Water Tossing Boulders
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A generation before Brown v. Board of Education struck down America’s “separate but equal” doctrine, one Chinese family and an eccentric Mississippi lawyer fought for desegregation in one of the greatest legal battles never told On September 15, 1924, Martha Lum and her older sister Berda were barred from attending middle school in Rosedale, Mississippi. The girls were Chinese American and considered by the school to be “colored”; the school was for whites. This event would lead to the first US
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This gripping historical account uncovers the 1924 Lum v. Rice case, where Chinese American students in Mississippi were barred from white schools decades before Brown v. Board of Education. Adrienne Berard meticulously reconstructs how Martha Lum and her family challenged segregation laws in a landmark legal battle that history nearly forgot, revealing the complex racial hierarchies that defined the Jim Crow South beyond the Black-white binary.
Berard's narrative shines in its intimate portrayal of the Lum family's determination and their unlikely alliance with an eccentric local lawyer who took on their case. Teen readers will connect with the personal stakes of educational access while gaining crucial perspective on how civil rights struggles have always involved diverse communities fighting injustice. The book's recovery of this overlooked precedent makes essential reading for understanding the long, multifaceted fight for educational equality in America.
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