When the Civil War brought an end to slavery, cotton plantation owners sought inexpensive labor replacements and some of the earliest Chinese to the Delta were recruited for this purpose. The Chinese did not embrace this role and instead carved a business niche in the Delta by opening grocery stores in black neighborhoods to serve cotton pickers who previously acquired their food and household items from plantation-owned commissaries. Chinese also came to the Delta from other parts of the U. S. to escape discrimination and violence in the west during the late 1800s and early 1900s, and carved out a distinctive position as a third element in a predominantly biracial society. This presentation explores the arrival of Chinese immigrants in the Mississippi Delta, the social, political and economic conditions of that era and the development of a Delta Chinese society. The presenter tells the story of the Mississippi Delta Chinese through his father’s and his own experiences growing up in a multiethnic neighborhood in Greenville, reflecting on how his musical talents helped him achieve acceptance and assimilation in the white dominant Delta society.
Sherman Hong was born in Greenville, Mississippi, during segregation and has investigated why the Chinese came to Mississippi in the mid-19th century. He entered “white” public schools soon after it was permitted in Greenville, and tells of his experiences in a deeply divided South in the 1940s to the 1960s.
