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

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Berard, Adrienne, author.

Contributor:

ProQuest ebook central.

Clarence J. Marshall Memorial Library Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lum, Martha--Trials, litigation, etc.

Lum, Martha.

Chinese Americans--Civil rights.

History.

Chinese Americans.

Segregation in education--Law and legislation.

Rosedale (Miss.)--Trials, litigation, etc.

Rosedale (Miss.).

Segregation in education--Law and legislation--Louisiana--Mississippi River Delta--History--20th century.

Segregation in education.

Chinese Americans--Civil rights--Louisiana--Mississippi River Delta--History--20th century.

Louisiana--Mississippi River Delta.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Boston : Beacon Press, 2016.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

A generation before Brown v. Board of Education struck down America's "separate but equal" doctrine, one Chinese family and an eccentric Mississippi lawyer fought for desegregation in one of the greatest legal battles never told On September 15, 1924, Martha Lum and her older sister Berda were barred from attending middle school in Rosedale, Mississippi. The girls were Chinese American and considered by the school to be "colored"; the school was for whites. This event would lead to the first US Supreme Court case to challenge the constitutionality of racial segregation in Southern public schools, an astonishing thirty years before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. Unearthing one of the greatest stories never told, journalist Adrienne Berard recounts how three unlikely heroes sought to shape a new South. A poor immigrant from southern China, Jeu Gong Lum came to America with the hope of a better future for his family. Unassuming yet boldly determined, his daughter Martha would inhabit that future and become the face of the fight to integrate schools. Earl Brewer, their lawyer and staunch ally, was once a millionaire and governor of Mississippi. When he took the family's case, Brewer was both bankrupt and a political pariah--a man with nothing left to lose. By confronting the "separate but equal" doctrine, the Lum family fought for the right to educate Chinese Americans in the white schools of the Jim Crow South. Using their groundbreaking lawsuit as a compass, Berard depicts the complicated condition of racial otherness in rural Southern society. In a sweeping narrative that is both epic and intimate, Water Tossing Boulders evokes a time and place previously defined by black and white, a time and place that, until now, has never been viewed through the eyes of a forgotten third race. In vivid prose, the Mississippi Delta, an empire of cotton and a bastion of slavery, is reimagined to reveal the experiences of a lost immigrant community. Through extensive research in historical documents and family correspondence, Berard illuminates a vital, forgotten chapter of America's past and uncovers the powerful journey of an oppressed people in their struggle for equality.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI Available via World Wide Web.

Print version record and CIP data provided by publisher.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Clarence J. Marshall Memorial Library Fund.

Other Format:

Print version: Berard, Adrienne. Water tossing boulders.

ISBN:

9780807033548

0807033545

Publisher Number:

99988462164

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.