{"id":9200,"date":"2023-04-19T17:24:25","date_gmt":"2023-04-19T17:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/?page_id=9200"},"modified":"2023-06-19T20:47:30","modified_gmt":"2023-06-19T20:47:30","slug":"edward-and-annette-joe","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/edward-and-annette-joe\/","title":{"rendered":"Edward and Annette Joe"},"content":{"rendered":"[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” column_element_spacing=”default” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1\/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” bg_image_animation=”none” border_type=”simple” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][divider line_type=”No Line”][vc_column_text]\n

Edward and Annette Joe Oral History<\/span><\/h1>\n[\/vc_column_text][divider line_type=”No Line”][page_submenu alignment=”center” sticky=”true” bg_color=”#008542″ link_color=”#ffffff”][page_link link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/manuscripts-and-guides\/” title=”Manuscripts & Subject Guides<\/strong>” id=”1682002896524-6″ tab_id=”1682002896525-1″] [\/page_link][page_link link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/guides-to-the-collection-page\/” title=”Collections Portal<\/strong>” id=”1682002896539-2″ tab_id=”1682002896540-3″] [\/page_link][page_link title=”Visit<\/strong>” id=”1682002896546-4″ tab_id=”1682002896546-4″ link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/departments\/archives-museum\/visit\/”][\/page_link][page_link title=”Make a Request<\/strong>” id=”1682002896552-10″ tab_id=”1682002896552-7″ link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/departments\/archives-museum\/requests\/”][\/page_link][page_link title=”About Us<\/strong>” id=”1682002896559-10″ tab_id=”1682002896560-6″ link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/departments-archives-museum-about-us\/”][\/page_link][page_link title=”Yearbooks Online<\/strong>” id=”1682002896571-9″ tab_id=”1682002896571-10″ link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/departments\/archives-museum\/yearbooks-alumni-magazines-delta-state-histories\/”][\/page_link][\/page_submenu][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” column_element_spacing=”default” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1\/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” bg_image_animation=”none” border_type=”simple” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]Joe, Edward and Annette\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Tape 1 of 1\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 5\/1\/00<\/strong><\/p>\n

By:\u00a0 Jennifer Mitchell and Kimberly Lancaster<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is an oral history of the Chinese in the Mississippi Delta.\u00a0 The interview is being recorded with Mr. and Ms. Edward and Annette Joe on May 1, 2000.\u00a0 The interviewers are Jennifer Mitchell and Kimberly Lancaster.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

KL:\u00a0 Today is May 1, 2000. We are at the home of Edward Joe and Annette Joe.\u00a0 I am Kimberly Lancaster and<\/p>\n

JM:\u00a0 Jennifer Mitchell<\/p>\n

KL:\u00a0 We are interviewing the Joe\u2019s for the Mississippi Delta Oral History Project. (Tape cut off.)\u00a0\u00a0 Mr. and Ms. Joe could you tell us a little bit about your parents?\u00a0 How they arrived in the delta?<\/p>\n

