Who Was Bert V. Eutemey, And What Was His Importance for New York City Chinese?

It was not until the 1930s in New York City that Chinese who died could receive mortuary services from a Chinese. For decades, a caucasian undertaker, probably Irish or Italian, performed these services because discriminatory prejudices did not allow Chinese to enter this profession. Unfortunately, white undertakers were not familiar with or incorporated many Chinese cultural practices and beliefs about funerals.

Bert V. Eutemey, a name that does not appear to be Chinese, was born in Jamaica with a mixed English, African, and Chinese ancestry. He became the first licensed Chinese undertaker in New York City in 1930 with his Chinese Cheung Sang Funeral Corporation at 22 Mulberry Street, a name that ironically translates as "The Chinese Wish You Long and Happy Life Corporation." Historian Shirley Yee noted in her recent book "An Immigrant Neighborhood: Interethnic and Interracial Encounters in New York, that since he was born in Jamaica, Eutemey was able to gain entry into the mortuary business using the non-Chinese part of his identity as a white British citizen. His Chinese background and bi-lingual fluency then facilitated his acceptance in the Chinese community.  It is paradoxical that Eutemey's mixed racial heritage, usually a stigmatized condition, actually worked to his advantage in this situation.

 Despite this obvious advantage, Eutemey still occasionally faced some delicate situations such as whether to conduct a funeral using western or Chinese customs. In 1930, an article in the New York Sun, Jan. 8 reported that Eutemey was in a dilemma planning the funeral of Charlie Boston, a Chinese Christian, as different relatives disagreed about whether he should receive a western or Chinese-style send-off. It was reported that Eutemey was prepared for either decision by hiring both an American and a Chinese band.

I had never thought about this problem before I learned about the significant impact that Eutemey had for the Chinese community in New York City. It raises questions of what happened to Chinese who died in the rest of the country, and how did Chinese elsewhere break the racial barriers in this profession?

Faces and Places of Chinese Miners on Gum Saan

Many Chinese immigrants came to California to seek their fortunes on Gum Saan or “Gold Mountain” after the 1848 discovery of gold in the Sierra mountains. Although many accounts have been written about these men, there is little visual evidence about these men who struggled in their quest for gold.

An unusual and fascinating document at the California Historical Society is a notebook maintained by John T. Mason, a justice of the peace in Downieville, once a thriving gold mining town in the Sierras in the mid 19th century that gives rare and arresting head and shoulders photographs of close to 200 Chinese, the majority being miners, but included some cooks, and several merchants.  The collection of photographs, probably taken for use on the identity cards that Chinese were required to carry under the1890 Geary Act. Most of the photos, which resemble police mug shots, were taken in 1894 by D. D. Beatty at Downieville in Sierra County. By this date, Downieville was no longer a major source of gold but some elderly Chinese miners were still there. The grim and sullen expressions on their faces reflect the harshness of their difficult lives as they were met with racial prejudices and physical violence. Each photo is accompanied by brief physical descriptions of the height, age, occupation (miner or cook), physical defects or injuries, and facial marks for almost 176 Chinese, mostly middle and older aged men, with no children and few women.

                                       Partial list of the names of the 176 Chinese, mostly miners. 

 Photographs of eight of the close to 200 Chinese miners and cooks. 

 An accomplished contemporary photographer, Jason Francisco, took Mason’s journal and interspersed his own photographs of the rugged Sierra terrain and their ramshackle dwellings among the 70 or 80 pages of photographs of the Chinese to create a compelling visual document that almost brings the men back to life by embedding the isolated faces in the mug shots in photographs of the physical surroundings where they once lived and worked.

Francisco aptly describes his creation as “part document, part poetic archaeology.” Picturing the men in the physical landscape where they toiled in search of gold, Francisco gives us a deeper appreciation of the difficulty of their lives.

                                    Two of Jason Francisco’s Photographs Placed Among the Pictures of the Men. 

 In Francisco’s words: “A Land of Shadows (2005-ongoing) is an inquiry into immigrant Chinese life in rural 19th century California—a communal life that was itinerant, vulnerable, preyed upon, resilient, and centrally important in the state’s and the nation’s history. Taking its title from a traditional Chinese metaphor for the domain of the ancestors, the project integrates my own photographs of the remnants of Chinese settlement in the Sierra Nevada foothills and the Sacramento Delta areas into a forgotten compendium of government mug shots of Chinese immigrants, made by D.D. Beatty in Downieville, circa 1890.” A Land of Shadows,  Francisco's creative remake of Mason’s album, draws attention to the need to include the historical experience of the Chinese miners to help us understand the emptiness that the photographs of the men project.

