Water Tossing Boulders
How a Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools in the Jim Crow South
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $13.50
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Moe Egan
-
By:
-
Adrienne Berard
About this listen
A generation before Brown v. Board of Education struck down America’s “separate but equal” doctrine, one Chinese family and an eccentric Mississippi lawyer fought for desegregation in one of the greatest legal battles never told
On September 15, 1924, Martha Lum and her older sister Berda were barred from attending middle school in Rosedale, Mississippi. The girls were Chinese American and considered by the school to be “colored”; the school was for whites. This event would lead to the first US Supreme Court case to challenge the constitutionality of racial segregation in Southern public schools, an astonishing thirty years before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Unearthing one of the greatest stories never told, journalist Adrienne Berard recounts how three unlikely heroes sought to shape a new South. A poor immigrant from southern China, Jeu Gong Lum came to America with the hope of a better future for his family. Unassuming yet boldly determined, his daughter Martha would inhabit that future and become the face of the fight to integrate schools. Earl Brewer, their lawyer and staunch ally, was once a millionaire and governor of Mississippi. When he took the family’s case, Brewer was both bankrupt and a political pariah—a man with nothing left to lose.
By confronting the “separate but equal” doctrine, the Lum family fought for the right to educate Chinese Americans in the white schools of the Jim Crow South. Using their groundbreaking lawsuit as a compass, Berard depicts the complicated condition of racial otherness in rural Southern society.
In a sweeping narrative that is both epic and intimate, Water Tossing Boulders evokes a time and place previously defined by black and white, a time and place that, until now, has never been viewed through the eyes of a forgotten third race. In vivid prose, the Mississippi Delta, an empire of cotton and a bastion of slavery, is reimagined to reveal the experiences of a lost immigrant community. Through extensive research in historical documents and family correspondence, Berard illuminates a vital, forgotten chapter of America’s past and uncovers the powerful journey of an oppressed people in their struggle for equality.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Crying in H Mart
- A Memoir
- By: Michelle Zauner
- Narrated by: Michelle Zauner
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian-American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.
-
-
Broken Korean
- By Tim on 04-21-21
By: Michelle Zauner
-
The Grimkes
- The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family
- By: Kerri K. Greenidge
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Grimke sisters, Sarah and Angelina, have been highly revered figures in American history, lauded for leaving behind their lives as elite slave-owning women on a plantation in South Carolina to become firebrand abolitionists in the North. Yet the focus on their story has obscured the experiences of their Black relatives, the progeny of their brother, Henry, and one of the enslaved people he owned, a woman named Nancy Weston.
-
-
Before you read The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd read The Grimkes first.
- By Sherri Harris on 01-03-23
-
Slavery by Another Name
- The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
- By: Douglas A. Blackmon
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 15 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this groundbreaking historical expose, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history - an Age of Neoslavery that thrived from the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II.
-
-
Steel Yourself
- By Mark on 05-23-14
-
Black Fortunes
- The Story of the First Six African Americans Who Escaped Slavery and Became Millionaires
- By: Shomari Wills
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The astonishing untold history of America's first Black millionaires - former slaves who endured incredible challenges to amass and maintain their wealth for a century, from the Jacksonian period to the Roaring '20s - self-made entrepreneurs whose unknown success mirrored that of American business heroes such as Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, and Thomas Edison.
-
-
True His/Herstory
- By Brazy Brazy on 06-25-18
By: Shomari Wills
-
Abraham Lincoln
- The Prairie Years and The War Years
- By: Carl Sandburg
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 44 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally published in six volumes, which sold more than one million copies, Carl Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln was praised as the most noteworthy historical biography of Sandburg’s generation. He later distilled this monumental work into one volume that critics and readers alike consider his greatest work of nonfiction, as well as the most distinguished, authoritative biography of Lincoln ever published.
Growing up in an Illinois prairie town, Sandburg listened to stories of old-timers who had known Lincoln. By the time this single-volume edition was competed, he had spent a lifetime studying, researching, and writing about our 16th president.
