‘I want people to have uncomfortable conversations’: A new documentary explores Chinese and Black relations in the Jim Crow South

Crystal Kwok: I visited the Rosa Parks Museum in Alabama and I decided to kind of take my phone and just randomly ask people. I asked several people outside the museum. And it was interesting. They just had no idea, because this question never popped up. It never occurred to people that there were non-Black and [non-] white people on the segregated bus.

It started off as a very personal project of mine because I was very close to my grandmother growing up. She had this very thick Southern accent. And she would tell me stories, including how she ran away and how she slowly took money to plan her trip to run away. She was about 17 at the time and running away from the segregated South. But as I started to do my research going to Augusta, Georgia, and, you know, learning about the racial history, I realized that there was a much bigger story of race relations between the Chinese and Black community. And so, it started shifting into something much bigger and much deeper.

We’ve been othered in such ways that it’s like the default mode for people to assume that we are not a part of a legitimate American history. History is produced by the people in power. We don’t think about things on the margins. It’s reduced to, “OK, which fountain did you drink from the white fountain or the Black fountain?” “Where did you sit on the bus?” or “How did you enter the theater?” And so, you know, we get so reduced to these binaries.

The white community, at that time, they didn’t want to do business with the Black people. So, that’s how the Chinese stepped in. Slowly, slowly, these families, including my grandmother’s family, they left from San Francisco over to Augusta, Georgia, to join this small, but very strong, community of Chinese grocers. The Chinese allowed the Black customers to pay with credit, meaning a lot of times, they didn’t get their paycheck until the end of the month, and they were allowed to sign off and just take things home. So, between storekeeper and customer, yes, it was friendly. But at the same time, I think the Black community recognized there was a power structure. In my family, they were friendly, but they kept their distance. They were not allowed to become friends or even associate with any of the Black neighbors. Whereas in some cases, which I discovered, the ones who allowed their kids at the time to play with their Black neighbors, this all played out during the riots, the big 1970 race riots.

There was a huge protest and a riot. You know, it was just kind of like complete destruction mode, really. So, most of the stores were devastated at that time. There were two stores that stayed untouched. They were the ones who had relationships, who had friendly relationships with their Black neighbors. They were friends. And the Black community would validate. They said that they remember telling the protesters, the rioters, they said, don’t touch this store.

As much as I wanted to stage my story around Chinese and Black community voices, you know, the stories about them, but the foundation of it is the white supremacist structure that brought these two marginal communities together in the first place. I love this analogy: white supremacy isn’t the sharks in the water, it’s the water.

I want people to leave with questions. I want people to have uncomfortable conversations at home. I think we don’t do enough of that.