The state classified them as colored; the blacks considered them to be white, and the Chinese saw themselves

as neither. Barred from the white schools and refusing the black schools, the Chinese had to find their own means of acquiring an education.

Education

The Quest for

project.

In 1934, Ira Eavenson, a minister at First Baptist in Cleveland who had begun English classes for local Chinese a few years earlier, led efforts to raise funds for a separate Chinese school, according to John Jungs book Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton. Chinese across the Delta raised $30,000 from both Chinese and white sources. The building was two stories and concrete, on the outskirts of town on Highway 8, according to Wong. It had

The Cleveland Chinese school on Highway 8, just after completion in 1937. Courtesy of Paul Wong.

parents to come to the realization that the school was incapable of preparing their children for college, wrote Wong. One by one, the Delta Chinese families attending the school left. In 1941, the first year Wong came to the school, there was already about 30 students at the school. In 1942, the Mrs. Wong, who had been so happy for the start of the school, decided to send her children to a school in Memphis where they joined the children of another Delta Chinese family who had left a year

Our inability to solve the problem of providing them an education caused us great pain and anguish. Living in this unjust society to what avail is it to complain or worry?
Dancie Ng Wong, a supporter of the building of the Chinese school
dormitories for boarding students. Two American teachers taught all 12 grades, and one Chinese teacher instructed the students in Chinese studies. In its first year of operation in 1938, the school had about 60 students. The start of the school had been long anticipated by some Chinese. In letters of correspondence in 1938 between Dancie Ng Wong, a woman who had been very involved in the founding of the school, and a Tin Kong Ng, Wong wrote about the arrival of a school for the Chinese. That there will now be a place where our children can receive an education, is not only a happy event for the parents, but also a glorious event for our country, Wong wrote. In order to educate her children before the school came, she had had to find another source for schooling. our inability to solve the problem of providing them an education caused us great pain and anguish. Living in this unjust society to what avail is it to complain or worry. Our solution was to send our children back to our home country to be educated, she wrote in a letter to Tin Kong Ng. When her youngest was just 3 years she took her two sons and one daughter back to China and left them in earlier for the same reason. Wong, himself, left the school in 1943 and moved to Portland, Ore., to finish high school, he wrote. The school continued to shrink until it only taught the lower grades and only English. It closed regular classes in 1946. The Cleveland public schools allowed Chinese to attend soon after. Other cities like Ruleville, Rosedale and Greenville offered classes sporadically for Chinese children, according to James Loewens book, Mississippi Chinese. Greenville even provided a oneroom schoolhouse and a white teacher for grades 1 through 12 for a number of years in the late 1930s. Eventually in the early 1940s, five Chinese students were allowed into the white school on a trial basis, according to Robert Seto Quans book, Lotus Among the Magnolias. Their racial purity was testified to by Chinese men, and after a successful year, the school system decided to allow the Chinese to attend. In 1924, a Chinese merchant in Rosedale named Gong Lum sent his daughter, Martha, to the local white school. At recess, she was informed she could not return.

The school building soon before its demolition in 2003. Courtesy of Paul Wong. the care of an uncle so they could attend school there. The children stayed in China for four years, away from their parents. They came back to Mississippi in 1938 because the Japanese had begun bombing southern China. All three children directly entered the Cleveland School. However, the school failed to meet the expectations of the Chinese community. Many parents planned for their eldest children to take over the family grocery business, so they did not need much education and the Cleveland school was enough, wrote Wong. Parents had other plans for the younger children, though, that went beyond the grocery store and beyond the scope of the tiny Cleveland Chinese school. It did not take long for the

BY NATALIE DICKSON
typical.

All the Chinese children who attended the Cleveland Chinese School in its inaugural year of 1938. Courtesy of Paul Wong. home to parents. My parents would get mad at me if I didnt do well, Wu said. But unlike many Mississippi Chinese before her, no legal system has hindered Wus quest for education. The previous generations had to work around the system, finding private tutors, setting up their own schools and even separating families to acquire an education. The Chinese were not legally allowed to enter the white schools on a state level until the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case officially ruled in 1954 that separate schools were inherently unequal. Until then, the Chinese were legally classified as colored in the state of Mississippi. In response to the lack of schools, Chinese across the Delta came together with the help of the Cleveland First Baptist Church to build a school for the Chinese. It turned out to be the largest community project ever undertaken by the Mississippi Chinese, wrote Paul Wong, a Delta Chinese who recently compiled a book of memoirs on the

Nickie Wus schooling has been

She attended the Clarksdale public school through the 6th grade, and then went to Lee Academy until the 10th. For her last two years of high school, she was at the Mississippi School for Math and Science. Now she is a student at Ole Miss. Two generations ago, though, her education would have been atypical. Wus only challenge in going to school was bringing home good grades. Even Bs were something difficult to bring

