From Segregated Classrooms to Selective Colleges: Chinese American Education in Arkansas

Introduction

The experiences of Chinese Arkansans in educational institutions, ranging from primary and secondary schools to higher education, highlight both the struggles and successes of an immigrant community consciously determined to secure better opportunities for future generations. This exhibit highlights personal narratives, historical context, and archival information collected by our researchers to explore the critical role of education in shaping the lives of Chinese Americans and their families in Arkansas. Learning about the impact of educational opportunities is not just a window into the past, it has become the foundation for future generations in understanding the context for modern racial and ethnic stereotyping. Despite navigating a shifting laws around desegregation, social isolation, and personal family obligations, Chinese families in rural Arkansas achieved uncommon success in pursuing educational opportunities within and beyond their communities.

School in the segregated South

To complicate matters of education, segregation in the South was commonplace. Segregation was not, however, very clearly defined for racial or ethnic groups outside of the Black/White divide. Following the landmark Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, a more specific case, Gong Lum v. Rice in 1927, upheld segregation in schools against students of Chinese descent. In Mississippi, Martha Lum, the daughter of Chinese immigrant Gong Lum, was sent home from the White school she had attempted to attend because she was Chinese (St. John’s Law Review). Her father sued by claiming that Martha had been incorrectly classified as “colored” while the state sought to win the discrimination case by designating Chinese American students as “colored” to further prohibit them from attending White schools. Despite the Supreme Court of Mississippi ruling in Gong Lum’s favor, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision and, in 1927, upheld the state’s right to use legislation to classify Chinese students as “among the colored races who are assigned to public schools separate from those provided for the whites” (Lum v. Rice).

Unlike their counterparts in Mississippi, many school districts in Arkansas did not block Chinese children from attending White schools, which led to Arkansas becoming a refuge for Chinese families seeking better educational opportunities for their children. Some families were already settled in Arkansas, but some immigrants purposefully made the move from Mississippi to Arkansas so that their children or future children could attend White schools. For many first generation immigrants, education was not simply a path to personal achievement for their children, it was a necessary step to overcoming barriers of exclusion and discrimination. 

“According to what my mother told me, she saw better educational opportunities in Arkansas. She found that her children could go to some of the better schools.” –Don Lum

A majority of Chinese Americans in Arkansas were in school during the time of desegregation. While many of them were attending school in a post Brown v. Board Arkansas, most of them were attending White schools. For many of the immigrant parents of these students, obtaining a good education for their children was critical, and that often included separating themselves from association with a minority status. (Bow, “Racial Interstitiality and the Anxieties of the ‘Partly Colored” in Asian Americans in Dixie, 72) Having experienced discrimination in Mississippi themselves, some immigrants sought better opportunities in Arkansas. Marilyn Joe Fong noted that her mother would say “‘I hated Mississippi cause they wouldn’t let me go to school there.’ And she’s had that chip on her shoulder, you know? She felt like Arkansas treated her better.” Lucy Joe Fong’s father made the conscious decision to move to Arkansas so that his future children could attend White schools, even though his family would regularly interact with Black clients and community members. 

Chinese Arkansan Experiences with desegergation

Federal guidelines/regulations about segregation would not impact Arkansas again until the mid-twentieth century. Although the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education ruled segregation illegal, it was not until 1957 that The Little Rock Nine attempted to integrate Little Rock, Arkansas’ high school system. Despite the importance of the federal government’s backing of desegregation, there was no way to force the implementation of desegregation across the nation, and many rural counties fell through the cracks. By 1960, only 10 out of 75 counties in Arkansas had made any efforts to desegregate or integrate their schools (Encyclopedia of Arkansas). There are 13 different Arkansas cities that represent 8 counties where the Chinese Americans interviewed for this project grew up, none of which had desegregated by 1960.

City	County	Desegregation	# of Black Students in 1965	# of integrated Black Students in 1965
Altheimer	Jefferson	1965	991	12
Arkansas City	Desha	1966	115	0
Blytheville	Mississippi	1962	2,581	12
Crawfordsville	Crittenden	1966	N/A	N/A
Dermott	Chicot	1965	971	4
Dumas	Desha	1965	1,368	40
Earle	Crittenden	1965	N/A	N/A
Elaine	Phillips	1965	903	11
Holly Grove	Monroe	1965	N/A	N/A
Hughes	St. Francis	1965	1,831	3
Lake Village	Chicot	1965	1,115	5
Pine Bluff	Jefferson	1963	3,796	11
West Helena	Phillips	1965	4,187	100

In Beverly Go Wasson’s case, her family was mere blocks away from the schools in her town, but they were the Black schools that were severely underfunded and did not have the same educational opportunities as the White schools. Her father enrolled her and her siblings in the White schools, often having to drop them off early in the morning and pick them up late from school to accommodate the customers he would get during school rush hours. Laurence Howe, who grew up across the border from Memphis in Crawfordsville, AR, went to public school until a couple years after his district integrated. He was then enrolled in a private school in Tennessee because his father “wanted us to go to private schools in Memphis to get the best education that he could afford to give us.”

