Language

English (en)

Date of Award

5-6-2025

Author's School

College of Arts & Sciences

Author's Program

History

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (A.B.)

Restricted/Unrestricted

Unrestricted

Abstract

Previous research on the history of education in the Jim Crow South has largely focused on the effects of legal segregation on Black communities. However, there existed another group: the Chinese. In the seemingly bifurcated system, their intermediate status was particularly discernible in the school. After Lum v. Rice (1927) stipulated that Chinese people, as members of the “colored” race, should be excluded from white schools, Chinese families sought other forms of education, including private tutors and church-sponsored mission schools. Still, they remained steadfast in their commitment to accessing white public education. The Chinese reproduced, acquiesced to, and in some ways subtly challenged the racial hierarchy, encapsulating larger struggles relating to identity development, assimilation, power, and community relations. In this project, I use oral history interviews and archival material from Houston and the Mississippi Delta to analyze the school as a crucial site of racial formation. I argue that Chinese Americans in the mid-twentieth-century South came to understand their identities and race relations through interactions with the education system. While navigating deeply racist social contexts and educational institutions that rewarded assimilation, Chinese people learned to cope with oppression and negotiate their liminal position, striving to escape the unjust treatment of a group racialized as “colored” in the Jim Crow South. These stories underscore antecedents to the model minority stereotype, as well as the construction of Asian American identity in light of state-sanctioned white supremacy and anti-Blackness.

Mentor

Dr. Michelle Purdy

Additional Advisors

dr. nadirah farah foley, Dr. Dalen Wakeley-Smith

Download

Share

COinS