Water Tossing Boulders

How a Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools in the Jim Crow South

By: Adrienne Berard

Narrated by: Moe Egan

Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

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 Supreme Court case to challenge the constitutionality of racial segregation in Southern public schools, an astonishing thirty years before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Unearthing one of the greatest stories never told, journalist Adrienne Berard recounts how three unlikely heroes sought to shape a new South. A poor immigrant from southern China, Jeu Gong Lum came to America with the hope of a better future for his family. Unassuming yet boldly determined, his daughter Martha would inhabit that future and become the face of the fight to integrate schools. Earl Brewer, their lawyer and staunch ally, was once a millionaire and governor of Mississippi. When he took the family’s case, Brewer was both bankrupt and a political pariah—a man with nothing left to lose.

By confronting the “separate but equal” doctrine, the Lum family fought for the right to educate Chinese Americans in the white schools of the Jim Crow South. Using their groundbreaking lawsuit as a compass, Berard depicts the complicated condition of racial otherness in rural Southern society.

In a sweeping narrative that is both epic and intimate, Water Tossing Boulders evokes a time and place previously defined by black and white, a time and place that, until now, has never been viewed through the eyes of a forgotten third race. In vivid prose, the Mississippi Delta, an empire of cotton and a bastion of slavery, is reimagined to reveal the experiences of a lost immigrant community. Through extensive research in historical documents and family correspondence, Berard illuminates a vital, forgotten chapter of America’s past and uncovers the powerful journey of an oppressed people in their struggle for equality.

©2016 Adrienne Berard (P)2016 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“In an engaging bit of social history, Berard rescues a forgotten part of Southern history and brings it to light, offering readers a rare glimpse into Chinese immigrant life and the way segregation affected so many for decades. Flush with telling details and backed by meticulous research, a piece of near-forgotten Chinese-American history is retold.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Surely the most racist Supreme Court decision in the twentieth century, Gong Lum v. Rice has finally found its biographer. Adrienne Berard, who lives about twenty miles from where it all happened, has unearthed fresh facts and brought them to life to tell an important story.” —James Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me

“With luminous prose and intricate research, Adrienne Berard has preserved an undeservedly forgotten battle in the struggle for racial equality...In Berard’s skilled and supple hands, the past speaks eloquently to our American present.” —Samuel G. Freedman, author of Breaking the Line: The Season in Black College Football That Transformed the Sport and Changed the Course of Civil Rights

Over a third of the book was just about the lawyer

I ended up returning this book about two thirds though when I gave up in absolute frustration. The first third, which is mostly about the Lum family, is interesting. But as soon as they meet the lawyer the book becomes all about him and I didn’t buy the book the learn about his history! There’s absolutely no reason I need to know about his father’s history, his family, or his childhood, or teenage years, or early career, or any of it, but unfortunately I do now. If the author had spent more time on the actual subject of the book, the Lum family and their history, it could have been a great book. But I absolutely do not recommend this book. Unless what you’re actually interested in is the lawyer’s personal history.

Narrator did great and is the only reason I felt a bit guilty about returning this title.