Chinese Plantation Workers...

[5fish]

The Southern ruling class had a solution for their labor needs after the civil war. It was to import Chinese laborers...

Chinese Plantation Workers

Before the 1870s, there were only a tiny handful of Chinese people living in the American South. But with the end of the Civil War and the emancipation of black slaves, Southern planters began to e…

studiesinamericanhistory.wordpress.com

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Southern planters began to eye the Chinese as possible substitutes for their former human property.

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After all, according to reports from California, Chinese laborers were docile and hardworking. Why should they be less so as field hands than as gold miners and railroad workers? If the Chinese would be willing to work according to the terms that had prevailed under slavery, perhaps the emancipated blacks could be persuaded to return to their former condition as well.

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So in 1869, Southern elites organized a conference to discuss Chinese labor. Hundreds of delegates assembled in Memphis, Tennessee. A notable Chinese labor contractor assured the crowd that the Chinese were obedient, industrious, and naive; a famous importer of Chinese labor promised that workers could be brought from China on five-year contracts for as little as ten dollars a month.

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Both the Southern planters and the Chinese laborers quickly became disillusioned. The plantation owners were accustomed to exerting absolute control over their workers; they believed that the way to increase productivity was to have overseers whip grown men into tractability. But the Chinese considered their relationship to the planters to be a normal business arrangement; they expected their employers to adhere to the terms of their contracts, and had no intentions of laboring under oppressive conditions.

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Unlike the former slaves, the Chinese laborers worked under contract, and they proved to be shrewd negotiators, hiring bilingual interpreters and lawyers to protect their interests. When employers violated contracts, the Chinese filed lawsuits. In this they were supported by a postwar government that was alert to any signs of racial exploitation in the South

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The Southern oligarchy’s dream of holding Chinese workers in bondage turned out to be a nightmare. Within a few years, most of the Chinese had walked away from their contracts and moved to cities, where they accepted real jobs or opened their own businesses. By 1915 there were almost no Chinese workers on Southern plantations.

 

[5fish]

Here...

Chinese labor in the southern United States - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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In the mid-late 19th Century, Southern planters argued that because of the Civil War and Reconstruction policies, there wasn't a sufficient labor pool to maintain the plantations. Post-emancipation, Freed Blacks demanded higher wages and migrated to rejoin families broken apart by slavery. In response, Southern planters argued that Black laborers were unreliable and unstable and implemented Black codes with labor provisions that would limit the mobility of Black people.[1]

Starting as early as 1865, Southern newspapers began printing editorials and letters calling for Chinese labor to be the new labor supply.[2] This interest was sparked in part by accounts boasting that the Chinese contract labor attributed to the increase in Cuban agricultural imports. The Chinese effectively became the new labor supply but were positioned societally at the same level as African Americans.

The importation of Chinese labor to the South did not happen overnight. In February 1866, R.S. Chilton, the commissioner of U.S. immigration argued in his report to Congress that under the 1862 act prohibiting coolie trade, importation of Chinese labor to the South should be prohibited and southerners should instead work out contracts with freed Blacks. However, because the commissioner associated Chinese immigration as "involuntary" immigration, southern publications and advocates of importing Chinese labor found a loophole by arguing that Chinese laborers were "voluntary" and had left Cuba after their eight-year contracts expired.[3]''''

 

[5fish]

Chinese became grocers... its a good read the Chinese of the delta...

Chinese in Mississippi: An Ethnic People in a Biracial Society - 2002-11

A small group of Chinese immigrants came to Mississippi after the American Civil War. In their new environment, they sought ways to earn money and to adapt to the predominant culture of the state while preserving their ethnic identity. They came into a society dominated by Mississippians of...

www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov

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Like most Chinese immigrants to the United States, those coming to Mississippi were mainly from the Sze Yap, a district in south China. Sze Yap was a more commercially sophisticated area than many parts of China at the time, with a history of contacts with foreign traders. Immigrants were likely from peasant and artisan families. Traditionally, young males from the area traveled far for work to supplement the family income. The initial immigrants to Mississippi came not to settle here, but to earn money to send home as savings to be used when they returned to China. Once they were here, though, others soon arrived, often with more financial resources than the first immigrants. Few women came in this period and the men remained socially isolated. Furthermore, the state’s preoccupation with racial issues resulted in the Chinese being classified as non-white in a predominantly biracial Mississippi social system. These early immigrants to the state sought, however, economic success rather than social recognition, since they did not intend to stay long.

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The Chinese soon realized that working on a plantation did not produce economic success. They then turned to another activity — opening and running grocery stores. The first Chinese grocery store in Mississippi likely appeared in the early 1870s. Tax records in the early 1880s list Chinese as landowners in Rosedale, in Boliver County.

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Chinese grocers, nonetheless, carved out a successful, distinctive role. One reason for their success was a cohesive family system. After they established their small businesses, these early Chinese merchants would send back home for a young male from their family to come and help the business succeed and to learn how to run a business. That young relative would later perhaps use his savings, loans from relatives, and credit from wholesale suppliers to set up his own grocery. Hard work, experience in business operations, and a reputation for financial integrity soon led to good credit ratings for the Chinese merchants. For generations, grocery stores would be passed down from father to son, and as late as the 1970s, six family names accounted for 80 percent of the Delta Chinese population.

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The Chinese also carved out a distinctive spot as a third element in a predominantly biracial society. White Mississippians originally classified the Chinese in the Delta on a low social par with African Americans. They were outsiders in a racially aware state. They sold their goods mostly to black customers, and they lived in black neighborhoods. Blacks and whites did not, however, see Chinese as precisely equivalent to blacks. Chinese were culturally and linguistically quite different from Mississippi African Americans, and their merchant status was above that of most blacks. The Chinese grocery was, however, a welcoming place for African Americans in the Delta: a place to sit and talk, pass the time, and even find work from landowners who would check there for available day laborers. The Chinese were middlemen between blacks and whites, often providing a needed contact point in a segregated society.