The Impact of The Changing Face of Chinese in America

Perhaps the most generally accepted 'label' for categorizing descendants of the immigrants from China to the United States starting around the mid 19th century is "Chinese American" (or "Chinese Canadian" above our northern border). Even though we are usually lumped into the politically pragmatic catch-all category, "Asian American," and we sometimes passively accept it, this designation fails to reflect the fact that Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Korean Americans, Vietnamese Americans, and so forth, are as different from each other as are Americans with European ancestors such as French, German, Italian, Swedish, Danish, and English, etc.

Chinese in America were a relatively homogenous group before the 1950s, generally poor rural immigrants from Guangdong province who came to seek gold, but wound up building railroads, and working in laundries and restaurants. Their descendants, born here or in China, were the majority of the Chinese in America then. But today, Chinese have come here from many places other than Guangdong including Hong Kong, Taiwan, People's Republic of China, Southeast Asia, and other countries in the region.

Not only do these Chinese have some proficiency in English, they read and write Chinese, which most descendants of earlier Chinese immigrants can not. Moreover they speak Mandarin rather than Cantonese or Toishan-wa, the language of the earlier cohorts of Guangdong immigrants. Many newer Chinese do not seek to assimilate to the extent that earlier generations did. Indeed, many of these Chinese are transnational in outlook, with one foot here and the other foot in their country of origin. Moreover, many of them are highly educated and are often affluent. Yet, there are also newer Chinese from Fujian province next to Guangdong, who must work long hours for low wages trying to pay off the debts incurred for illegal entry.

To call all of these diverse groups "Chinese Americans"obscures such vast differences. For one matter, many of these groups do not relate well to each other, reflecting historical conflicts among them. The language differences as well as social class variations also serve to keep them separate. For example, in the 1950s, American Born Chinese (ABCs) who were making strides in being accepted in mainstream America dissociated themselves from new less educated immigrants that they disparaged as "fresh off the boat" (FOBs). Today, the tables are turned as some newer affluent Chinese look down on the ABCs as not being fully Chinese because they can't speak Chinese well or at all. The Changing Face of Chinese in America, is a significant development stemming from the different histories and backgrounds of the different subgroups that has transformed the social structure of Chinese communities.

Chinese in America have their problems among their subgroups but they also face concerns about their place in American society. For, unfortunately, to many non-Asian Americans, these subgroups of Chinese 'look the same'and accordingly they will be prone to treat all Chinese the same way, despite their differences. Until recently, America's inability to distinguish among Chinese subgroups favored them because attitudes toward Chinese improved substantially from after W. W. II until the rise of Red China. Today, however, there is a growing trend toward China-bashing due to the threat of China's economic growth as well as to China's faults that include corruption, human rights violations, censorship, contaminated food and product exports.

Chinese in America, irrespective of where they came from, how long they have been here, how educated they are, or assimilated they are, will suffer if non-Asians think all Chinese here "look the same." We will be viewed as more "Chinese" than as "American." (Ironically, if we visited China, we would be clearly seen as American, not as Chinese.) The old negative images and prejudices that have been dormant for decades will resurface as we become once again, the yellow peril. The challenge for Chinese in America is how to transcend our differences and unite to counter these dangerous trends.

Trends in Racist Terms in Text Referring to Chinese

Google's ngram tool, provides frequency counts of the occurrences of words and phrases in books and other printed text across decades. Although it is not flawless, results obtained for ethnic epithets or racial slurs might mirror prevailing social attitudes. This illustration shows a count of the occurrence of two negative terms describing Chinese, Chinaman (in blue) and Chink (in red),from 1800-2000. The occurrence of 'chink' is relatively constant and lower than the occurrence of 'Chinaman,' which showed a sharp rise from 1840 to 1900 and large drop in occurrence from 1900 to about 1960. Whether these trends matched spoken use of these terms is a separate question, but one might think they would parallel each other.

Gong Lum v. Rice (1927) Chinese School Segregation Before Ole Miss Blocked James Meredith (1962)

Long before Mississippi governor Ross Barnett stood in the doorway to block the admission of James Meredith half a century ago in 1962 as the first African American student to enroll at Ole Miss, Chinese in the Delta faced similar barriers. Back in the fall of 1924 the Rosedale, MS. school administration denied admission of Chinese children to the local elementary school. Gong Lum, a local Chinese merchant, filed a lawsuit on behalf of his two daughters, Berda and Martha, against this ruling. He was initially successful, but the Supreme Court of Mississippi in 1925, and the U. S. Supreme Court in 1927 upheld the decision to deny Chinese admission to whites-only public schools. The family portrait below in 1920 before the girls were old enough to attend school shows Berda in the lower left and Martha near the center.

