Day 79: Joe Gow Nue & Co., Greenville, Mississippi

📌APIA Every Day (79) - Joe Gow Nue & Co., one of the first Chinese-owned grocery stores in the Delta region of Greenville, Mississippi, was situated at the end of 200 Washington Avenue, on the corner of North Walnut Street. The store played a crucial role in serving both Chinese and African American customers during the peak of racial segregation in the South. Being one of the few Chinese grocery stores in the area offering local Chinese food, it became a popular community center. Moreover, the store provided additional services for its Chinese community members, including assistance with immigration forms, passport applications, and ticket purchasing to cities such as New York, Seattle, San Francisco, and New Orleans.

Although there is no information on when or how Joe Gow Nue, the Chinese owner of the store, arrived in Mississippi, it is mentioned that Nue was a native of Wang Sek village in China's Guangdong province. Around 1910, Nue retired and returned to China, selling his grocery store to two brothers, Joe Nam and Joe King, who had previously operated a laundromat in Holyoke, Massachusetts. The grocery continued to be managed by other family members, and in 1947, Joe Ting, the third brother of Nam and King, and additional relatives ran the grocery store for another five decades.

The existence of a Chinese grocery store in the Deep South provided a valuable service that benefited Chinese American, African American, and White populations. Chinese business owners purchased goods from White wholesalers and then sold those goods to Black patrons. This arrangement was prevalent throughout the Mississippi Delta and similar interactions occurred in Arkansas and Texas. The popularity of the store led to the opening of another grocery named "Joe Gow Nue Co. No. 2." However, the store eventually closed in the 1990s, with the remains of the historic structure destroyed by a fire in 1998. Today, the site that once housed Joe Gow Nue Co. is now a grassy lot.

LEARN MORE:

NolaChinese: Mississippi: Joe Gow Nue

Internet Archive: Tri-State Chinese Directory of Mississippi, Arkansas, and Tennessee

Hotty Toddy: The China Connection In Greenville, Miss.

US Luck: Joe Gow Nue and Co. in Greenville, Mississippi.

NPR: The Legacy Of The Mississippi Delta Chinese

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