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 Through extensive research in historical documents and family correspondence, Berard illuminates a vital, forgotten chapter of America’s past and uncovers the powerful journey of an oppressed people in their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. - (Random House, Inc.)
Adrienne Berard is an award-winning journalist 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. - (Random House, Inc.)
Booklist Reviews
Thirty years before Brown v. Board of Education struck down segregation in public schools, a Chinese American family in the Mississippi Delta fought to continue their daughter's education. On September 15, 1924, Rosedale School's principal banned nine-and-a-half-year-old, straight-A student Martha Lum and her older sister from school because of their "colored" Chinese ancestry. The Lum family decided to fight, and their lawsuit became "the first U.S. Supreme Court case to challenge the constitutionality of segregation in Southern public schools." Filed by former Mississippi Governor Earl Brewer, the case took on a Southern gothic-like legal cast, ending with twenty-seventh president-turned-chief justice William Taft writing the final decision. Although the writing is a bit uneven, with clumsy attempts at florid language ("daughters of an ancient nation called China") and repetition in spite of the book's slim size, Berard's intention to "restore Gong Lum v. Rice to its rightful place in history" is undeniably noble. And the fact that the school district where the Lums filed suit remains segregated almost a century later is sobering proof of the book's significance. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
Library Journal Reviews
Berard (Love and War) makes mostly good on her intention to illuminate the lives of the Chinese immigrant Lum family who lodged an early desegregation effort in 1920s Mississippi. In the appeal to allow their daughter to continue her education among the white peers she matriculated with throughout her years at the local school, the family enlisted the help of former governor Earl Brewer. Brewer and the legal machinations of the family's efforts briefly overtake the narrative and readers may lose sight of the Lum family; however, they circle back into the spotlight at the end. Berard makes solid use of research materials, such as city directories, but more information on the Lums would have been helpful in presenting a fuller picture of family ambitions. The volume does provide a fresh perspective on what was left behind when so many African American citizens fled the South as part of the Great Migration. VERDICT Potentially useful for students of specifically Asian American or Southern history.—Jewell Anderson, Savannah Country Day Sch. Lib., GA. Copyright 2016 Library Journal.
Publishers Weekly Reviews
Berard (Love and War) tells the story of the Lum family, a Chinese American family living in the Jim Crow–era South, from the father's perilous arrival to the United States in the winter of 1904 during a time of anti-immigration sentiment to the 1927 lawsuit Gong Lum v. Rice, the first Supreme Court decision against school segregation. Berard conveys why Jeu Gong Lum wanted better lives—and better schools—for his two daughters, particularly Martha, who was a straight-A student, during a time when segregated black schools often had inadequate facilities. But the book does not go into detail about the poor conditions of black public schools, so when Katherine Lum says, "I don't want my children to attend ‘colored' schools" and one of their lawyers argues that "the Mongolian is on the hither side... between the Caucasian and African" as the premise of the case, a current of antiblack sentiment overwhelms a story of an immigrant family simply wanting the best for their children. As a result, this divisive narrative that focuses less on the importance of obtaining freedom and a better education for all U.S. citizens than on how one family fought to secure privilege for their children. Agent: Anna Ghosh, Ghosh Literary. (Oct.)
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