Sillers Jr. to Mr. E. H. Green, Election Commissioner, Cleveland, MS, June 5, 1924, Walter Sillers Jr. Collection, Box 47, Folder 37A, Delta State University Archives, Cleveland, MS.

  (1) “The cotton market crash . . .” Lamar, History of Rosedale, 22.

  (2) “If the rumors were true . . .” Description based on photographs of Martha Lum, courtesy of Alvin Gee.

  (2) “Mornings had their own rhythm . . .” Lamar, History of Rosedale, 30; Morganti, “Recollections of Rosedale.”

  (2) “Next came the whistle for . . .” Sillers and Williams, History of Bolivar County, 203–9; Lamar, History of Rosedale, 33.

  (2) “Classes began at eight thirty . . .” “Notice,” Bolivar County Democrat, Rosedale, MS, September 6, 1924; “Schools Open Sept. 15th,” Cleveland Enterprise, Cleveland, MS, July 17, 1924; Walter Sillers Jr. to Walter Sillers Sr., Chicago, August 22, 1924, Walter Sillers Jr. Collection, Box 34, Folder 101, Delta State University Archives, Cleveland, MS.

  (2) “The more interesting route . . .” Sanborn Map Co., Rosedale, MS, 1918 and 1924.

  (3) “After crossing Bruce Street . . .” Sillers and Williams, History of Bolivar County, 343–45.

  (3) “At the end of Court Street . . .” Lamar, History of Rosedale, 98–100.

  (3) “The most famous . . .” Ibid., 106–12.

  (3) “Continuing north along . . .” “The Demise of an Old Movie Theater,” Bolivar Commercial, Cleveland, MS, October 9, 1975; Lamar, History of Rosedale, 38.

  (3) “Just past the Talisman . . .” Lamar, History of Rosedale, 34–35.

  (4) “A block and a half north . . .” US Dept. of the Interior, National Register of Historic Places Inventory, Grace Episcopal Church,
Rosedale, MS; Sillers and Williams, History of Bolivar County, 505–6.

  (4) “The new brick schoolhouse . . .” Sillers and Williams, History of Bolivar County, 353; Lamar, History of Rosedale, 51–53.

  (4) “At the beginning of every year . . .” Morganti, “Recollections of Rosedale,” 24.

  (4) “Martha’s name was always . . .” Chan and Gee, 1992; Eng and Eng, 2014; Eng et al., 2014.

  (5) “Before taking the position . . .” Lamar, History of Rosedale, 52.

  (5) “Out of the relatively diverse . . .” Chan and Gee, 1992; Transcript of Record with Supporting Pleadings, Gong Lum v. Rice, US Supreme Court, 275 US 78, The Making of Modern Law.

  (6) “Once safely inside the walls . . .” Chan and Gee, 1992.

  PART ONE

  (9) “Dear Sir . . .” H. E. Tippett, Chinese Inspector in Charge for Port of Detroit, to L. T. Plummer, Chinese Inspector in Charge for City of Chicago, March 31, 1904, Folder 1/81, General Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Record Group 85, National Archives and Records Administration for Great Lakes Region, Chicago.

  CHAPTER I

  (11) “A thin ray . . .” Anderson, “Detroit River”; Eng et al., 2014.

  (11) “A furious wind . . .” Chan and Gee, 1992; H. E. Tippett to L. T. Plummer, March 31, 1904; Vancouver Daily World, “Chinese Smuggled into the States,” August 19, 1907. Note: This article depicts what many immigrants experienced: “The four Chinamen had been landed in Vancouver two weeks ago and smuggled across the Detroit river, where they had remained in the bushes just below Detroit for twelve hours.”

  (11) “Jeu Gong waited for a signal . . .” Mann, Local Merchants, 127–33; Smith, Empress of China.

  (11) “The wait was with him . . .” A. E. Blake, “Trip Across Canada and the American Rockies,” Box 42, Folder 1, Chung Collection, University of British Columbia. Note: This is a handwritten travel diary of a journey taken in 1900 by Blake and H. A. Jamieson across Canada and to the United States, via the Canadian Pacific Railway. The diary includes 104 black-and-white photographs of their journey. Canadian Pacific Railway Company, The Highway to the Orient: Across the Prairies, Mountains and Rivers of Canada to Japan, China, Australasia, and the Sunny Isles of the Pacific, Montreal Litho Co. Ltd., 1906, Box 195, Folder 17–2, Chung Collection, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Note: Pamphlet advertising destinations and Canadian Pacific Railway Co. services in Canada; includes a map of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

  (12) “Just over the water . . .” Tippett to Plummer, March 31, 1904; Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, 110–12; Siu, Agents and Victims, 67–68, 81, 243.

