This scholarly, carefully researched book studies one of the most overlooked minority groups in America—the Chinese of the Mississippi Delta. During Reconstruction, white plantation owners imported Chinese sharecroppers in the hope of replacing their black laborers. In the beginning they were classed with blacks. But the Chinese soon moved into the towns and became almost without exception, owners of small groceries. Loewen details their astounding transition from “black” to essentially white status with an insight seldom found in studies of race relationships in the Deep South.