The Mississippi Delta region has a long history of racism, but the story goes beyond Black and White. Asian Americans say they too have faced discrimination, but have mostly stayed silent. As the pandemic reignited tensions, one young man in the Delta's Chinese American community says it's time to speak out. This episode of CBSN Originals' Reverb series explores the history of anti-Asian racism in Mississippi's Delta region and a new generation that's demanding change.
At the centre of the film is Ryan Kwan, who runs Friendly Market in Greenville with his mother and brother. Chinese families arrived in the Delta after the Civil War, and many ran grocery stores serving Black and White communities alike, while the Chinese Exclusion Act and segregation shut them out of homes and schools. Reporter Maxine Hughes also meets Gilroy and Sally Chow in Clarksdale, keepers of that history.
The Delta has a very particular light: flat, wide and humid, with the horizon seemingly miles away. I used the drone to show those long, empty roads and fields, and the Sony 200-600 to compress the small towns into the landscape around them. Inside the grocery, the F55 on the Fujinon XK20-120 and the MK zooms let me work quietly in a space that was still open for business, catching the rhythm of a family store that sits at the heart of its community.