EJ:\u00a0 My parents came from actually my dad came from Canton, China, at the age of ten or twelve years old.\u00a0 He was a houseboy on a ship that came out of China that came to the United States.\u00a0 He came to Seattle, Washington and from that he migrated to San Francisco.\u00a0 He worked as a houseboy when he as an assistant to Thomas Edison there at Stanford University.\u00a0 From that point, he stayed there, and studied English for several years.\u00a0 He had friends that lived in Mississippi that invited him to come south.\u00a0 So he came across to Chicago and then down by train to Memphis to the delta.\u00a0 This was in 1912, there about.\u00a0 One of the stories he tells back in those days is that it is more wilderness than anything else in the delta.\u00a0 He worked in the business there in Boyle grocery store.\u00a0 They had on Saturday night there was always something going on.\u00a0 He told this story that they thought that it was New Years Eve.\u00a0 People were shooting their guns.\u00a0 He stepped out of the store for just a minute came out on the street and fell over.\u00a0 It was shot.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t think it was New Year\u2019s Eve then.\u00a0 That happens back in those days quite often.\u00a0 In Boyle, he stayed there.\u00a0 Well naturally that is where I was born.\u00a0 My parents after he worked there in the grocery store for several years.\u00a0 Then in 1928, he went back to China and married my mother.\u00a0 He stayed there for a year, and then he came back to the business.\u00a0 Then in 1949, my mother came over from China.\u00a0 My dad raised five children in the grocery business.\u00a0 My oldest brother, Jim Wong, ran a grocery store for a while.\u00a0 Since he was the oldest.\u00a0 He was about ten years older then the rest of us.\u00a0 He ran a business there in Boyle.\u00a0 Then he went to Cleveland.\u00a0 We attended.\u00a0 Back in those days, my oldest brother Jim, when he came to the states he was four or five years old.\u00a0 He went to Boyle school for a couple of years.\u00a0 Back in those days, the delta was still the school division of two schools.\u00a0 There was a black school and a white school.\u00a0 He attended the white school for several years.\u00a0 Then they had the school board decided that because of the situation in Boyle.\u00a0 He had to go to reform measure a private school, a Chinese school in Cleveland. You all know about that obviously.\u00a0 It was out there by the Chinese church.\u00a0 I attended school out there until I was in the sixth grade.\u00a0 Then the Second World War broke out in 1941.\u00a0 For several years we continued to go to school in Cleveland, because of the shortage of gas and situation due to the war.\u00a0 My brother was in the service at that time.\u00a0 He came back and ended up being head of the school board in 1943.\u00a0 We attended a public school in Boyle in 1943.\u00a0 It was probably one of the first schools in the delta that allowed Orientals to go to school.\u00a0 Besides, I think orientals are some and my other except Peter\u2026three brothers attended school in Boyle.\u00a0 All of us graduated from Boyle High School.\u00a0 He finished there at Boyle High School.\u00a0 All four of us attended Mississippi State and finished college there at Mississippi State.\u00a0 Probably the family as well my dad was probably one of the oldest Oriental person in the delta at the time.\u00a0 He was one of the founders of the Chinese School, Chinese Baptist Church there in Cleveland.\u00a0 His grandmother was one of the several founders of the Chinese School in Cleveland.\u00a0 It had a lot of children that came from all over the delta to attend the school there.\u00a0 It was also a school that people had a dormitory.\u00a0 We had a girl\u2019s side that was built for the girls, and a side for the boys.\u00a0 People would come there and spend the school year at the dormitory and go to school.\u00a0 Actually, the school had also English in the morning.\u00a0 We learned English from eight till noon.\u00a0 Then we had Chinese school from one to five.\u00a0 That is probably a long day for children to go to school.\u00a0 I think that it made the children a lot more disciplined in going to school.\u00a0 Most of these young people that attended the school there wind up going to college and becoming professionals.\u00a0 Other than our parents because our parents, the majority of the Chinese in the Mississippi delta were in the merchant business or grocery business.\u00a0 On causing at that time was a language barrier because of them migrating to the delta not knowing enough English, or have some sense of business sense of running a good business for the people there.\u00a0 They catered to the black population.\u00a0 It provided an opportunity for them to raise their family.\u00a0 It could be that during that time in other family life, the Chinese in the Mississippi Delta.\u00a0 Do you want to add to this?<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 Well, my grandparents came to Merigold, and gee I don\u2019t know the dates.\u00a0 My dad was born in Merigold in 1916.\u00a0 So it was sometime before that they came.\u00a0 They had a grocery store and owned some property there.\u00a0 They raised five children.\u00a0 Then their five children, which my daddy was right in the middle, I guess.\u00a0 Then daddy took over the store after.\u00a0 Well, he took over the store before the war.\u00a0 Then when he went to the war, my mother and my aunt ran the store.\u00a0 My memories probably begin there.\u00a0 But, I did know my grandmother.\u00a0 She died when I was about five years old.\u00a0 She was something else.\u00a0 She spent a lot of time with me.\u00a0 So I do have memories of her.\u00a0 I did not know my mom\u2019s parents because they never came over.\u00a0 Actually my mother was born in St. Louis.\u00a0 Her father was kind of a lay deacon preacher, a coordinator in the Presbyterian Church there in St. Louis.\u00a0 My grandmother did not like the weather, and then there was a lot that she didn\u2019t like about. She wanted to go back to China.