PDF African Americans in the Revolutionary War by Michael Lee Lanning Lt. Col in History

Description

A generation before Brown v. Board of Education struck down America’s “separate but equal” doctrine; one Chinese family and an eccentric Mississippi lawyer fought for desegregation in one of the greatest legal battles never told.On September 15; 1924; Martha Lum and her older sister Berda were barred from attending middle school in Rosedale; Mississippi. The girls were Chinese American and considered by the school to be “colored”; the school was for whites. This event would lead to the first US Supreme Court case to challenge the constitutionality of racial segregation in Southern public schools; an astonishing thirty years before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.Unearthing one of the greatest stories never told; journalist Adrienne Berard recounts how three unlikely heroes sought to shape a new South. A poor immigrant from southern China; Jeu Gong Lum came to America with the hope of a better future for his family. Unassuming yet boldly determined; his daughter Martha would inhabit that future and become the face of the fight to integrate schools. Earl Brewer; their lawyer and staunch ally; was once a millionaire and governor of Mississippi. When he took the family’s case; Brewer was both bankrupt and a political pariah—a man with nothing left to lose.By confronting the “separate but equal” doctrine; the Lum family fought for the right to educate Chinese Americans in the white schools of the Jim Crow South. Using their groundbreaking lawsuit as a compass; Berard depicts the complicated condition of racial otherness in rural Southern society.In a sweeping narrative that is both epic and intimate; Water Tossing Boulders evokes a time and place previously defined by black and white; a time and place that; until now; has never been viewed through the eyes of a forgotten third race. In vivid prose; the Mississippi Delta; an empire of cotton and a bastion of slavery; is reimagined to reveal the experiences of a lost immigrant community. Through extensive research in historical documents and family correspondence; Berard illuminates a vital; forgotten chapter of America’s past and uncovers the powerful journey of an oppressed people in their struggle for equality.