-
-
A moving tale of a very human man
- By Sohachi on 06-25-16
By: Carl Sandburg
-
No More Lies
- By: Dick Gregory
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, during the Black Power Movement, iconoclast Dick Gregory challenged one of the foundations of America itself - its history, which had been written almost exclusively from the white male perspective. In No More Lies, this true trailblazer gave voice to African Americans, speaking their truth about the past and race relations in the United States. No More Lies offers this incomparable satirist’s intellectual, conspiratorial, and humorous spin on the facts.
-
-
My Hertiages
- By n/a on 11-25-22
By: Dick Gregory
-
Crying in H Mart
- A Memoir
- By: Michelle Zauner
- Narrated by: Michelle Zauner
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian-American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.
-
-
Broken Korean
- By Tim on 04-21-21
By: Michelle Zauner
-
The Grimkes
- The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family
- By: Kerri K. Greenidge
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Grimke sisters, Sarah and Angelina, have been highly revered figures in American history, lauded for leaving behind their lives as elite slave-owning women on a plantation in South Carolina to become firebrand abolitionists in the North. Yet the focus on their story has obscured the experiences of their Black relatives, the progeny of their brother, Henry, and one of the enslaved people he owned, a woman named Nancy Weston.
-
-
Before you read The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd read The Grimkes first.
- By Sherri Harris on 01-03-23
-
Slavery by Another Name
- The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
- By: Douglas A. Blackmon
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 15 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this groundbreaking historical expose, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history - an Age of Neoslavery that thrived from the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II.
-
-
Steel Yourself
- By Mark on 05-23-14
-
Black Fortunes
- The Story of the First Six African Americans Who Escaped Slavery and Became Millionaires
- By: Shomari Wills
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The astonishing untold history of America's first Black millionaires - former slaves who endured incredible challenges to amass and maintain their wealth for a century, from the Jacksonian period to the Roaring '20s - self-made entrepreneurs whose unknown success mirrored that of American business heroes such as Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, and Thomas Edison.
-
-
True His/Herstory
- By Brazy Brazy on 06-25-18
By: Shomari Wills
-
Abraham Lincoln
- The Prairie Years and The War Years
- By: Carl Sandburg
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 44 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally published in six volumes, which sold more than one million copies, Carl Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln was praised as the most noteworthy historical biography of Sandburg’s generation. He later distilled this monumental work into one volume that critics and readers alike consider his greatest work of nonfiction, as well as the most distinguished, authoritative biography of Lincoln ever published.
Growing up in an Illinois prairie town, Sandburg listened to stories of old-timers who had known Lincoln. By the time this single-volume edition was competed, he had spent a lifetime studying, researching, and writing about our 16th president.
-
-
A moving tale of a very human man
- By Sohachi on 06-25-16
By: Carl Sandburg
-
No More Lies
- By: Dick Gregory
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, during the Black Power Movement, iconoclast Dick Gregory challenged one of the foundations of America itself - its history, which had been written almost exclusively from the white male perspective. In No More Lies, this true trailblazer gave voice to African Americans, speaking their truth about the past and race relations in the United States. No More Lies offers this incomparable satirist’s intellectual, conspiratorial, and humorous spin on the facts.
-
-
My Hertiages
- By n/a on 11-25-22
By: Dick Gregory
-
Walk with Me
- A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer
- By: Kate Clifford Larson
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
She was born the 20th child in a family that had lived in the Mississippi Delta for generations, first as enslaved people and then as sharecroppers. She left school at 12 to pick cotton, as those before her had done, in a world in which white supremacy was an unassailable citadel. She was subjected without her consent to an operation that deprived her of children. And she was denied the most basic of all rights in America—the right to cast a ballot—in a state in which Blacks constituted nearly half the population. And so Fannie Lou Hamer lifted up her voice.