\u00a0 So my grandfather said okay that we will go back.\u00a0 My mother had two brothers in Greenville.\u00a0 She had a sister.\u00a0 They took my mother and her sister back to China when they were children.\u00a0 When they come back to visit.\u00a0 One time mom met dad was during the flood.\u00a0 They were about thirteen years old.\u00a0 They couldn\u2019t get to Greenville because the levy had broken.\u00a0 So my grandfather said, well you know there used to be a man named Gong.\u00a0 I think he lives somewhere in this area.\u00a0 Great-Granddaddy Gong had.\u00a0 I get all mixed up because we have grandchildren.\u00a0 So I get all mixed up with greats.\u00a0 My mother\u2019s daddy called daddy\u2019s daddy.\u00a0 He said sure we have got plenty of room.\u00a0 They had a big house that they lived in near a park.\u00a0 It was a real neat place.\u00a0 He loved fruit trees.\u00a0 He had all kinds of orchards and venures.\u00a0 He just had so much. a well.\u00a0 It was a real neat place.\u00a0 I remember playing school trees.\u00a0 We had a swinging gate in front.\u00a0 The dog would always get out there.\u00a0 We had two dogs.\u00a0 I thought they would get run over out there.\u00a0 I thought I would never have another dog.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want that to happen anymore. Anyway during, well when I was about six.\u00a0 I guess I six years old.\u00a0 We had the store. The store also had a little place.\u00a0 It had a warehouse.\u00a0 Then\u00a0 it had a little kitchen.\u00a0 You know place where you could sleep there.\u00a0 So on Christmas Eve our store burned with everybody\u2019s Christmas, with all of our Christmas.\u00a0 There was a shortage of water.\u00a0 So they tried to cype in water from the bayou which ran through the middle of the town like they usually do. They couldn\u2019t get enough water.\u00a0 So the whole block burned.\u00a0 When it did.\u00a0 We had to find another place to locate the store.\u00a0 So daddy\u2019s daddy owned property across the railroad.\u00a0 It was being used for a drug store.\u00a0 So they asked that man to find another place.\u00a0 He was not very happy about it.\u00a0 He did it anyway.\u00a0 We moved our store over there, and it still exist, The Gong Company.\u00a0 It is still there.\u00a0 My aunt, I don\u2019t think she opens it. She still lives there.\u00a0 She used to open it every once in a while just so she could see people.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what she does now.\u00a0 I know she has a huge garden out there behind.\u00a0 The house has been torn down.\u00a0 The living quarters are up over the store.\u00a0 What had been the offices for lawyers and doctors and so forth.\u00a0 During the war, dad went to the war.\u00a0 All of our men folk went to the war.\u00a0 So Aunt Sue came back to help mother.\u00a0 She had at that time four children and expecting her fifth one.\u00a0 And so, it was easier for us to go upstairs rather than for us to go across to the house and a safer trip.\u00a0 We lived upstairs.\u00a0 Most of my memories are there.\u00a0 We had a huge area up there.\u00a0 I remember the washing machine.\u00a0 I remember playing school from the rooftop.\u00a0 You could go our on the roof of the next building.\u00a0 We would go out there and play.\u00a0 It was just a fun time.\u00a0 We had a good time.\u00a0 I went to the Chinese school until I was in the fifth grade.\u00a0 I started fifth grade at Boyle.\u00a0 When daddy had came back from the war, he had three unmarried siblings.\u00a0 He said wow I have all these children.\u00a0 He said we would go out and find another place.\u00a0 You all will have this.\u00a0 So they did.\u00a0 They went to Boyle.\u00a0 The main reason why they went to Boyle was because of the school.\u00a0 When we were at war, mother even wrote to the school board and said that my kids are having to be taken to Cleveland to school and it is really hard for us.\u00a0 They were, it was not a happy situation.\u00a0 They wrote her back, and said that if she wanted to go to the black school you may.\u00a0 Though if you don\u2019t you will just continue to get your children up to Cleveland because you are not coming to our school.\u00a0 It was not a happy situation.\u00a0 We went there.\u00a0 We moved to Boyle.\u00a0 We started school there.\u00a0 All my siblings graduated there except that it consolidated with Cleveland when the youngest two or three graduated from Cleveland.\u00a0 There were eight of us.\u00a0 I am the oldest.\u00a0 Ed is the third child in his family.\u00a0 Mom and dad just had a happy time.\u00a0 Daddy loved being in the store.\u00a0 He had lots of friends.\u00a0 We enjoyed living there.\u00a0 His family participated in sports.\u00a0 My daddy would not let the boys get out there and play football.\u00a0 He just though they were just too precious to do that.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know whether it was daddy or mother.\u00a0 One of them did it.\u00a0 So they kept them from doing it.\u00a0 However they let me play basketball.\u00a0 That was really unusual because I don\u2019t think that they let any of the other children.\u00a0 I probably taught them a lesson.\u00a0 I was so bad on the field.\u00a0 You could laugh at me because I couldn\u2019t dribble.\u00a0 Anyway, I don\u2019t think any others did participate beside Steve. Steve did the track at Cleveland. \u00a0He was pretty good at it.\u00a0 Cause he even came to Jackson when we lived here to be in a meet at Hinds.\u00a0 My baby sister was born when I went to college.\u00a0 You can tell it is a big difference in our ages.\u00a0 She now teaches in Hong Kong and they love living over there.\u00a0 They have a daughter who is about to be in the eighth grade, I think.\u00a0 They have been over there for five or six years. I have sisters and brothers everywhere.\u00a0 I have a brother and a sister here in Jackson.\u00a0 Wanita Gong is my sister and Steven Gong is my brother.\u00a0 Then we have a brother in Georgia.\u00a0 I have a sister in Tennessee.\u00a0\u00a0 We are kind of spread out.\u00a0 We are every where.<\/p>\n

