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Water Tossing Boulders

Page 24

by Adrienne Berard


  Moreau v. Grandich, 106–7

  mui tsai (Chinese slave), 114, 171n143

  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 44, 127, 144. See also Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

  National Labor Congress, 25

  nativism, Anglo-Saxon, institutionalization of, 59

  “Negro”: as classification, 5, 62, 103, 105, 162n77; use of term, xiii. See also African Americans

  New Alcazar Hotel, Clarksdale, Mississippi, 81

  New York Times: on Brewer’s Senate race, 69; on importation of low-paid Chinese laborers, 24–25

  Ng Fung Ho v. White, 134

  Nicholas, Grover C., 118

  Nicholas, Thomas, 122

  night riders, 59–60

  Nutt, J. H., 5, 59, 61, 88

  Oberst, Rosa and Mollie, 3–4

  Pacific Mail Steamship Company, 17–18

  Parchman prison farm, 75, 77. See also convict leasing

  Patton, Charley, 44

  Peabody College for Teachers, Nashville, 82

  “Pea Vine Blues” (Patton), 44

  Percy, LeRoy, 33

  Percy, William Alexander, 23

  Pi-Kan, and the story of the Lum name, 60–61

  Pittsburgh Courier: on Gong Lum v. Rice ruling, 139; and the migration of African Americans to the North, 43

  Pittsburgh Gazette, 85

  plantation society/planters: impact of railroad on, 36; impacts of industrialization, 37; need for cheap labor, 31–32; nostalgia for, 40–41; rigidity of, 27, 36–37

  Plessy v. Ferguson, 131, 137–38

  Plummer, L. T., 9–10

  Poland, immigrants from, 58

  Priestly, William, 2

  prison-labor system. See convict leasing

  Prohibition, 3

  public schools: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, 145–46; for Chinese students, 141–42; integrated, fears about, 98; and school board’s determination of race, 106, 168n122; and school attendance as a right, 88–89; segregated, Supreme Court’s upholding of, 137–38; white, exclusion of Chinese from, 1–2, 54–55, 99, 103, 141, 162n77

  racial purity: and the Chinese Exclusion Act, 19; and defining citizenship, 103–5; and homogenous Anglo-Saxon identity, 20–21, 56; and quota systems, 56. See also Fourteenth Amendment; white supremacy

  Radjesky, Jake, 47

  railroads: and convict leasing, 73–74; and industrialization, 26–27, 35–37, 43–44; as social dividers, xi, 6; use of, in smuggling, 16. See also Great Migration

  Ralph, Julian (“The Chinese Leak”), 18

  Reconstruction, 84–85, 97

  Red Clay Hills, Mississippi, 54

  Reed, David, 56, 58–59

  Reed, James, 58

  Rice, Greek P., Jr., 93, 172n150

  Rice, Greek P., Sr., 90

  Rice v. Gong Lum, arguments and strategy, 69, 83, 90, 93, 103–7; demurrer filed by school board, 99–102. See also Gong Lum v. Rice

  Richardson, Edmund, 35–36

  Richardson, James, 35–36

  River and Harbor Act, 1882, 71–72

  Roberson, Frank, 162n77

  Roberts, William Beauregard, 4, 60

  Rock Springs Massacre, Wyoming, 1885, 20

  Rosedale, Mississippi: Bruce Street, 2–3, 52–53; described, 1–4, 52–54; Episcopal church in, 4; Lum family move to, 47, 51–53; Chinese public school in, 141–42; schools for African American children, 2–3;

  Rosedale Compress Company, 2

  Rosedale Consolidated School: accreditation, 5, 55, 170n138; attendance of county children, 5, 54–55; barring of Chinese children, 5–6, 59; class photo, 55; creation, 4; first day of school preparations, 1, 5, 59; regional pride in, 54

  Rosedale school board: authority given by Mississippi Supreme Court, 106–7; classification of Chinese as “colored,” 5, 59, 99–100; Sillers’ participation on, 54. See also Gong Lum v. Rice; Rice v. Gong Lum

  Sales, Miss, 109

  Scharmer, George, 32

  schools. See public schools

  Scott Plantation, Mississippi, 53–54

  Section 207, Mississippi Constitution, 99, 102–3, 130

  segregation: and Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, 144–45; continuation of, in the Mississippi Delta, xi; and exodus of Chinese immigrants, 141; goals, 103; in public education, Supreme Court’s upholding of, 131–32, 137–38; and white privilege, in Flowers’s argument, 130. See also white supremacy