-
-
Amazing woman during very difficult times
- By Tenzin Dawa on 09-21-24
-
White Lies
- The Double Life of Walter F. White and America's Darkest Secret
- By: A.J. Baime
- Narrated by: Wayne Carr
- Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Walter F. White led two lives: one as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance and the NAACP in the early twentieth century; the other as a white newspaperman who covered lynching crimes in the Deep South at the blazing height of racial violence. Born mixed race and with very fair skin and straight hair, White was able to “pass” for white. He leveraged this ambiguity as a reporter, bringing to light the darkest crimes in America and helping to plant the seeds of the civil rights movement.
-
-
A difficult but essential read
- By Heather Wellington on 05-21-22
By: A.J. Baime
-
A Different Mirror
- A History of Multicultural America
- By: Ronald Takaki
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 18 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Upon its first publication, A Different Mirror was hailed by critics and academics everywhere as a dramatic new retelling of our nation's past. Beginning with the colonization of the New World, it recounts the history of America in the voice of the non-Anglo peoples of the United States---Native Americans, African Americans, Jews, Irish Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and others---groups who helped create this country's rich mosaic culture.
-
-
All mirrors distort
- By Michael on 04-02-17
By: Ronald Takaki
-
Blood at the Root
- A Racial Cleansing in America
- By: Patrick Phillips
- Narrated by: Patrick Phillips
- Length: 7 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
National Book Award finalist Patrick Phillips tells Forsyth's tragic story in vivid detail and traces its long history of racial violence all the way back to antebellum Georgia. Recalling his own childhood in the 1970s and '80s, Phillips sheds light on the communal crimes of his hometown and the violent means by which locals kept Forsyth all white well into the 1990s.
-
-
when is white history month?
- By Bailey on 03-06-18
By: Patrick Phillips
-
Bound for Canaan
- The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America's First Civil Rights Movement
- By: Fergus Bordewich
- Narrated by: Peter J. Fernandez
- Length: 19 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Civil War brought to a climax the country's bitter division. But the beginnings of slavery's denouement can be traced to a courageous band of ordinary Americans, black and white, slave and free, who joined forces to create what would come to be known as the Underground Railroad, a movement that occupies as romantic a place in the nation's imagination as the Lewis and Clark expedition.
-
-
The Heroic Missing Piece
- By Paul Frandano on 03-03-17
By: Fergus Bordewich
-
The Blood of Emmett Till
- By: Timothy B. Tyson
- Narrated by: Rhett Samuel Price
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mississippi, 1955: 14-year-old Emmett Till was murdered by a white mob after making flirtatious remarks to a white woman, Carolyn Bryant. Till's attackers were never convicted, but his lynching became one of the most notorious hate crimes in American history. It launched protests across the country, helped the NAACP gain thousands of members, and inspired famous activists like Rosa Parks to stand up and fight for equal rights for the first time.
-
-
Tough read. Rest in Peace Emmit. We are so sorry!
- By Melanie B on 09-16-18
By: Timothy B. Tyson
-
Buried in the Bitter Waters
- The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America
- By: Elliot Jaspin
- Narrated by: Don Leslie
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Leave now, or die!" From the heart of the Midwest to the Deep South, from the mountains of North Carolina to the Texas frontier, words like these have echoed through more than a century of American history. The call heralded not a tornado or a hurricane, but a very unnatural disaster: a manmade wave of racial cleansing that purged black populations from counties across the nation.
-
-
a compelling read with a disappointing conclusion
- By Gregory on 12-16-07
By: Elliot Jaspin
-
"I Am a Man"
- Chief Standing Bear's Journey for Justice
- By: Joe Starita
- Narrated by: Armando Duran
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1877, Chief Standing Bear's Ponca Indian tribe was forcibly removed from their Nebraska homeland and marched to Oklahoma - known then as Indian Territory - in what became the tribe's own Trail of Tears. "I Am a Man" chronicles what happened when Standing Bear set off on a 600-mile walk to return the body of his only son to their traditional burial grounds.