JM:\u00a0 What are all of their names?<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 There names, oh my goodness well let\u2019s see. Well Wanita Gong, I am the oldest, and I am Annette.\u00a0 Wanita is next.\u00a0 She is a pharmacist.\u00a0 She is a health care fan.\u00a0 I think you all are going to talk to them aren\u2019t you.\u00a0 Then there was Marian who married a register in Bakersfield, California. (Tape was not able to understand). Then I am going down the line.<\/p>\n

EJ:\u00a0 She is the schoolteacher.<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 She is a schoolteacher, right.\u00a0 She graduated from Delta State.\u00a0 She did.\u00a0 And let\u2019s see K. W. Junior is a banker in Georgia.\u00a0 Patricia is a nurse in Knoxville, TN.\u00a0 Gwen is in Hong Kong.\u00a0 She is a teacher of Fredric. She got her doctorate from Purdue and her master\u2019s and bachelor\u2019s from Ole Miss.\u00a0 We are just everywhere.\u00a0 We just had a happy time.\u00a0 We were involved in music.\u00a0 We were involved in our church.\u00a0 I think I never.\u00a0 I always knew that I was different because daddy and mother were real strict.\u00a0 The oldest three children were girls. They sure didn\u2019t want anybody coming around.\u00a0 So they were very, very strict.\u00a0 Everybody knew it.\u00a0 So we had a lot of friends.\u00a0 They always had to be at the house.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t just go out.\u00a0 Mother would always be glad to cook and have them come in the living room.\u00a0 But didn\u2019t want us going out.\u00a0\u00a0 The only time we went out.\u00a0 I think we went to drive in movies.\u00a0 Like you know how you do you just pack up about fifteen in a car.\u00a0 You go out to drive in movies.\u00a0 You sit on top of the cars.\u00a0 You just sit every where and watch the movies.\u00a0 It was really fun. The mosquitoes would eat you up.\u00a0 It was fun.\u00a0 It was about the only type of fun you would have there.\u00a0 We did have dances that were started by the Lucky Eleven.\u00a0 There were eleven Chinese fellows at Mississippi State.\u00a0 They became the lucky eleven.\u00a0 Every Christmas they would give this huge bash.\u00a0 People would come from every where, out of state.\u00a0 Everywhere because they knew we were having it.\u00a0 They would crown a queen every year.\u00a0\u00a0 Later on of course as a lot of them went to Ole Miss, then they just left it the Lucky Eleven.\u00a0 It included other schools too.\u00a0 They kept it up for along time for many years.\u00a0 That is how we kind of stayed in contact with each other and knew each other.\u00a0 I think Chinese parents were always trying to introduce their children to Chinese children.\u00a0 They noticed that was the thing in.\u00a0 It really was.\u00a0 So that is the environment that I grew up in.\u00a0 We always had music.\u00a0 Our families got together every weekend.\u00a0 We spent probably Sunday together, which was the only day that the store closed.\u00a0 We would play dominoes.\u00a0 Or play cards, poker or whatever mahjong.\u00a0 Or whatever just have fun.\u00a0 And enjoy being together.\u00a0 I think we don\u2019t have enough of that anymore.\u00a0 We are too scattered.\u00a0 And too busy.\u00a0 There were good times.\u00a0 Of course there were bad times too.\u00a0 There were times because as I said we were different.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t.\u00a0 I remember we came to Jackson, everybody looked at us like we were weird.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t know.\u00a0 I know when I had my first baby.\u00a0 This is hilarious.\u00a0 I had my first baby.\u00a0 Dr. Hendrics came in.\u00a0 He was not my pediatrician.\u00a0 He was in the group with the pediatricians.\u00a0 So he came in.\u00a0 Happened his nurse was in a Sunday school with me.\u00a0 Being so nice, he was explaining to me how to breast-feed my child.\u00a0 He was just explaining and explaining and explaining.\u00a0 I mean, everything you could explain and what to expect. Then he said do you have any questions.\u00a0 I said no I don\u2019t think I could have any questions because you covered it so well.\u00a0 His mouth went OH.\u00a0 He got outside.\u00a0 He said, Francis I didn\u2019t know that she spoke English.\u00a0 She just laughed.\u00a0 She said well she is in my Sunday school Class.\u00a0 I could have told you that.\u00a0 You just didn\u2019t ask.\u00a0 We were in that time; there weren\u2019t that many Orientals around.\u00a0 I think here in Jackson they had some.\u00a0 The ones that were here that married Dutch, Japanese.\u00a0 That was the closest to an Oriental that they would know.\u00a0 It was different.\u00a0 I know a lot of times.\u00a0 When I came here, I graduated for M. U. W.\u00a0 The head of the news department said you need to go and interview.\u00a0 You know Ed is in Jackson working as an accountant at that time.\u00a0 If you want to live in Jackson.\u00a0 (Tape was not able to understand.)\u00a0 They pay well.\u00a0 That is the best paying place in Mississippi.\u00a0 I went over there.\u00a0 It happened that the superintendent of the schools was interviewing.\u00a0 I went in and said hello.\u00a0 He was nice enough.\u00a0 Then he said, well I am sorry to tell you we just don\u2019t anything at the schools at all.\u00a0 I said sir I just came from an interviews department.\u00a0 He said you have tons of vacancies.\u00a0 I said I think I am qualified.\u00a0 I had lots more.\u00a0 I went to Delta State every summer.\u00a0 My year was the first year that they were required a teacher\u2019s certificate.\u00a0 So I got a performance degree, which didn\u2019t include all of the psychology and all the biology and stuff that you have to take for the teacher\u2019s license.\u00a0 I took all of those things.\u00a0 I think that I am very qualified.\u00a0 He said that it has nothing to do with your qualification.\u00a0 Well I want you to tell me why there is not a job.\u00a0 He said well we don\u2019t have a place for you.\u00a0 He said I am not ever going to hire anybody like you.\u00a0 I said well how am I.\u00a0 He said well you are Chinese.\u00a0 I said so.\u00a0 He said well I will never hire you teach in Jackson.\u00a0 I said well thank you very much.\u00a0 I went back over and told my professor.\u00a0 My educational professor is Czechoslovakian.\u00a0 He said want go punch him in the nose.\u00a0 I said oh just forget it.\u00a0 The thing about is there is.\u00a0 You know how God can take a lemon and make lemonade.\u00a0 I think blessings come through struggles.\u00a0 I thought well how am I going to help make a living.\u00a0 I did come here and went to the music department downtown.\u00a0 I said I want my certification.\u00a0 They said that you didn\u2019t need it.\u00a0 You can\u2019t work here so why do you want to be certified.\u00a0 So I never got my certification.\u00a0 Then the lady who denied my certification before she died, she\u2019s a musician,\u00a0 she came to me.\u00a0 I never realize that you would give so much to our community.\u00a0 I appreciate it.\u00a0 I had a lot of words that I could have said to her, but I didn\u2019t.\u00a0 Actually life is probably better for me because I enjoy what I do.\u00a0 Ed has been nice, and they have fostered a lot of workshops and a lot of going for me.\u00a0 I really developed.\u00a0\u00a0 I love what I do.\u00a0 I am getting better at it all of the time.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have any bitter regrets because I really believe it is because the Lord had a path.\u00a0 You just follow it and it works.\u00a0 It works.\u00a0\u00a0 So what else do you need to know?<\/p>\n