EDUCATION, 10

school. At recess, she was informed she could not return. Her father sued and the case traveled all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court where it was decided in 1927 that because she was not white, she was colored. Thus, the state of Mississippi did not have to allow her into the white schools, nor did it have to provide separate schooling for the Chinese race, according to case documents. The Lums moved to Arkansas after the case where Martha could attend public school. But although the Chinese were not legally allowed to attend the white schools because of the Gong Lum v. Rice case, various towns had no problem with Chinese coming to school. In Louise, Hoover Lee entered the 1st grade without a problem and went straight through until graduation. However, he knew of families who had to switch towns so their children could go to school, he said. His first cousin in Inverness went to the white school until a large number of Mexican laborers came to town for cotton picking. The sudden influx of immigrants brought more non-whites into the school system and Inverness reversed its policy of letting the Chinese attend, Lee said. His cousin had to transfer to Shaw where he was still allowed to go to school, he said. Another family he knew lived in Ruleville. The schools there barred Chinese students, so the mother moved with the children to Sumner while the father stayed behind to watch the store, Lee said. For the Chinese, this was just something they had to accept. We didnt do any complaining, Lee said. We just took the next best thing. Sometimes, however, the Chinese could work with the school boards to let family members attend. In Boyle, Peter Joes brother had just returned from three years of service in the military during World War II. After letting Peters older brothers attend the white school, the board changed its

policies in 1937 and barred the Chinese from entering, Joe wrote in one of the memoirs collected by Paul Wong. But in 1945, the brother used his service for the country as leverage to open the school back up for the Chinese, Joe wrote. The war proved to be a positive influence for the Chinese in gaining access to the white schools, Wong wrote. In the war against Japan, China was a U.S. ally. Furthermore, several Delta Chinese men served in the war. The Greenville schools opened up in 1944, according to Wong. Some opened earlier, such as Clarksdale in 1941 or Greenwood in the late 1930s. However, some small towns like Leland didnt open their doors until 1952, or Merigold in 1953. Despite the challenges the Chinese faced in seeking education, many became successful. (The Chinese school) generation turned out storekeepers, accountants, engineers and architects. The succeeding generation followed with doctors, lawyers, pharmacists and business executives, Wong wrote. One example of how the Chinese have drastically improved their stations in life in the Mississippi Delta is Audrey Sidney. Sidney grew up on the Arkansas side of the Delta and dealt with very little discrimination, she said. She eventually attended Mississippi State College for Women, now called the Mississippi University for Women, and earned a degree in education in 1956. When she and her husband moved to Greenville, she applied at the Greenville Public School to be a teacher. Although the schools allowed Chinese in at the time, they did not allow Chinese to teach. (The superintendent) told me that only Caucasians could teach in the white public schools in Greenville, she said in an interview for the Delta State Oral History Project in 2000. She settled for a job at the Greenville Air Force Base until years later in 1965 a friend at church told her she should apply again at the public elementary school. This time she was

Chinese boys from the Cleveland school collected scrapmetal for the war effort. The Chineses contributions to the war is said to have helped open schools up to them. Courtesy of Paul Wong.

Fun Pang (#15) attended the Chinese school in Cleveland from 1937 to 1942 until he became the only student to be expelled. He then went to Webb high school where he became a successful football player. Courtesy of Paul Wong. accountant and later earned an MBA, while Sidneys other daughter graduated in the first computer science class and later served on an international cyber software board, Sidney said. Many of the Delta Chinese, like Sidney, attended the universities in Mississippi without a problem. However, there were still forms of prejudice at college. Gay Chow wrote an article on the Chinese at Mississippi State University, called The Way We Were. Chow focused a lot on a club the Delta Chinese at MSU started in 1952, called The Lucky Eleven. It functioned a lot like a fraternity. To be a member, students had to pay fees and attend meetings. The students elected Lucky Eleven sweethearts and favorites from among the Chinese girls each year, too. The club filled a void for the Chinese at MSU and around the state. Although allowed to attend some of the schools and the universities, being accepted into the social events and organizations was another matter. We might have been friends with them at school, or we might have sat by them at the school cafeteria, but other than that, we might as well have been segregated, Chow wrote. The idea to form the Lucky Eleven club actually came when a group of Delta Chinese boys at MSU were talking about how they couldnt join any of the fraternities. So, they decided to make their own, Chow wrote. The main event the club hosted was the annual formal dance, usually hosted over the Christmas holidays. On

one Sunday during the holidays, the Cleveland American Legion would be rented out, decorated and filled with women in formal gowns and men in smart suits. From the 1950s to the 1970s, the dance was the social event, Chow wrote. Chinese drove from Clarksdale, Greenwood, Memphis and even parts of Arkansas and Louisiana to attend the Christmas dances put on each year. The University of Mississippi Chinese club would also host annual dances that would sometimes compete with the Lucky Elevens, Chow wrote. But as the Chinese became more accepted into the social networks of the universities, the clubs faded away. The last Lucky Eleven dance was hosted in 1977 The older generations of Chinese look back fondly on the Lucky Eleven days, but there is not much need for the clubs to exist today as the Chinese have become accepted into the schools and their societies.

Elizabeth McCain (l) and Martha Miller (r) taught the upper and lower grades, respectively, at the Chinese School. Miller remembers being shunned in the white community to a degree for teaching at the school. Courtesy of Paul Wong accepted. Sidney later switched to the newly opened private Washington School in 1970 and became the elementary schools principal. Then in 1989, she became headmaster of the entire school and served until 1999. Both of her two daughters attended the public elementary school, the private school and eventually Mississippi State University. One graduated as an

Chinese at a dance held in the Greenville Veterans of Foreign War building. Courtesy of John Jung.

EDUCATION, 11