An Asian American Visits the Delta

By Susie Ling. Posted May 29, 2026

Friends had told me that they took a Civil Rights History Tour, and it was so interesting. I thought to create my own, but what did this L.A. city girl know… I planned a counterclockwise itinerary from Arkansas to Mississippi to Tennessee; I had never visited this tri-state corner of our nation before.

ARKANSAS CHINESE GROCERIES

Our first stop was West Memphis in Arkansas – just west of the Mississippi River. (We later stumbled into a “Memphis” in Mississippi before the Memphis in Tennessee!) This was Al Lum’s home town. Al is an attorney active with Los Angeles’ Chinese Americans. Al had talked about his family’s grocery stores in West Memphis and Hick’s Corner, and I wanted a peek.[1]

Those Chinese small groceries that sold mainly to African Americans are now a memory in history. In the early 20^th century, they served the truckloads of sharecroppers that would come through town to work the cotton. Al talks about his family frying pork rind to serve their customers. By the 1960s, harvesting cotton became more mechanized, local job patterns shifted, and Chinese grocery stores phased out – eventually replaced by a chain of Dollar General, Dollar Store, and Family Dollar enterprises.

Al Lum migrated to Los Angeles in the 1950s and became an attorney – although his Southern accent comes through once in a while. He now lives in Pasadena which is about 18% Asian American. West Memphis has 0.6% Asian.

The easiest way to find Asians, I know, is to GPS a Chinese restaurant. Off of Highway 40 is Dragon China. It was delicious. They had a steady stream of take-out customers, although I was the only Chinese. The 2^nd generation of Chens have a wide array on their menu from chop suey to fried chicken wings to a Cajun seafood boil. They’ve been in business for over 30 years.

In Scott, Arkansas is the Plantation Museum which features a 3-room exhibit on the history of Chinese in Arkansas. It said that Chinese came to Arkansas by 1869, hired by cotton plantations. In 1880, there were 125 Chinese in Arkansas including 14 laundry workers. It was also in 1880 that Jim How and King Leong opened the first known Chinese grocery in Arkansas. There were Chinese grocers all over the South.

Later on, on Memphis, TN’s Beale Street, a sign suggests that 14 Chinese laundries served this African American main street between 1887 to 1915. Between 1930 to 1960, there were 5 Chinese groceries. Interesting history. Kudos to these historical markers. There is a Mississippi Chinese Heritage Delta Museum in Cleveland that we didn’t see. Next time.

PILGRIMAGE TO ROHWER AND JEROME, ARKANSAS

Rohwer Heritage Site.

Our main itinerary was the 2026 Jerome Rohwer Pilgrimage. During WWII, my in-laws had been unjustly incarcerated in Jerome before they were segregated to the Tule Lake camp. There were 120 “pilgrims” gathered – including 15 survivors – for the 3 ½ day program. It has been over 80 years since the camps were closed. Three chartered buses took us to the Rohwer and Jerome camp sites. Soybean fields have taken over the 10,000 acres that was Rohwer incarceration camp. Only the boiler’s smoke tower remains – and a small cemetery that needs care. We saw a few monuments and markers.

The Japanese Americans gathered told many stories and remembrances. Super cool that the camps are studied and studied. I was surprised that many in our group have toured various WWII camps several times. They compared Amache with Minidoka, Manzanar with Heart Mountain, and Fresno Assembly Center with Santa Anita Assembly Center.

But why place two camps in Arkansas – 36 miles from each other, and 2800 miles from the Santa Anita Assembly Center? Most of the incarcerated here were from near Fresno and Los Angeles – with a minority from as far as Hawaii. Rosalyn Tonai of the National Japanese American Historical Society told me that the War Relocation Authority had many considerations in 1942. Arkansas had these factors: a large piece of government land, water source, not unfriendly host population, access by railroads…. When the 17,000 Americans of Japanese descent came to Jerome and Rohwer, the rural Arkansans were scared. According to the 1940 census, the pre-war population of Jerome was 112. In 1940, there were about ten Japanese Americans reported in Arkansas.

At Jerome, 3^rd generation farmer, Kim Ellington, welcomed us warmly. He told about how his grandfather, Big Six, bought the former camp land for $5 per acre. He bought it from the guy who purchased the land from the Farm Security Administration after the Japanese Americans left. FDR’s administration had acquired the land as part of a Depression relief program in the 1930s. The first guy sold the empty barracks to farmers nearby and cleared out the cement posts. They left the smoke tower (as it probably has asbestos). Ellingtons realize that soybean does well here under the sun and the rain. Kim has 4200 acres.

Kim’s dad, John, lived his whole life in the Jerome area – except for 1927, when the Great Mississippi flooded. Kim’s dad remembered selling soda to the kids in camp at cost – never losing a dime. Big Six sold moonshine and did better.

Centenarian Mits Yamamoto with Jerome farmer, Kim Ellington, and Jeanne Naito.

