Edmund Tsang

Edmund at CUHK


Edmund came to have lunch with me, and we had a leisurely discussion of life in Mobile, AL, which brought back memories from another time in my life.

In 1989, after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, I joined the English Department of the University of South Alabama in Mobile, which is on the southern coast of Alabama. I decided to go there because the person who interviewed me for the job, Prof. James Dorrill, was the most amiable of the interviewers I met during my job search. What I didn't know was Prof. Dorrill was also a Catholic priest. But that's another story.

Alabama is known as the "Heart of Dixie", one of the most traditional (and backward) places in the American South. (I'll write about all that on another occasion.) I spent six years there, generally happy at my job. But, when Fr. Dorrill was replaced by a Machiavellian Chairman, the last two years turned out to be tumultuous ones both for me and the English Department, but, that, too, is another story.

Not once did Fawzia, Roy, or I face any type of racial discrimination in Mobile. (An experience not uncommon to us in Hong Kong.) But, religion triumphed over everything; in a city that had 500 churches, the school system was a wreck, with mobile homes being used as classrooms on some occasions. As seen in most Southern cities, the whites and the blacks did not mingle. They lived, shopped, and worshipped separately.

The one little spark of liberalism in Mobile was the fortnightly tabloid The Harbinger, put out mainly by a few faculty members at the University, and distributed free. The Harbinger was incessant in its criticism of State officials, including the Governor, and various incompetent and failing city services such as the school system. The editor had the unusual name of Edmund Tsang, and not having visited Hong Kong or met many people from here, I couldn't guess the origin of the last name leave alone pronounce it. When I met Edmund, I was astonished to learn that he was from engineering (and not the humanities where most liberals find their home). He obviously spent many hours on The Harbinger, not only writing and typesetting it, but also taking copies around town for distribution.

Two incidents provide evidence of the racial discrimination in Mobile. In 1958, Jimmy Wilson, a black handyman, had been condemned to death for stealing $1.95 from a white woman. The jury may have been influenced by the woman's testimony that Wilson had spoken to her in a disrespectful tone. (Fortunately, due to an international outcry, Wilson's sentence was commuted). Second, the last recorded lynching in the USA occurred in Mobile as recently as 1981.

Edmund told me that he ran The Harbinger from 1983 to 2001, when he left Mobile to take up another appointment in Michigan. I asked him where his liberalism came from, and he said the Christian Brothers at St.Joseph's School had inspired it. He said boredom led him to start The Harbinger. Although the newspaper is no more, past copies have been uploaded at this site:

http://www.theharbinger.org/


With Edmund at the "infinity pool"on CUHK

Edmund married late and is now the father of three children. He remembers his upbringing in Yau Ma Tei, seven people sharing a one-room flat. His elderly mother still lives in Hong Kong.