Tried With Fire

Water Tossing Boulders: How a Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools in the Jim Crow South, Adrienne Berard, Beacon Press, 2016. Water Tossing Boulders is the true story of the Lum family's fight to have their children admitted to the whites-only public school in Rosedale, Mississippi. This unfolded in 1924-1927 during the years of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act , Jim Crow laws, and the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act . Jeu Gong and Katherine Lum were immigrants and part of the wave of Chinese laborers that came to this country to supply the loss of slave labor after the end of the Civil War. A large number of these laborers were denied entry or reentry with the Chinese Exclusion Act, the only law to-date that prohibited people from entering the US based on national origin. Laws were also stricter regarding the Chinese already here, but the Lums were able to settle in the deep South and open a small grocery store. The children, who were Americans by ...

This has been an unusual spring. In April and May, I had jury duty which meant being on call every Tuesday of the month not knowing until the night before. I reported only two Tuesdays, but it was stressful not knowing when I would have to serve. I like having some idea of the week ahead so spur-of-the-moment isn't my preference. It's gardenia time. I've cut dozens of flowers over the past week, and my house is filled with the fragrance. All the wet weather we had since last year seems to have made the gardenia bushes happy because they are full of blooms. Even though creation is under curse, even though there is so much that is wrong, there is still so much beauty in the world for which I am grateful. The book of nature, while limited, still speaks loudly of its Creator. If you like audio books, the freebie from Christian Audio this month has been very thought provoking. Liturgy of the Ordinary by Tish Harrison Warren picks up the same ideas as in You Are Wha...

When I started delving into the history of Asian American immigration, I uncovered stories and facts that I was never taught in school. One of those facts was the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act , a racist government policy that troubles me. It has left me skeptical about the rosy picture of the past that was painted for me through school texts and biographies. Thus I've been reading more history in search of the truth. Now I've learned something else. Water Tossing Boulders is the story of the Lum family, a Chinese Mississippi Delta family who challenged the state's school segregation laws when their daughters were forbidden to attend the whites-only public school. Their case went to the Supreme Court in 1927 , 25 years before Brown v. Board of Education , a landmark case worth reading about . Yet the Lum's story was omitted from history books. When asked the reason why, a descendent said, "Because we lost" to a unanimous 9-0 vote. What would it have been ...