Image Above: "Bolivar County Elementary School, Rosedale, MS, in 1924. Martha Lum fourth from left, front row. Courtesy of Paul Wong and Delta State University Archives and Museum, Cleveland, MS, Boyd-Walters-Bobo Collection, M100, Box 33, Folder 91."
Nearly thirty years before Brown v. Board of Education, on September 15, 1924, Martha and Berda Lum arrived at Rosedale Consolidated High School, in Rosedale, Mississippi, for their first day of school. Their principal sent them home at lunchtime, because they were Chinese. Their parents sued the school district, and this forgotten case about school segregation went all the way to the Supreme Court...
"The Chinese in Mississippi were a third race in a system built for two. Neither they nor the system knew what to do about that."- James Loewen. |
"This is the first case of this nature over to be brought to the courts of Mississippi, and it's believed that there has been no case similar to this one ever brought in the courts of the United States."-from 'Chinese Case Argued Today,' Daily Herald. |
