- [Crystal] Chinatown where so many Chinese immigrant stories began.
My grandma Pearl, she was born here in 1919.
- [NATASHA] Filmmaker Crystal Kwok was always fascinated by her grandmother Pearl's story.
- [Crystal] She moved with her family to Augusta, Georgia in 1927, where they ran a grocery store.
The grocery store created encounters and relationships, communities.
- [NATASHA] A story about racial divides and connections in the segregated south.
- Segregation was nothing more than a pseudo way of carry on slavery.
- The laws at that time were so limited but not applying to to the Chinese, so they feel this void.
- [Crystal] So we Chinese, occupying a blurry middle, complicates things.
- [NATASHA] Exploring this blurry middle through her own family's story, Crystal finds an untold part of the American story.
- They played the blacks against the Chinese like the Chinese look better than the blacks.
- But as far as our community was concerned, we were all community.
- [NATASHA] Blurring the Color Line on America Reframed.
Watch on World Channel and in the PBS app.