JM:\u00a0 Did you say earlier you had some education in China?<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 My mother did.\u00a0 See when she went back as a child, she went to school.\u00a0 She was taught to play the piano actually by a blind teacher.\u00a0 You will not believe, but when she had us she said that we had to have a piano.\u00a0 She went to whatever kind of store it is where you buy anything.\u00a0 It is kind of what we would call a junk or antique store.\u00a0 They called it something else.\u00a0 Anyway she went down there and bought a piano for maybe forty dollars.\u00a0 She put it in her big upright.\u00a0 She bought it because it sounding good.\u00a0 She really had a good ear.\u00a0 I played on that thing until I went to college.\u00a0 We bought an aphosonic.\u00a0 It was good piano.\u00a0 She could play. She would say now you got to teach like they read like they read here because I don\u2019t read the same way.\u00a0 Whatever way you read that is fine.\u00a0 Just stay with it because you are doing right.\u00a0 She would play for the W. M. U., and that is from one or two years from say like eight or nine years old.\u00a0 I tell the people that I teach.\u00a0 If she could do that, then you better do better.\u00a0 You have more opportunities than she did.\u00a0 She was a wonderful person.\u00a0 I wished she was in a condition that you could really get a lot from her because she would know a lot.\u00a0 She has been through a lot more than we\u2019ve had.<\/p>\n

JM:\u00a0 I have two questions.\u00a0 The first one is.\u00a0 I think that I understood you say in the early nineteen hundreds perhaps in the late eighteen hundreds it was easier for Chinese to be established in the delta?<\/p>\n

EJ:\u00a0 No it was not.<\/p>\n

JM:\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t at all.<\/p>\n

EJ:\u00a0 A lot of the Chinese came in the delta because it was right after the Civil War.\u00a0 They came up the river to be in the plantations.\u00a0 The plantation owners got them to work in the fields because the blacks refused to work in the fields after the Civil War.\u00a0 (Tape cut off).\u00a0 The Chinese came up to the delta up the Mississippi River from New Orleans by boat to Vicksburg and Greenville.\u00a0 There they were supposed to work in the fields.\u00a0 Well being that they felt that they didn\u2019t want work in the fields either.\u00a0 They were probably more energetic and more fuel than the other people.\u00a0 The started.\u00a0 My dad said that they would cook hotdogs or whatever we could for the black community.<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 The cotton pickers would come at five o\u2019clock in the morning.\u00a0 They would come and pick up there lunch.<\/p>\n

EJ:\u00a0 Back in those days it was hard.\u00a0 It was not easy.<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 It was not easy.<\/p>\n

EJ:\u00a0 A nickel was a nickel.\u00a0 My dad said that his business was pretty good.\u00a0 In fact in 1929, they had the crash.\u00a0 Banks in the Mississippi delta went broke.\u00a0 Bolivar County bank where my dad had his deposit in.\u00a0 He had set a hundred dollars worth of cash, which back in those days was a lot of money.\u00a0 They said well we can\u2019t give you any cash.\u00a0 They said but we can give you script for land in the delta.\u00a0 He said, well you know why do I want this swampland out here that wouldn\u2019t raise anything.\u00a0 It would cost you a dollar a year for taxes.\u00a0 Most of the Chinese that came to the delta were in the early.\u00a0 They came for the purpose of only making a fortune or making a living because their family was in China.\u00a0 The first generation was their intention was to make their fortune and go back to China.<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 That is right.<\/p>\n

EJ:\u00a0 My dad has always before the war, the Second World War, he said that we were going to make our living and go back to China.\u00a0 Well, we were raised in Mississippi, and we didn\u2019t want to go back to China.\u00a0 That is the only generation, the first generation that their main thing was to make their fortune and go back home.<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 They were very frugal.<\/p>\n