  (12) “The waters Jeu Gong . . .” Siu, Agents and Victims, 20.

  (13) “Streams and tributaries . . .” Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, 105; Siu, Agents and Victims, 16, 28, 35; Thomas, A Trip on the West River, 26.

  (13) “The rivers carried flower . . .” Thomas, A Trip on the West River, 2, 4.

  (13) “There were the large junks . . .” Ibid., 5; Hsu, “Trading with Gold Mountain,” 24.

  (13) “Beside the large boats . . .” Thomas, A Trip on the West River, 28.

  (13) “There were the duck farmers . . .” Ibid., 12.

  (13) “On the riverbeds grew . . .” Ibid., 43, 60; Siu, Agents and Victims, 18.

  (14) “These were the waters . . .” Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, 108; Lee, “Defying Exclusion,” 5.

  (14) “Between 1882 and 1920 . . .” Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, 72, 93; Lee, “Enforcing the Borders,” 55–56.

  (14) “While less expensive . . .” “How Orientals Are Smuggled,” Vancouver Daily World.

  (14) “When Jeu Gong took his first step . . .” Siener, “Through the Back Door,” 45.

  (15) “Low-skilled laborers were not the only . . .” Ibid., 46.

  (15) “According to newspapers . . .” Ibid.

  (15) “Immigration inspectors were more likely . . .” Ibid., 50.

  (15) “Edward Baltz was a smuggler and inspector . . .” Ibid., 45; “Customs Official Caught Smuggling,” Manitoba Morning Free Press; “Smuggle Chinks into the States,” Fort Wayne Daily News; “Smuggle Chinese in Cold Storage,” Hawaiian Star.

  (16) “Such widespread corruption . . .” Siener, “Through the Back Door,” 38.

  (16) “In many cases, corrupt agents . . .” “Smuggle Chinese in Cold Storage,” Hawaiian Star.

  (16) “Crossing into the United States . . .” Lee, “Enforcing the Borders,” 59.

  (16) “Every act of legislation aimed . . .” Siener, “Through the Back Door,” 50.

  (17) “At the frontier along the shores . . .” Ibid., 43.

  (17) “A 1912 report . . .” Unnamed Chinese Inspector in Detroit to Unnamed Chinese Inspector in Montreal, February 29, 1912, Folder 19/11, General Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Record Group 85, National Archives and Records Administration for Great Lakes Region, Chicago.

  (17) “Hundreds of Chinese immigrants . . .” Siener, “Through the Back Door,” 44; “Smuggle Chinese in Cold Storage,” Hawaiian Star.

  (17) “Despite the risks . . .” Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, 33.

  (18) “The influx of Chinese immigrants . . .” Siener, “Through the Back Door,” 34; Ngai, The Lucky Ones, 136.

  (18) “That same year . . .” Lee, “Enforcing the Borders,” 66; Ritchie, American Journalists, 125.

  (18) “The prairie, the plains . . .” Ralph, “The Chinese Leak.”

  (18) “While exaggerated . . .” Lee, “Enforcing the Borders,” 74; Beaver, US International Borders.

  (18) “Policing the border . . .” Lee, “Enforcing the Borders,” 84–86.

  (19) “For the majority of Chinese immigrants . . .” “An Act to Execute Certain Treaty Stipulations Relating to the Chinese,” May 6, 1882, Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789–1996, General Records of the US Government, Record Group 11, National Archives, Washington, DC.

  (19) “The act effectively halted . . .” Siener, “Through the Back Door,” 37; Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, 65.

  (19) “The sole voice in opposition . . .” Gold, Forbidden Citizens, 63–66, 95–111, 124–27, 202, 386; Daniels, Coming to America, 271.

  (19) “Hoar’s remarks fell . . .” Lee, “Enforcing the Borders.”

  (20) “Jeu Gong was crossing . . .” Daniels, Not Like Us, 48.

  (20) “In the year following . . .” Daniels, Coming to America, 274.

