Chinese Grocery Stores in the Mississippi Delta

During Reconstruction, cotton planters in the Mississippi Delta recruited Chinese laborers to work on their plantations, to replace the emancipated slaves who had previously done the hard labor. However, the Chinese workers quickly learned that they couldn’t earn enough money picking cotton to send back to their families, and they turned instead to running small grocery stores, filling a niche in the market of the Deep South. At one point, the city of Greenville, Mississippi, had 40,000 residents and 50 Chinese-owned grocery stores. Although the numbers of Chinese Americans living in the Mississippi Delta region had dwindled now, their legacy remains. Joining me to help us learn about this history is filmmaker and musician Larissa Lam , director of the 2021 documentary Far East Deep South , which follows her husband ’s family as they search for their own lost family history in the Mississippi Delta. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag , composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Image Credit: “ In the Mississippi Delta. There is an ever-increasing number of Chinese grocerymen and merchants .” Marion Post Wolcott, photographer. Leland, Miss…