1921, Alsop and Callahan. 405 N. Main St.
Imposing beyond its one-story height, this E-plan building’s shaped parapets, round-arched entrance, and Spanish Mission styling gave it the nickname The Alamo. The school was at the center of a debate about the place of the Delta’s Chinese residents in Mississippi’s racially segregated culture. In 1924, Martha Lum, a Chinese American student, was told she would henceforth attend Rosedale’s African American, or “Colored” school. Her parents sued the school district, and the U.S. Supreme Court case known as Gong Lum v. Rice (1927) upheld the “separate but equal” clause of Plessy v. Ferguson (1893). In the wake of this landmark decision the Delta Chinese either began to attend religious Chinese Mission Schools or left the state.