EJ:\u00a0 That was the tradition.\u00a0 In their minds their family was over there.\u00a0 The Second World War changed a lot for everybody.\u00a0 We understand that.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t grow up in it, but it made the people.\u00a0 Mississippi itself saw the world. They saw that there are other people in another world living.\u00a0 I think it changed the attitude of a lot of people. Of all the soldiers that were in the service.\u00a0 A war is bad, but after the Second World War a lot of people came back, and they accepted a lot more.\u00a0 They accepted a lot more of the different.\u00a0 They accepted Chinese a lot more.\u00a0 They accepted Jewish people more in the delta.\u00a0 The delta is a more of a melting pot than else where.\u00a0 You had the Jewish people that were in the dry good business.\u00a0 The Orientals were in the grocery business.\u00a0 The Italians were in the farming.\u00a0 I always thought.\u00a0 It was growing up there that we had our problems.\u00a0 We enjoyed it.\u00a0 When we left the delta to come here.\u00a0 When I went to Mississippi State, kids here have never seen have seen an Oriental.\u00a0 I went to work over in Scott County over there. I went over there as an accountant.\u00a0 The people over there I was a novelty.\u00a0 They looked at you.\u00a0 I still got my work done.\u00a0 They were good people, and they realized who we are.\u00a0 Coming to Jackson from getting out of service.\u00a0 I was in the service for a couple of years and going to work here.\u00a0 I can count the Orientals on my fingers that lived in Jackson.\u00a0 There was only Dr. Gee.\u00a0 He was a doctor and engineer.\u00a0 It was I, and Mr. Don who was a pharmacist.\u00a0\u00a0 It was about five or six of us.\u00a0 Right now the Oriental population in Jackson is several thousand because of the universities.\u00a0 People are moving in.\u00a0 Most of the concentration of the Chinese was in the Mississippi Delta because of the fact that the first generation of Chinese could make a better living running grocery stores and being part of a community up there.\u00a0 It was black or white or whatever.\u00a0 They were in the middle of the black and white struggle of integration.\u00a0 It probably helped the Orientals out in that process.<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 It has just been a lot of change.<\/p>\n

EJ:\u00a0 A lot of change.\u00a0 People have changed.<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 As people have migrated from different areas like they have.\u00a0 A big factory normally brings people in.\u00a0 You get exposed to different people.\u00a0 It is not that you don\u2019t know other people.<\/p>\n

EJ:\u00a0 When I applied for a job, the man I went to work for Mr. Ed Morgan.\u00a0 This was forty years ago.\u00a0 He said you know Ed you can be one of our better person because when you go in these towns out here.\u00a0 They gone know you.\u00a0 If I was to send somebody else out there they are not going to know the way you do good or bad.\u00a0 They gone know you.\u00a0 I remember.\u00a0 I said well let\u2019s (Tape was not able to understand.)\u00a0 I was running my business. You are a minority where people will know you.\u00a0 We have done well in our business.\u00a0 We have tried to raise are families to be that way to.\u00a0 We have two, three kids.\u00a0 They are all college graduates.\u00a0 We are as a second generation we are moving away from those traditions that our parents that raised us up in.\u00a0 I am sure we are more Americanized than anything else right now.<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 I work with a lady who was born in China.\u00a0 She is a daughter of missionary parents.\u00a0 She is a missionary doctor.\u00a0 She likes to say that she is more Chinese than Annette is because I was born over there.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t come over here till college.\u00a0 It is true.\u00a0 It is neat.\u00a0 It really is neat.\u00a0 We would probably have more hang ups than anybody because of the way we were raised.\u00a0 It was just so strict.\u00a0 It was just real, real strict.\u00a0 There are a lot of things.\u00a0 I guess there is a lot of change that has happened to us than more than to my parents I am sure.\u00a0 As far as having to adapt to change, I think our generation has had to adapt to it more than anybody.\u00a0 They lived their own life, and they didn\u2019t care what anybody else did.\u00a0 They were going to do what they wanted to do, and just leave me alone.\u00a0 Let me do what I wanted to do, I want bother you, and you don\u2019t bother me.\u00a0 We are more into the stream of what was going on.\u00a0 We have to cope with a lot of things.\u00a0 We are playing sports and being in contests. \u00a0We are meeting and greeting other people.\u00a0 That has not always been fun.\u00a0 There are a lot of people that would look flat at you.\u00a0 I remember. I have so many stories.\u00a0 I could tell forever, but I won\u2019t tell all of them.\u00a0 This hasn\u2019t been a long time ago.\u00a0 It just blew me away.\u00a0 That my mother was in the hospital and it was one of her when she was had to be in the hospital.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what it was for.\u00a0 I was staying with her.\u00a0 I guess I came down that morning.\u00a0 I probably went down to breakfast.\u00a0 We always spent the night.\u00a0 I came down and this minister of music was coming in.\u00a0 I hugged him and said hello.\u00a0 I knew him because I had worked him at the Baptist building as a consultant in children\u2019s music.\u00a0 He said well what are you doing here and so forth.\u00a0 We exchanged pleasantries.\u00a0 This man came by and he told him, this guy is still the minister of music.\u00a0 He said, you shouldn\u2019t be caught standing around talking to her.\u00a0 I thought who is he talking about.\u00a0 What is this?\u00a0 Just that kind of thing.\u00a0 If you have never ever had that feeling.\u00a0 You don\u2019t know how it feels until you are the one that they are talking about.\u00a0 I guess through that you learn a lot.\u00a0 You learn a lot through your experience.\u00a0 You can do a lot of things because of your experience that you couldn\u2019t do before.\u00a0 So it is an enabling experience even though it is not very nice.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t feel very good.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t always have to feel very good.\u00a0 It has been proven.<\/p>\n

JM:\u00a0 Do you think that you all have.\u00a0 We have kind of talked about that you all children will probably be more Americanized perhaps.\u00a0 Is there any things that you have passed on to your children that your parents have given you that perhaps Kimberly and I would have not been exposed to?\u00a0 Any values or?<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 Traditions?<\/p>\n

