An Alliance of Chinese Immigrants and Mississippi Delta Elites against School Segregation: U.S. SupremeCourt cases Lum v. Rice (1927) and Lun v. Bond (1929).
You are cordially invited to join a guest lecture by Prof. Susan Brownwell this Wednesday!
Date: Wednesday, Oct 30, 2024, 4-5:20pm
Location: Via Zoom Online (https://uh-edu-cougarnet.zoom.us/j/83207480876)
OR in-person Cougar Village 1 (CV1), Room N 113
4385 COUGAR VILLAGE DRIVE
HOUSTON, TX 77204-7002
In the Mississippi Delta, an alliance of Chinese immigrants and white elites fought against racial segregation in the schools in two lawsuits that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The legal fees were paid by a local association of Chinese merchants and the primary attorney was Earl Brewer, governor of Mississippi in 1912-1916. Lum v. Rice (1927) was the first-ever challenge to school segregation to reach the U.S. Supreme Court; the court supported the legality of segregation, and reaffirmed it in Lun v. Bond (1929). Uncovering the broader networks that supported the cases reveals a progressive white faction that worked together with a Chinese network, but ultimately their effort was blocked by the Mississippi state government and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Speaker: Prof. Susan Brownwell, History Professor at UMSL
Dr. Brownell is an internationally recognized expert on Chinese sports, Olympic Games, and World’s Fairs. She won UMSL’s Chancellor’s Award for Research and Creativity in 2015.She has done fieldwork in China, primarily in Beijing and Shanghai. In 2007-08 she was a Fulbright Senior Researcher at the Beijing Sport University, doing research on the Beijing Olympic Games. She also did research at the Olympics in Athens, Rio, and PyeongChang.
Dr. Brownell grew up in Virginia. She traces her interest in China back to the stories told by her grandmother, whose father was governor of Mississippi, a civil rights proponent, and lawyer for the Mississippi Chinese Association in the 1910s and 20s. Her love of anthropology began as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, where she took Victor Turner's famous seminar, in which the participants reenacted different rituals from around the world.
She was also a nationally-ranked track and field athlete in the U.S. before she joined the track team at Beijing University in 1985-86 while she was there for a year of Chinese language studies. She represented Beijing in the 1986 Chinese National College Games and set a national record in the heptathlon. In 1987-88 she returned to the Beijing Sport University for a year of dissertation research. She has taught at Middlebury College, the University of Washington, Yale University, and Heidelberg University.