School Life Beyond Race: Academics, Activities, and Daily Expectations 

Although race played a significant role in determining where Chinese Arkansans attended school, many of them noted that their racial and cultural identity did not significantly impact their day to day life through primary and secondary school. Some of the experiences of Chinese Arkansan students were unique as the children of entrepreneurial immigrant parents, but many of them had to navigate academic expectations, extracurricular activities, friendships, and work just like their peers.

For many Chinese Arkansans, there was a significant expectation that they would work in their family’s store during their free time. For each family, this expectation was different. Lucy Joe Fong and her siblings experienced some of the stricter side of store life. When talking about her father, she noted that “he was a hard taskmaster because he expected us to come home from school every day to work in the store. No activities after school.” Her family’s store took up a majority of her time when she was not studying, so much so that she notes in her interview feeling socially inept by the time she attended college. On the other hand, Bill Yee said that his parents “didn’t want us working night and day in the grocery store, and their goal was always for us to go get an education.” Both Bill and his brother Joe Dan would still work in their family’s store, but there was much less pressure to spend all of their free time helping their parents.

Several Chinese Arkansans were involved in as many extracurricular activities as they could fit into their schedules. Don Lum was the president of his student council, captain of his football team, and lettered in both football and track. Monty Wong was in his school’s Beta Club, Future Farmers of America, Cub and Boy Scouts, and he played a variety of sports like football, basketball, baseball, and track. Ping Fong was another active student, winning state titles in Track. One of Lee Sing’s brothers even became the president of Pine Bluff High and had a magazine article written about him.

Despite living in rural towns in the deep south with a heavily racialized climate, many Chinese Arkansans noted that they did not feel discriminated against as children. Charlie Young attributed the lack of discrimination he felt to the fact that there were “a bunch of Chinese kids [that] went to Earle High School” which helped to normalize a Chinese American existence and provide them with a community of their own when they needed it. Although Chinese Arkansans may not have felt targeted, several of them felt isolated while growing up because of their identity. Susie Tonymon said that while she did not feel like there was any discrimination at her school, she was embarrassed to speak Chinese because it made her feel different, and she just “wanted to be like everybody else.”

Educational Pressure

One of the motivations for these parents to push their children was the desire for them to do and achieve better. Lee Sing told us that his dad “saw education, college education, as almost the key to having a better life.” Since many of the Chinese immigrants had experienced a difficult life of immigration, perseverance, and acclimation to a new country, Sing notes that his father would tell him and his siblings to “go to college, be a doctor or be a lawyer.” because he saw those as financially stable professions that would secure their future. Higher education also meant more opportunities to move where they wanted and do what they wanted to do instead of having to pursue a career out of survival. 

Chinese American Higher Education and Beyond

Higher education was viewed as an essential step toward success, and many second and third-generation Chinese Arkansans pursued college degrees with the encouragement and expectations of their families. While their parents often ran small businesses in rural towns, many of these students were among the first Chinese Americans to attend universities in Arkansas and beyond. Their journeys reflect both the sacrifices made by earlier generations and the drive to create new opportunities beyond the family store.

Out of the 22 individuals interviewed for this project, 20 attended college – an extraordinary statistic for rural Arkansas students in the mid-1900s. To add context to this situation, in 1960, only 4.8% of Arkansans 25 years and older had a Bachelor’s Degree or more. By 1970, that percentage had only increased to 6.7% (census.gov). Additionally, many of our interviewees had several siblings that also attended college. James Suen, who attended the University of Texas at Austin, earned his medical degree from UAMS, and was a fellow at MD Anderson Cancer Center. He had eight siblings, all of whom attended and graduated from college. To have entire groups of siblings and an approximately 90% college attendance rate within the Chinese Arkansan demographic at this time helps to highlight the collective emphasis on higher education. It underscores the determination of Chinese Arkansan families to ensure that their children had access to greater opportunities

Beyond undergraduate attendance and graduation, several Chinese Arkansans and their siblings pursued advanced degrees, primarily in the medical or technical fields. Bill Yee and Joe Dan Yee, brothers, both attended the University of Arkansas Fayetteville along with three of their four other siblings. Elisa Pang, who completed two years at the U of A was one of seven out of eight siblings to attend college. Ping Fong, who earned his undergraduate degree from Purdue and continued on to get two Master’s degrees, was the youngest of four siblings to all graduate from college. 

Conclusion

The educational experiences and achievements of Chinese Arkansans in the mid-twentieth century are important and noteworthy, but ironically they have also contributed to the decline of Chinese-owned groceries in the rural South. The pursuit of higher education led many Chinese Arkansans away from their home towns and their parents’ businesses, leading many Chinese American store owners to sell or close the family store when they retired. Some from the college generation moved out of state, some continued to live in Arkansas separate from their families, and a few would return to briefly support their family’s store, but their collective educational achievements has ensured that success for subsequent generations of Chinese Arkansans looks quite different from the lifestyles and businesses of earlier generations.