JM:\u00a0 Traditions and things like that.<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 Well our grandchildren love Chinese food.\u00a0 We do cook.\u00a0 They are real thrilled.\u00a0 Our children have married wonderful mates.\u00a0 They are not Chinese.\u00a0 It was just so funny.\u00a0 When my daughter-in-law said that Eddie told me that he was Chinese.\u00a0 Well I never thought of you as Chinese but that is okay.\u00a0 I thought gee that is kind of weird.\u00a0 I thought she must be real dense.\u00a0 She is not, but she really is wonderful.\u00a0 She really is.\u00a0 That is just exact.\u00a0 She just never thought about that.\u00a0 He said well you know that we have some traditions when they were going to get married, and he told her about all those traditions that we liked to do.\u00a0 She said well that great.\u00a0 In fact, I have said that the in-laws in their family try to keep the traditions.\u00a0 She teaches the children to count in Chinese.\u00a0 She knows phrases and so forth.\u00a0 She is really interested in our background.\u00a0 She knows my parents.\u00a0 So she can put it all together.\u00a0 The kids are very well adjusted, which is wonderful.\u00a0 I suspect that our kids may be prep, because they went to prep.\u00a0 They may have had some encounters there.\u00a0 The first Orientals in there.\u00a0 It never hurt them.\u00a0 It may have left a few scars, but not outwardly is that personal scars that you get.\u00a0 That is part of living.\u00a0 You don\u2019t necessarily have to be Chinese to witness that.\u00a0 You can be anybody and have that happen to you.\u00a0 We have.\u00a0 We really have been impressed.\u00a0 Got far beyond what we deserve.\u00a0 Mother and Daddy, well we kept the traditions like having birthday parties.\u00a0 They love birthday parties.<\/p>\n

KL:\u00a0 What about their wedding?\u00a0 Where did the two meet?<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 Well we lit up the street.\u00a0 When I went to college, I thought I was old enough to ask for a date.<\/p>\n

EJ:\u00a0 We probably had the first real large wedding in the delta of Chinese.<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 Now when mother and daddy married, they had a huge wedding.\u00a0 I am not counting soles.\u00a0 I am just talking about according to that day.\u00a0 They had a huge wedding.\u00a0 We had a large wedding.\u00a0 Matter of fact all my sister had a large wedding.\u00a0 All of his brothers had large weddings.<\/p>\n

EJ:\u00a0 Anything that you should have.<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 All the people would get together and do the cooking.\u00a0 My daddy would feed nine hundred in a nine course meal.\u00a0 It was spectacular.<\/p>\n

EJ:\u00a0 It was at the American Legion Hut and the V. F. W.<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 Our parents were so frugal.\u00a0 They are not like we are.\u00a0 They don\u2019t spend on themselves.\u00a0 We spend on ourselves.\u00a0 They wouldn\u2019t spend a dime on themselves.\u00a0 They save it all for the kids.\u00a0 In that way, I know that my dad gracious.\u00a0 He was home schooled so to speak. His tutor, one of his tutors was Mr. Bob Radell.\u00a0 He is the alumni secretary to Mississippi State.\u00a0 He was also the superintendent of Boyle school when they were going and when I was going in the early part.\u00a0 We had other superintendent come in after he went to Mississippi State.\u00a0 His wife, Ms. Radell, she was daddy\u2019s tutor.\u00a0 I think that is real interesting.\u00a0 It used to be a small world.\u00a0 As far as school, he went to Chicago to go to an electrician school.\u00a0 That is how he got into the navy.\u00a0 He was an electrician in the destroyer.\u00a0 We have pictures of the ship that he was on.\u00a0 His ship was the first one to go into Pearl Harbor.<\/p>\n

EJ:\u00a0 No not<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 No not to Pearl Harbor, Old Nakagawa Tokyo Bay, when they signed the surrender.\u00a0 I was in the wrong place.\u00a0 He never talked about it.\u00a0 Tom Brokall was right.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t talk about their experiences.\u00a0 They just kept it all to themselves.\u00a0 Just in the last few years he would say some things.\u00a0 We would put stories together.\u00a0 They would be good stories.\u00a0 We should have heard them a long time ago.\u00a0 There is a lot to tell.\u00a0 We are in a such busy world.\u00a0 We don\u2019t take time to listen.<\/p>\n

KL:\u00a0 Do you think he waited, is that a Chinese tradition of not talking about it?<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 No, I think all the people in World War II.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know any one that talked about it.\u00a0 That was such a tremendous upheaval because all the men left.\u00a0 Daddy, bless his heart, he said well when they got us older men in there that is win they started winning the war.\u00a0 He had never said that before.\u00a0 He said that in the last two or three years.\u00a0 I bought him that book.\u00a0 He was reading it.\u00a0 He was enjoying every bit of it.\u00a0 They were just an unusual.\u00a0 They still, he had shipmates that still kept up with each other.\u00a0 They have reunions.\u00a0 It is really neat.\u00a0 Some of them had lied about there age.\u00a0 Some of them were only about fourteen or fifteen years of age.\u00a0 They were down in there with men that had four or five kids.\u00a0 It was quite an experience.\u00a0 We do still eat Chinese food.\u00a0 We eat all kinds of food actually.\u00a0 I think that is the world today.<\/p>\n

JM:\u00a0 Back to my second question that I had.\u00a0 I think you have all ready answered it actually.\u00a0 When the Chinese private school was closed, and you went to other schools?<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t closed when we left.\u00a0 It still went on.<\/p>\n

