Image Above: "The Lum Family, Berda, Biscoe, and Martha, front row, and Gong and Kate, back row." Courtesy Alvin Gee, Lum Family and Delta State University Archives.
Jeu Gong Lum, an illegal immigrant from China, who came through Canada in 1904, married Kate, an eighteen-year-old domestic servant in Mississippi. They started a family very shortly after. The Lums opened one grocery in Benoit, MS, lived in the back of the store, and had Berda and Martha who, from a very young age, helped their parents and went to a one-room schoolhouse. Life in Benoit was hard, especially when Kate was pregnant with their third child, Biscoe, and Kate wanted to move. Jeu Gong bought land, and over four years, built a new store by hand in Rosedale, MS. They moved in 1923. Like other Delta Chinese, the Lums served both white and black customers, belonged to the white church, and tried hard to fit in the two-race society. Berda and Martha attended the Rosedale public school for the 1923-24 school year. On the first day the next year, they were sent home.
"Like many other Chinese immigrants in the region at the time, her father saw a chance to make a life for himself in the United States by establishing a grocery store that would cater to plantation owners and agricultural workers in the Delta."- Katherine Flynn "There were some friends who were attorneys-they were friends of my grandmother's- and they approached her and said, we will help you. Because these three children, although my father wasn't mentioned, they're American citizens, actually have birth certificates, and so you cannot deny an education to American citizens. That was how I heard the story begin."-Sharon Lum Eng, by Adrienne Berard. |
"Rosedale Chinese 1918 - 19. Back from left: Willie Wy Wong, Ben Wong, Kate Wong Lum, Gong Lum, Middle: Wong Dai, Lum Jim Foon, Martha Lum, Oy Shung Fung, Susie Wong, Front: Mamie Wye, Berda Lum, Taylor Wy, Dan Wy, Alex Wong photo credit: Carolyn Hong Chang" Courtesy of J.W.Dung.
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