Discussion Questions:

1. How did segregation laws and desegregation affect Chinese Arkansan students differently than Black and White students in the South?
2. What role did family businesses play in the lives of Chinese Arkansans and how did that impact their education?
3. Why might education have been so important to Chinese immigrants?
4. How did the expectations of parents influence Chinese students’ performance in school and their choices beyond high school?
5. What factors went into Chinese students’ feelings of inclusion or belonging in school?
6. Why are the higher education achievements of Chinese students noteworthy?

Further Reading:

1. Adrienne Berard, Water Tossing Boulders: How a Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools in the Jim Crow South (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2016).
   • Berard provides a much farther encompassing history in the case of Lum v. Rice(1927) and highlights some of the broader racialized struggles for access to education in the Mississippi and Arkansas Delta. This is a valuable resource in understanding immigration, education, and race policy as it intertwines with southern Chinese experiences. 
2. James W. Loewen, The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 1988).
   • Loewen’s writing puts Chinese experiences with race relations into a context that frames many families’ decision to move to states like Arkansas for education. The categorization of social status pre 1940 helps create an understanding of how many Chinese families were treated, largely before many of the interviewees for this project would have remembered.
3. Judy Yung, Chinese Women of America: A Pictorial History. (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1986).
   • This pictorial history highlights many Chinese women in the South that have similar stories to Chinese Arkansans. Louise Lee Gee, pictured above in the exhibit, is one of the women included in this book. Yung engages many contradictory narratives of inclusion vs exclusion, involvement vs isolation, and more to provide context into what it was like to be Chinese in a heavily racialized southern climate.
4. Khyati Y. Joshi and Jigna Desai, eds, Asian Americans in Dixie: Race and Migration in the South. (University of Illinois Press, 2013).
   • Leslie Bow’s chapter, “Racial Interstitiality and the Anxieties of the ‘Partly Colored’” discusses the ways in which the Chinese in the Delta navigated the Black/White racial divide and how they were categorized within that divide. Other chapters help to frame Asian American struggles throughout the American South. This source acts as a wider guide to understanding the context of early Asian communities different from those of Chinese Arkansans but similar in some of their experiences. Chapter 5 titled “Moving out of the Margins and into the Mainstream: The Demographics of Asian Americans in the New South” also discusses educational attainment and the difference between different typical education levels and those achieved by Asian Americans.
5. Leslie Bow, Partly Colored: Asian Americans and Racial Anomaly in the Segregated South. (New York: New York University Press, 2010).
   • Through a discussion of different segregationist policies implemented in the South, Bow’s book analyzes the inclusion and exclusion of Chinese Americans and how many Chinese families navigated the Black/White divide. In chapter 3, Bow compares the experiences of different Chinese communities, one from Arkansas and one from Mississippi, to frame how different states within the South could still produce different experiences with integration by Chinese children. 
6. Mark A. Gooden, “Gong Lum v. Rice” and “Brown v. Board of Education,” in Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/event/Gong-Lum-v-Rice.
   • This source provides a more specific look into the two major Supreme Court cases that impacted Chinese Arkansan education the most. The history of each case, the precedents used to determine the case, and brief outcomes are described for both cases.
7. Shih-Shan Henry Tsai, “The Chinese in Arkansas,” Amerasia Journal 8, 1 (May, 1981): 1-18, doi:10.17953/amer.8.1.uvh488861156m5r2.
   • Tsai provides a significant history of the Chinese in Arkansas, particularly in relation to their experiences with business and education as tools to navigate a segregated society. Having taught at the University of Arkansas from 1971 to 2008, Tsai brought broader Asian Studies efforts to Arkansas and interacted with a number of Chinese Arkansans. 

Sources

1. Encyclopedia of Arkansas, “School Desegregation Timeline,” updated February 3, 2025, https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/school-desegregation-timeline-19725/.
2. Michael B. Dougan, “Elementary and Secondary Education,” in Encyclopedia of Arkansas, updated November 18, 2024, https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/elementary-and-secondary-education-389/.
3. Southern Education Reporting Service, Statistical Summary of School Segregation-Desegregation in the Southern Border States. (Nashville, TN: Southern Education Reporting Service, 1961) 7-11.
4. St. John’s Law Review, “Racial Segregation in Public Education: Gong Lum v. Rice,” St. John’s Law Review 2, 2. (May, 1928).
5. U.S. Census Bureau, “Arkansas: Educational Attainment of the Population 25 Years and Over: 1940 to 2000.” https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2000/phc/phc-t-41/AR.pdf
6. William Howard Taft, “Gong Lum v. Rice, 275 U.S. 78 (1927)” JUSTIA U.S. Supreme Court, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/275/78/.