Show Notes

Those Vietnamese refugees able to escape from their war-torn homeland in the 1970s found a refuge on the Texas Gulf Coast where they engaged in shrimping, something they knew from experience.
Their story is described by Kirk Johnson in "The Fishermen and the Dragon" as these shrimpers run up against the opposition of the white fishermen who resent the arrival of the Asian newcomers.
In an effort to expel the Vietnamese fishermen, the Klu Klux Klan is brought in to run a two-year campaign of threats and violence.
This all plays out against a backdrop of pollution in the bays that have sustained generations of shrimpers and crabbers. Petrochemical plants, oil spills and the continued dumping of chemicals goes on unabated as one lone woman fights to stop the environmental degradation.
Johnson told Steve Tarter that his book is a study in who America is for, who gets the benefit of the democratic ideals that are held so highly.