Wife and husband Rosalyn Tonai and Grant Din, with Din’s “cousin”, Mayor Jeff Owyang.

Our chartered busses stopped at McGehee. The chair of the McGehee WWII Japanese Internment Camp Museum is the town’s mayor, Jeff Owyang. Owyang, a Chinese American, has been the mayor for over twelve years in this town of 4000. He was born in San Jose, California, but came to Arkansas with his parents in 1969 to take over Gonggong’s grocery store, Y. L. Tow and Co. Mom Mabel, born in Dermott, Arkansas, was the fifth of nine children of Yee Gow Suen and Mary Chiang Suen. They came from Toisan in 1929. From 1975 through 1998, the Owyangs owned Trade Winds Restaurant in McGehee.

After four days together, the Japanese Americans on this pilgrimage dispersed, but promised to return again. The first organized pilgrimage was in 1974. We drive on to Mississippi.

THE DELTA ALONG THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER

So much comes back to this land and weather. The Delta was rich cotton country, the richest. Cotton was synonymous with slavery, then sharecropping. About twelve generations of African Americans cleared and drained the wild swampland; maintained levees to control the flooding; planted hoed, weeded, and harvested; and then ginned, baled, and sold this cash crop.

Things changed with the John Deere combines and harvesters. In 1945, a machine harvester managed an acre in 5 hours; an experienced African American did the same job in 85 hours. The pesticides and technology kept improving just as soybeans, corn, and rice took over. Soybeans are used for animal feed as well as biodiesel and petroleum substitute. Humans and small farms were pushed out.

In the Great Migration, about a million Blacks left Mississippi between 1910 and 1960. They dispersed to Memphis, Chicago, New York, and even Los Angeles. In 1930, the farm population in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee was at 3.7 million. By 1970, there was less than a million. Passing all those healthy soybean, corn, and cotton fields, we never saw a working soul – except for one duster plane. The South shifted economically, but their legacy of racial exploitation remained.

MISSISSIPPI CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM IN JACKSON

We drove through hours of farms, slowed down by another rainstorm, and crossed the beautiful Mississippi to reach Jackson. They say the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum is something. I thought it was too much! Slavery, Reconstruction, lynching, Jim Crow, race riots, segregated military, Black schools, KKK and Citizens’ Councils, and then Emmett Till, Medger Evers, Freedom Riders… There were so many details in this state-sponsored museum that opened in 2017. And there are even more such museums and legacy sites in Jackson. Jackson has layers and layers and layers of Black/White history.

EMMETT TILL AND THE TALLAHATCHIE RIVER, MISSISSIPPI

We go further north. We wanted to pay tribute to Emmett Till, whose brutal killing is a huge trigger of the 1950-70s Civil Rights Movement. L.A. friends had warned us “to be careful” along the Tallahatchie River. First, I smirked as all we saw was corn and cotton. Then I found out about the signs. The first commemorative sign to mark the area where Emmett Till’s body was found was erected as late as 2008. Within six months, the sign was thrown into the river. The second sign was riddled with bullet holes. A third replacement sign was erected in 2018, and then also riddled with bullet holes. The fourth sign, erected in 2019, is a 500-pound AR500 steel plate – like those used in target ranges – fronted with bulletproof acrylic.

Bryant’s Grocery is on private property and almost completely taken over by the elements.

Tallahatchie County Courthouse in Sumner where defendants Bryant and Milam were found not guilty by all White jury in 1955.

NATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM IN MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE

Our final destination was the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King was killed in 1968. They very creatively preserved Room 306 and the context of Dr. King’s work. It was “chills down your back” impressive. This National Civil Rights Museum should be on all Americans’ bucket list.

Still, to be labeled a “national” civil rights museum, it would be even better to mention the various Asian Exclusion Acts; the 1898 case of U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark affirming birthright citizenship; the 1944 case of Korematsu v. United States which legitimatized incarceration based on race; and the rise of Asian hate during the recent pandemic.

In the 1927 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Gong Lum v. Rice – a case originating in Rosedale, Mississippi – 9-year-old Martha Lum was denied access to a local public school as she was “not White”. Her father, Gong Lum, was a grocer. He eventually sent Martha and her siblings to live with relatives in Michigan so they could continue their schooling. Martha was part of the Great Migration out of the South.

In time, museums in Memphis, Jackson, Little Rock – and Los Angeles – will focus more on the connections and interactions between Asians, African Americans, and others in history and today. I’ll have more to learn next time I have the urge to fill up on grits and biscuits with gravy in the New South.

This travelogue is submitted by Susie Ling, retired Asian American Studies professor from Pasadena City College and a Board Member of the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California (chssc.org).

[1] Albert Lum’s has an interesting memoir entitled Stand Up and Be Counted (2024). Al was the founding president of the Southern California Chinese American Lawyers Association (SCCALA) in 1975.