A Culture in Decline: The Mississippi Delta Chinese (Essay‪)‬

John Thornell documents the history of Chinese settlers in the Mississippi Delta in this scholarly note, quoting from, among other sources, interviews carried out in 2000 as part of an oral history project funded by the Mississippi Humanities Council. Chinese in the Mississippi Delta In 2003, the long-vacant Chinese Mission School building in Cleveland, Mississippi, was finally demolished. In this small Delta town, with a population less than 14,000, a vacant lot now stands where a residential school for Chinese children once flourished. The demolition of the school building parallels the gradual demise of the culture that supported it. Greenville (population 41,500), thirty-five miles from Cleveland, was home to forty-two Chinese grocery stores in 1951. Now Greenville has ten. From 1960 to the present, the population of Delta Chinese has declined by one-half. A culture with a Delta-wide population of Chinese involved in all aspects of community life and accentuated by Chinese grocery stores, Chinese mission schools, and churches has been relegated to a largely invisible presence. The Chinese struggle for survival is particularly poignant because of the proud accomplishments of the culture in the face of what seemed to be insurmountable obstacles.