Photograph Courtesy of Carolyn Hong Chan.

Although the Lum sisters were dismissed from the school on the first day of the fall term in 1924, they had actually, despite the Mississippi law, been attending the school during the previous year, and possibly earlier since they were in the 3rd grade. A recently discovered photograph of a 3rd-4th grade class at Rosedale school, dated April 16, 1924, was posted on Facebook by Linda Gatewood Bassie. The two Chinese girls in the bottom left were identified as Berda and Martha by Carolyn Hong Chan, a relative who grew up in the area. Moreover, the photograph shows another Chinese girl on the right side and two older Chinese boys in the upper left top row. (It might seem odd to have such wide age differences in the same class, but some Chinese children were recent immigrants and not fluent in English) Even though the attendance of these 5 Chinese was in violation of Mississippi law that restricted white schools to caucasians, in practice, different local authorities varied in their adherence to the law and it was not uncommon for some towns to accept Chinese children while a nearby town might not. Gong Lum may have lost the legal battle, but he did realize his goal of his children attending white schools by moving his family across the river to Elaine, Arkansas, where they were admitted.

Chinese Mission School Historic Marker, Cleveland, MS.

           Most discussions, even today, of school segregration in Mississippi, and elsewhere, focus on black and white children with little or no mention of other children such as Chinese.

In an earlier post on Sept. 23, I noted that:

        "Since the late 1800s Mississippi maintained that white schools were for caucasians only, and that since Chinese were not caucasian, it was ruled that they could not attend white schools. Chinese fought this situation in court, a generation before the landmark 1954 decision (Brown vs. Board of Education) that overturned school desegregation nationwide.  The Chinese lost their case, and the ruling was upheld by the U. S. Supreme Court, Gong Lum v. Rice, 1927.  Chinese had to establish their own schools to provide better education for their children with the assistance of local churches until  white schools finally began to admit them during the late 1940s in a few small Delta towns."

Overdue recognition from the State of Mississippi of how Delta Chinese coped with this problem came on Oct. 21, 2012 with the dedication of an historic marker on the site of the Chinese Mission School established in 1937 by the Delta Chinese with the support of the First Baptist Church and Cleveland community leaders to provide a better education for Chinese children than was available to them. Over 200 attended the ceremony, including some alumni from as far away as New York and California to celebrate the recognition given to this vital collaboration to educate Chinese children and to visit the newly created Mississippi Delta Chinese Heritage Museum housed at Delta State University.
  It was a joyous homecoming for the Delta Chinese to pay tribute to their rich historic past.

RTHK Documentary on Chinese in North America

RTHK, the Hong Kong television network, produced an excellent documentary on Overseas Chinese in North America consisting of 4 hour-long episodes aired over the late summer of 2012.

This ambitious project, although it could only scratch the surface of the history of Chinese in North America, nonetheless was a significant contribution by providing audiences in Hong Kong with an overview of the many difficulties that Chinese who left for Gold Mountain had to suffer, but were able to eventually overcome. This documentary serves as an invaluable historical resource for Hong Kong Chinese.

Below are links to the 4 programs on YouTube. Some of the commentary is in Chinese, and the subtitles are also in Chinese, but most of the interviews are conducted in English. I was a consultant and interviewee in the fourth episode which focused on Chinese laundries and restaurants.

Roots Old and New, Stories of Chinese Emigrants - North America -#1 Angel island

https://podcast.rthk.hk/podcast/item.php?pid=469&eid=30029&year=2013&lang=en-US#

 

Roots Old and New, Stories of Chinese Emigrants - North America - #2 Chinese, Railroad, and Head Tax

https://podcast.rthk.hk/podcast/item.php?pid=469&eid=30030&year=2013&lang=en-US#

Roots Old and New, Stories of Chinese Emigrants - North America    #3 Chinese laundries and restaurants     

https://podcast.rthk.hk/podcast/item.php?pid=469&eid=30028&year=2013&lang=en-US

Roots Old and New, Stories of Chinese Emigrants - North America  #4    WWII Veterans

https://podcast.rthk.hk/podcast/item.php?pid=469

Before There Was "Lin-sanity"

        The meteoric and sudden rise of Jeremy Lin to professional basketball stardom last year is of historic importance for Americans of Chinese, and other Asian, ancestry.  The attention he deservedly received should give interest to the story of the Hong Wah Kues, a Chinese professional basketball team that barnstormed the country in 1939-1940 playing the likes of the Harlem Globetrotters.

