The Chinese of the Mississippi Delta are an often-overlooked part of the history of the Deep South. In part one of our two-part series, Sandra Knispel of Mississippi Public Broadcasting tells the story of how they came all the way to the small towns of the Delta.
Tensions were mounting on Audubon Drive in East Memphis in late 1956. The folks at 1034 were nice enough people, but the visitors were a problem. The traffic jams of people wanting to get a look at the house, the pink Cadillac in the driveway, maybe get a picture taken with the parents, see if the son was home; all this was getting to be too much for the neighbors.