  (20) “In 1891 eleven Italian immigrants . . .” Jaret, “Troubled by Newcomers,” 15.

  (21) “As Jeu Gong set out for Gam Saan . . .” National Park Service, “The Immigrant’s Statue.”

  (21) “Some thirty miles east . . .” Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, “CIW Station”; Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, “Eugenics Record Office”; Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color, 78.

  (21) “In the forested fringes . . .” Yee, Poon, and Chan, 2013.

  (21) “Once in Chicago . . .” Bing, “To Stand Alone”; Eng et al., 2014; Chan and Gee, 1992; Yee, 2012; Poon, 2012.

  (22) “A city was too risky . . .” Chan and Gee, 1992.

  (23) “An alluvial plain . . .” Cobb, The Most Southern Place on Earth, 4.

  (23) “With slightly over 50 percent . . .” Ibid., 5; Percy, Lanterns on the Levee, 3–4.

  (23) “The Delta was settled . . .” Cobb, The Most Southern Place on Earth, 8.

  (24) “At the dawn of the nineteenth century . . .” Daniels, Coming to America, 240.

  (24) “The so-called ‘coolie’ market . . .” Pfaelzer, Driven Out, 26.

  (24) “‘It was a brutal . . .’” Ibid., 26; Daniels, Coming to America, 240.

  (24) “Following the Civil War . . .” Krebs, “The Memphis Chinese Labor Convention”; Commons, A Documentary History, 80–88.

  (24) “On June 22, 1869 . . .” Krebs, “The Memphis Chinese Labor Convention”; Cohen, Chinese in the Post–Civil War South, 67.

  (24) “Isham Green Harris, a lawyer . . .” Cohen, Chinese in the Post–Civil War South,
67; Gyory, Closing the Gate, 33.

  (25) “‘A number of Chinamen . . .’” “Minor Topica,” New York Times, July 13, 1869.

  (25) “The notion of introducing . . .” Gyory, Closing the Gate, 36; “National Labor Conference: First Day’s Proceedings,” New-York Tribune, August 17, 1869.

  (25) “Despite such concerns . . .” Cohen, Chinese in the Post–Civil War South, 68, 82; Gyory, Closing the Gate, 33.

  (25) “As increasing numbers of Chinese . . .” Cohen, Chinese in the Post–Civil War South, 100; Loewen, The Mississippi Chinese, 2–4, 26

  (25) “Fleeing the plantation . . .” Ibid., 83.

  (26) “‘When the paroxysm of humanitarianism . . .’” “Chinese Immigration,” Washington Post, November 14, 1905.

  (26) “With the help of his relative . . .” Chan and Gee, 1992; Eng et al., 2014.

  (26) “In his new life . . .” Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, 154.

  (26) “J.K. Young ran a Chinese grocery . . .” Paul Wong to Adrienne Berard, October 29, 2013, e-mail describing old friend J. K. Young, photographs included. US Bureau of the Census, Census for 1910.

  (27) “A self-taught scholar . . .” Wong to Berard, October 29, 2013; Shepherd, The Chinese of Greenville, 4–5.

  (27) “It was the language . . .” Headlines pulled from Associated Press, “Disloyal Troops Murder Hundreds in Cities of China,” October 12, 1911.

  (27) “Even as the old country . . .” Loewen, The Mississippi Chinese, 74–81.

  (27) “Like every other immigrant group . . .” Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color, 8–10.

  (28) “There was talk of a servant . . .” Chan and Gee, 1992; Yee, Poon, and Chan, 2013; Certificate of Birth for Berda Beadel Lum, October 22, 1913, Records of the State of Mississippi, State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics; Application for Status as Permanent Resident for Katherine Toy Lum, September 3, 1972, Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, US Department of Justice; Deposition of Wong Hang Toy, Case Number 2244, Chinese Exclusion Acts Case Files, 1895–1943, Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Record Group 85, National Archives, Seattle; Passenger Arrival Record for Hang Toy Wong, September 22, 1906, in Portal, ND, on Canadian Pacific Railway to Gunnison, MS, Record of Chinese Passenger Arrivals, 1903–44, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Seattle District, Chinese Passenger Arrival and Disposition Volumes, 1903–44, ARC: 646080, vol. 41, Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Record Group 85, National Archives, Seattle.