-
-
Excellent book & narration
- By D.B. Hammond on 03-25-17
By: Joe Starita
-
Arc of Justice
- A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age
- By: Kevin Boyle
- Narrated by: Lizan Mitchell
- Length: 17 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The grandson of a slave, Dr. Ossian Sweet moved his family to an all-white Detroit neighborhood in 1925. When his neighbors attempted to drive him out, Sweet defended himself, resulting in the death of a white man and a murder trial for Sweet. There followed one of the most important (and shockingly unknown) cases in Civil Rights history. Also caught up in the intense courtroom drama were legal giant Clarence Darrow and the newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
-
-
Gripping narrative
- By Chris on 04-13-09
By: Kevin Boyle
-
The Devil's Half Acre
- The Untold Story of How One Woman Liberated the South's Most Notorious Slave Jail
- By: Kristen Green
- Narrated by: Deanna Anthony
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times best-selling author Kristen Green draws on years of research to tell the extraordinary and little-known story of young Mary Lumpkin, an enslaved woman who blazed a path of liberation for thousands. She was forced to have the children of a brutal slave trader and live on the premises of his slave jail, known as the “Devil’s Half Acre”. When she inherited the jail after the death of her slaveholder, she transformed it into “God’s Half Acre”, a school where Black men could fulfill their dreams.
-
-
Preachy
- By Elizabeth Combs on 09-13-22
By: Kristen Green
-
Root and Branch
- Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the Struggle to End Segregation
- By: Rawn James Jr.
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education is widely considered a seminal point in the battle to end segregation, but it was in fact the culmination of a decades-long legal campaign. Root and Branch is the epic story of the two fiercely dedicated lawyers who led the fight from county courthouses to the marble halls of the Supreme Court, and, in the process, laid the legal foundations of the civil rights movement.
-
-
Superb story
- By Philo-sophia on 01-26-12
By: Rawn James Jr.
-
Snow-Storm in August
- The Passions That Sparked Washington City's First Race Riot in the Violent Summer of 1835
- By: Jefferson Morley
- Narrated by: Peter Jay Fernandez
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Editor and investigative reporter Jefferson Morley has been widely published in national periodicals and is the author of the critically acclaimed nonfiction work Our Man in Mexico. An eye-opening look at Washington’s first race riot, Snow-Storm in August also offers revealing profiles of Arthur Bowen, the slave blamed for the riot, and “Star Spangled Banner” lyricist Francis Scott Key, a defender of slavery who sought capital punishment for Bowen.
-
-
An interesting
- By BDHumbert on 08-27-18
By: Jefferson Morley
Critic reviews
“In an engaging bit of social history, Berard rescues a forgotten part of Southern history and brings it to light, offering readers a rare glimpse into Chinese immigrant life and the way segregation affected so many for decades. Flush with telling details and backed by meticulous research, a piece of near-forgotten Chinese-American history is retold.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Surely the most racist Supreme Court decision in the twentieth century, Gong Lum v. Rice has finally found its biographer. Adrienne Berard, who lives about twenty miles from where it all happened, has unearthed fresh facts and brought them to life to tell an important story.” —James Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me
“With luminous prose and intricate research, Adrienne Berard has preserved an undeservedly forgotten battle in the struggle for racial equality...In Berard’s skilled and supple hands, the past speaks eloquently to our American present.” —Samuel G. Freedman, author of Breaking the Line: The Season in Black College Football That Transformed the Sport and Changed the Course of Civil Rights
What listeners say about Water Tossing Boulders
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Crysta M
- 05-05-21
Over a third of the book was just about the lawyer
I ended up returning this book about two thirds though when I gave up in absolute frustration. The first third, which is mostly about the Lum family, is interesting. But as soon as they meet the lawyer the book becomes all about him and I didn’t buy the book the learn about his history! There’s absolutely no reason I need to know about his father’s history, his family, or his childhood, or teenage years, or early career, or any of it, but unfortunately I do now. If the author had spent more time on the actual subject of the book, the Lum family and their history, it could have been a great book. But I absolutely do not recommend this book. Unless what you’re actually interested in is the lawyer’s personal history.
Narrator did great and is the only reason I felt a bit guilty about returning this title.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!