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Crafting a Delta Chinese Community: Education and Acculturation in Twentieth-Century Southern Baptist Mission Schools

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Sieglinde Lim de Sánchez
Sieglinde Lim de Sánchez*
Affiliation:
Educational Policy Studies Department of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Extract

During Reconstruction between one-fourth and one-third of the southern African-American work force emigrated to northern and southern urban areas. This phenomenon confirmed the fears of Delta cotton planters about the transition from slave to wage labor. Following a labor convention in Memphis, Tennessee, during the summer of 1869, one proposed alternative to the emerging employment crisis was to introduce Chinese immigrant labor, following the example of countries in the Caribbean and Latin America during the mid nineteenth century. Cotton plantation owners initially hoped that Chinese “coolie” workers would help replace the loss of African-American slave labor and that competition between the two groups would compel former slaves to resume their submissive status on plantations. This experiment proved an unmitigated failure. African Americans sought independence from white supervision and authority. And, Chinese immigrant workers proved to be more expensive and less dependable than African-American slave labor. More importantly, due to low wages and severe exploitation by planters, Chinese immigrants quickly lost interest in agricultural work.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 43 , Issue 1: A Special Issue on Asian-American Educational History Guest Editor: Eileen H. Tamura , Spring 2003 , pp. 74 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 by the History of Education Society 

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