  Seigel, Phillip, 78–79

  “separate but equal” concept, 138, 145–46

  sharecroppers, black: exodus to North during World War I, 43; as a new consumer market, 33; replacement with poor white farmers, 54–55; Sunday shopping, 34; tactics to prevent migration to North, 44–45; yearly economic cycle, 39

  Sharp, Elmer Clinton, 102–3

  Shaw, Nate, 45

  Sillers, (Mrs.) Walter, Sr., 54

  Sillers, Walter, Jr., 48, 54–55, 60

  Sillers, Walter, Sr., 48

  slaves, slave labor: African slave trade, 24, efforts to replace with Chinese “coolies,” 24–26; and the Fourteenth Amendment, 84–85; importance in the Mississippi Delta, 23

  Smith, C. C., 75

  Smith, Sidney McCain, 101

  smugglers, human traffickers, 14–15, 17

  social equality, 43–44. See also plantation society/planters; segregation

  Spaulding, O. L., 18

  states’ rights: and the Fourteenth Amendment, 133; and upholding of segregated public schools, 137–38

  Station for Experimental Evolution, Cold Spring Harbor, New York, 21

  Stevens, Thaddeus, 84

  Street, James Howell, 118

  Stubblefield, Mr., 77

  Sunflower County, Mississippi: levee system, 72; state-run penal farm, 75

  Sun Wui, China, 11–14

  Taft, William Howard, 132, 137–38

  Talisman Theater, Rosedale, Mississippi, 3

  Thomas, Thomas, 15

  Traynham, James/Traynham Plantation, Mississippi, 118, 122

  US-Canadian border, human trafficking across, 14–16, 18–19

  US Supreme Court: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 143–45; Brown v. Mississippi, 127–28; Plessy v. Ferguson, 131, 137–38; physical relocation, 132. See also Gong Lum v. Rice

  Vagrancy Act, 73–74

  Vancouver Daily World, on human smugglers, 14

  Vardaman, James Kimball, 74–75

  Vick, Macon, 116

  Wabash, Arkansas, Lum family move to, 140, 143

  Washburne, Elihu, 97

  Washington Post, on the Chinese problem, 26

  Weekly Delta, 97

  white supremacy: appeals to poor white farmers, 54–55; Black Codes, 73–74; and definition of the Caucasian/white race, 61, 103; and the murder of African Americans, 126; and nostalgia for antebellum South, 23–24; scientific support for, 21. See also Ku Klux Klan (KKK); lynching; plantation society/planters; segregation; yeoman farmers

  Wiggins, Mississippi, 82–83

  Wildcat Society, 126

  William J. Burns Detective Agency, 76–77

  Wilson, Julian, 72

  Wilson, Woodrow, 133

  Wolfe, Rae (Miss Rae), 4

  Woman Voter, 167–68n110

  Wong, Alex, 49

  Wong, Ben and Susie, 49

  Wong, Don Chuck Tai, 47, 49

  Wong, Katherine (Hang Toy Wong). See Lum, Katherine Wong

  Wong, Lung Jin Foon, 49

  Woodruff, Nan Elizabeth, 44

  “Work or Fight” order, 45

  writ of mandamus, 83

  Yanner, John, 16

  Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad 35–36, 63

  Yazoo-Mississippi Delta. See Mississippi Delta

  yeoman farmers: millworkers, 37; replacement of sharecroppers with, 54–55; and segregated public schools, 1–2, 54–55

  Young, J. K., 26–27, 136

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ADRIENNE BERARD is an award-winning jour
nalist and graduate of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. She has been the writer-in-residence at Delta State University in Mississippi and now resides in Williamsburg, Virginia.

  BEACON PRESS

  Boston, Massachusetts

  www.beacon.org

  Beacon Press books

  are published under the auspices of

  the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

  © 2016 by Adrienne Berard

  All rights reserved

  Text design and composition by Kim Arney

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Berard, Adrienne, author.

  Title: Water tossing boulders : how a family of Chinese immigrants led the first fight to desegregate schools in the Jim Crow South / Adrienne Berard.

  Description: Boston : Beacon Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015049943 (print) | LCCN 2016012491 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-8070-3353-1 (hardback) | ISBN 978-0-8070-3354-8 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Lum, Martha—Trials, litigation, etc. | Rosedale (Miss.)—Trials, litigation, etc. | Segregation in education—Law and legislation—Louisiana—Mississippi River Delta—History—20th century. | Chinese Americans—Civil rights—Louisiana—Mississippi River Delta—History—20th century. | BISAC: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Discrimination & Race Relations. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / Asian American Studies. | HISTORY / United States / State & Local / South (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV).

  Classification: LCC KF228.L86 B47 2016 (print) | LCC KF228.L86 (ebook) | DDC 344.73/0798—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015049943

 

 

 


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