EJ:\u00a0 Boyle<\/p>\n

JM:\u00a0 Boyle, but it was World War II, and people\u2019s exposure that sort of closed that gap.<\/p>\n

EJ:\u00a0 Well I think so it took a lot of tolerance for people to change.\u00a0 Then too, I think, the integration situation up in the delta had always been stickly in that area.\u00a0 As after the war and the years went on, there was more times in the delta that the traditionally included the Chinese population into these main stream because most of the merchants in town were Oriental.\u00a0 They came in the main stream of the population, economically, financial, and world wise.\u00a0 We became more accepted.\u00a0 In fact, due to the war and due to education.\u00a0 We are creature that are of\u00a0 (Tape was not able to understand).\u00a0 I had four brothers, and we all attended Boyle High School (Tape was not able to understand).\u00a0 As usual people may have called us athletic.\u00a0 I am where I want to be.\u00a0 In sports, I played pretty good sports.\u00a0 You get accepted there a lot better.\u00a0 As well as education, I think Annette was valedictorian of her class.\u00a0 Of course I think because of our parents pushing us to do good in school and in the community.\u00a0 They always made sure we would stay out of trouble.<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 Remember what home you came from.<\/p>\n

EJ:\u00a0 You would get it when you get back.\u00a0 If you get it at school, you would get it at home too.<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 That is exactly right, that is what is wrong with our community today.\u00a0 They don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

EJ:\u00a0 They always said not to embarrass your family name.\u00a0 My parents would always say that. \u201cDon\u2019t embarrass your family name.\u201d\u00a0 What ever you do, don\u2019t embarrass you family name.\u00a0 That is a big tradition.\u00a0 Really the kids these days grow up without a family.\u00a0 In the situations that we are going through now, we are getting fruits of that type.\u00a0 Families are broken.<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 Daddy, I remember so well that he wouldn\u2019t allow anybody to say dirty or ugly words.\u00a0 He would always say listen well, I have raised a bunch girls here.\u00a0 We are not going to have that.\u00a0 Go outside, or if he thought thought that they were going to be rambunctious, he would send us inside.\u00a0 He would not let us stay out there.\u00a0 I remember that so well.\u00a0 If he knew it was a troublemaker, he pretty well knew who was what.\u00a0 He would say, sorry I am raising girls.\u00a0 I don\u2019t like that.\u00a0 Go outside, they never.\u00a0 We did not sold beer because of that.\u00a0 I think our preacher in our community had such a big.\u00a0 He did so much for us as far as values and as far as.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 I can remember I went to G. A. Camp.\u00a0 My preacher took me to G. A. Camp.\u00a0 He loaded me off, and here I am in Clinton, MS at Camp Garaway.\u00a0 I was ten or eleven years old.\u00a0 That was really quite an experience.\u00a0 I really was different.\u00a0 I was always did okay.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t like we couldn\u2019t eat the food.\u00a0 Or we didn\u2019t dress the same way.\u00a0 Mother made all of our clothes.\u00a0 She was a wonderful seamstress.\u00a0 We did okay. The preachers I think encouraged us.\u00a0 I know goodness I played piano at church.\u00a0 They would call.\u00a0 He was just so sweet.\u00a0 Here I am just a little kid.\u00a0 I know I am a little kid.\u00a0 I can remember old Caraway, Ms. Annette we need you to play for us Sunday our organist is not going to be there.\u00a0 I am thinking I can\u2019t play the organ.\u00a0 I play the piano.\u00a0 They thought it is the same thing.\u00a0 I said do you really want me to do that.\u00a0 Yes, we really need you to do that.\u00a0 I know how bumly I was on that organ.\u00a0 The ladies would come up there and say that is just so sweet.\u00a0 They would just encourage you.\u00a0 It was good encouragement.\u00a0 It is a positive stroking.\u00a0 I think that is the richness.\u00a0 My daddy he is just so sweet.\u00a0 My mother also said if you find any friends make sure that they are Christian friends because they are the best friends.\u00a0 She taught us that.\u00a0 Of course now you could say it too.\u00a0 It still holds true today.\u00a0 The basic, basic caring about each other and trying to do the best that you can do with what you have.\u00a0 It was okay.\u00a0 A lot of people ask me are bitter about the way it was back then.\u00a0 I know a lot of things were unfair.\u00a0 I am sure there are lots of stories down there that you can dig out.\u00a0 Through it all, it is the attitude that you have about where you are going and what you are doing and the values are there.\u00a0 No matter who or what you are all right with the Lord so you know that you are okay. You don\u2019t have to worry about it.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have to be the best.\u00a0 You just do the best that you can.\u00a0 I like that.\u00a0 I try to pass that on to all the kids that I teach.\u00a0 I told them that they may never learn to play the piano, but if they learn to listen when someone speaks to them and show a little bit of respect of property and things like that.\u00a0 They may have learn things and take them a long way.\u00a0 It still lives today.\u00a0 It is coming through.\u00a0 That is about all that I know.<\/p>\n

EJ:\u00a0 You all have another interview.<\/p>\n

JM:\u00a0 Yes we do.<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 Do you want to call Wanita.<\/p>\n

JM:\u00a0 Thank you very much.<\/p>\n

AJ:\u00a0 Oh gracious<\/p>\n

KL:\u00a0 Enjoyed talking to you.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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