66 Intégrité: A Faith and Learning Journal Intégrité: A Faith and Learning Journal Vol. 19, No. 1 (Spring 2020): 66-74
Photo Essay The Chinese Baptist Church and Mission School in Cleveland, Mississippi John Zheng
Recruited by planters to replace freed African American laborers after the Civil War, the first Chinese immigrants, who might have been laborious workers for the transcontinental railroad, set foot on the Mississippi Delta. They came with the purpose to make money so that they could live a better life when they returned to China. Once they realized they couldn’t make money from laboring in the cotton fields, the Chinese resorted to opening grocery stores to achieve business success. An early Chinese immigrant who arrived in the Delta was Wong On. Born near Canton, China, in 1844, Wong arrived in California in 1860 to help build the transcontinental railroad. After moving to the Mississippi Delta to pick cotton, Wong married a black woman and opened a store in Stoneville (Wilson). Soon more Chinese arrived, particularly in the early decades of the twentieth century. Most of them were the immigrants’ relatives or sons from China. Their grocery stores were successfully established in the communities through a family system that passed business from father to son. When more Chinese immigrants settled down in the Delta and established families, education became an urgent need for their children. But, during the hard times of segregation, Chinese children were excluded from white public schools even though Delta Chinese wished to be assimilated. When Chinese children were excluded from local all-white schools by the 1927 US Supreme Court decision, Gong Lum v. Rice, Chinese parents, the First Baptist Church, and community leaders worked together to found a boarding mission school in Cleveland in 1937 to provide an educational haven for dozens of Chinese students in the central Delta. It offered classes in English, Chinese, math, spelling, reading, and history from 8:30 in the morning and ended at 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon. Some students boarded at school while others went home after school. The mission school, supported by the Baptist Church, desired also to introduce the Chinese students to Christianity. Unfortunately, the school was closed in 1951 when Chinese children had a chance to attend public schools in the Delta. In the difficult years when Chinese immigrants worked hard to maintain business and raise children in the Delta, the Baptist Church played a central role for generations, particularly the Chinese Baptist Church in Cleveland (Figures 1