Sociologist Kathleen Yep published a book, Outside the Paint: When Basketball Ruled at the Chinese Playground.   that documents in rich detail the story of the brief shining moment of this band of spirited and talented Chinese athletes with an unconventional style that relied on speed and aggressive play to offset their size disadvantage against taller opponents.

Immigrants Stayed Connected With China Through Music

       Chinese immigrants stayed culturally connected to their homeland in many ways, bonds that were especially vital in the face of the hostility and discrimination they suffered historically in America. Those living in Chinese communities that came to be referred to as "Chinatowns" had access to theaters when they flocked to see live Chinese opera on stage, as suggested in a documentary, A Moment in Time by Ruby Yang, showing how meaningful this experience was for them in a time before television.



        Unfortunately, many Chinese lived in areas across the United States where their numbers were too few to have access to such cultural experiences. I grew up in Macon, Georgia, for example, where our family was the only Chinese in town.  My parents received Chinese newspapers in the mail, probably once a week, that was their window on news from China and about Chinese issues in the United States. Still, we did have ONE Chinese phonograph record, the Chinese National Anthem, that provided a smidgen of contact with China. When I was around 4 or 5 years old, my brother and I, would crank up the old manual phonograph to play this marching music known also as the "March of the Volunteers" and we would march around the room enthusiastically even though we didn't understand the Chinese lyrics.
       A friend in Chicago, Bill Tong, recently told me about his more extensive contact with Chinese music in listening to his parents' records and tapes of Chinese music as he was growing up.  His father listened to Cantonese opera as well as Chinese pop music that his mother favored. In the Hoisan dialect it was called "see oy cook," or Shidaiqu (in Mandarin).  This Mando-pop  style of music based in Shanghai and sung in Mandarin fused Chinese folk songs with American jazz and enjoyed enormous popularity from the 30's through the 50's.  Among its biggest stars were Zhou Xuan, one of his father's favorite singers and Wu Ying Yin (one of his mother's favorites).

       Wu Ying Yin's most famous song "Acacia Moon, Trinidad Sent" recorded in 1948. Wu Ying Yin (1922-2009) enjoyed a long career, singing into her 80's. In 2003, she performed this song in Shanghai that she popularized during the 1940's. 

        Despite separation by thousands of miles across an ocean from their homeland, Chinese immigrants sought ways to experience familiar and treasured aspects of their Chinese culture. Anti-Chinese sentiment was often based on their apparent unwillingness to assimilate to American culture. However, having nostalgia for one's homeland should not be seen as incompatible with acceptance of the host culture.  Furthermore, which is the chicken, and which is the egg?  Had Chinese been afforded equal opportunity, perhaps they would have more easily come to embrace American culture.

Mississippi Delta Chinese Grocery Stores

Mississippi Public Broadcasting aired several interviews in 2011 about the Delta Chinese grocery stores. 

    Chinese in the Delta

     AIR DATE 09/19/11

   An isolated group of Chinese Americans managed to maintain a vital, albeit small community in the  Mississippi Delta for roughly a hundred years. Now largely forgotten, Chinese groceries once dotted small Delta towns, serving mostly the black community. They  also provided the essential ticket to survival for the Chinese immigrants in a society strictly segregated between black and white. MPB's Sandra Knispel spoke with California State University professor emeritus John Jung.  Jung is the author of four books about the life,

Magnolias and Chopsticks: The Mississippi Delta Chinese Experience Part 1

PUBLISHED BY SANDRA KNISPEL ON 21 SEP 2011 04:25PM

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, MPB’s Sandra Knispel tells the story of what made them come all the way to the small towns of the Delta.

China is a long way from the United States. Yet many made the voyage, hoping for a better life. In the late 1860s, the first Chinese reached the Mississippi Delta. According to data collected by the University of Mississippi's Center for Population Studies, in 1870 only 16 Chinese lived in the Magnolia state.

Magnolias and Chopsticks: The Chinese Experience in the Mississippi Delta Part 2

PUBLISHED BY SANDRA KNISPEL ON 22 SEP 2011 08:55AM

The Chinese of the Mississippi Delta are an often-overlooked mosaic in the history of the Deep South. In the second installment of our two-part series, MPB’s Sandra Knispel looks at their rapid economic and social ascent -- from grocery store owner to professional. She interviews three Chinese in the  MississippiDelta, Harold Lum, Luck Wing, and Frieda Quon whose families owned grocery stores .

                         

Luck Wing

                             r  

Kit Lum

                                      L