The grocery-store generation

Behind the storefront

Leland, November 1939. Marion Post Wolcott photographed Joe Gow Nue and Co., its neighbors, and the people gathered outside.

A brick storefront with a painted sign reading Joe Gow Nue and Co., Grocery, Meat Market. People sit on benches and stand on the sidewalk in front of the open door. — **In the Mississippi Delta. There is an ever-increasing number of Chinese grocerymen and merchants. Leland** Leland, Washington County, November 1939. The caption is the photographer’s own, written on the card that travelled with the negative. The people in front of the store are not identified in the record. Marion Post Wolcott, Farm Security Administration. LC-USF34-052450-D; no known restrictions. Catalogue record ↗

A wider view of the same block: the Joe Gow Nue and Co. storefront beside Frank Barnes Sheet Metal Works, a parked car at the kerb, and people seated on benches under the awning. — **[Untitled photo, possibly related to: In the Mississippi Delta. There is an ever-increasing number of Chinese grocerymen and merchants. Leland]** Leland, Washington County, November 1939. The same storefront, uncaptioned, printed to the edge of the negative. It shows what the captioned frame crops away: the shop’s neighbours, a figure standing inside the open door, and the ordinary business of a street. Marion Post Wolcott, Farm Security Administration. Library of Congress item 2017801699; no known restrictions. Catalogue record ↗

Two negatives preserve one November afternoon. The archive does not identify the people in the photographs.

Stores, schools, and community

The Southern Foodways Alliance’s Chinese Grocers collection follows grocery work and family life through interviews. Tony and Monica Li describe running Wong’s Foodland in Clarksdale. Frieda Quon recalls growing up behind her family’s store and choosing a career in library science.

Families and local institutions have preserved this history in oral histories, photographs, store furnishings, and community collections.

Mississippi Delta Chinese Heritage Museum, in the Capps Archives & Museum Building at Delta State University in Cleveland: oral histories, photographs, store fittings and family material, including an assembled Chinese grocery with an original set of store doors. See the museum’s website for visitor information.
The Delta Chinese Heritage photograph collection, catalogued by the same archives.
Recorded interviews with Delta Chinese residents, including grocers in Clarksdale, Greenville, Jonestown, and Sledge.

The people these records name