April 27, 2022 • 33 mins
Yves brings us the fascinating story of Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, the first Chinese woman to get a PhD in economics and a force to be reckoned with in the Suffrage movement.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I'm not going to
stuff I've never told your protection of I heart radio
and it's time for another female first, which means we
are once again joined by our good friend, the wonderful,
the amazing Eaves. My goodness, it's good to be good
(00:33):
per usual. Yes, always good to have you. Anything interesting
going on, Eaves, anything of note, anything you're looking forward to? Um,
I don't know, is it okay? I don't know. I'm
even more comfortable with saying I don't know, and I
definitely don't. I don't think they're pretty I feel good.
(00:54):
Things are at level. I'm learning every day, something new,
something that's always a good thing. Um. Yeah, but yeah, nothing.
I don't have much to report, you know. I say
that is one of the things that I admire about
you as where I just sit, you continue to do
(01:14):
new things, learn new things, do things to find yourself
that I'm like, Man, you are really motivated, and I
feel like you used your time wisely. Maybe I'm projecting
because I'm like, I want to be like Eaves. Why
can't I be like Eaves? It's very sweet of you
to think that I have everything together. That is definitely
not the case. Maybe like you at least like exploring,
(01:36):
whether it's like you know, relearning meditation or watching movies
that I like. We recommend something you like, I'll watch it,
and you actually follow through. That's amazing to me. I
think you might be selling yourself a little short, because
I think one reason that we do this is because
our of our never ending curiosity, Like you have to
(01:59):
have level of like staying curious about the world and
learning new things to be able to delves deep into
research and such precurious and intricate topics as you do.
You know, And again, I'm very impressed by the people
that you bring to us, because it is other people,
the women that we've never heard of and or have
been neglected for so long that you can do these
(02:20):
deep dives. It's been also impressive, and that you're doing
the work for us. Thank you. Yes, yes, I was.
I was thinking about that. I was like, how does
as always find these amazing stories I've never heard? Well,
you know, the world is a vast pit of information
(02:46):
and overpopulation, notwithstanding people are being born and there are
a lot of shows to tail. I mean that makes
me really excited, um, and it really puts things into
perspective to just know how many small universes have been
created that we are able to tap into because we
(03:06):
have such a wealth of information at our fingertips. There
is a talent to being able to research and research
well because I have discovered I'm at the very cusp
of like trying to figure it out when we try
to find, you know, women around the world that series
and finding women and activists who are doing great things
that we don't talk about or talking enough about, but
(03:27):
it's still like hard to actually figure out where to
even start half the time. So I'm discovering that it
is a lot. It takes a bit of talent and
of course a lot of practice, but like all of
those days come together to find good research. So kudos,
thank you again. I love this. I love our because
(03:51):
it's early morning. I feel like we're starting off with
a warm virtual hug that like it's it's honestly just
the was to really appreciate because when you really think
that down deep into it and you're like, wow, this
is kind of amazing. Yeah, I'm done, undone with my
squashy guccy stuff. I love it. I love it. We're
(04:13):
such Eves fan girls. Yes, yes, I'll take you anything, anything,
I'll take it all perfect, perfect, well, speaking of amazing
stories and small universes, I love how you put it
like that. M who did you bring for us today? Eves?
Today we're going to be talking about Mabel ping Huai.
(04:33):
So she was Chinese American women's rights activists and she
was involved in the suffragist space. Um and I said
that she was the first Chinese woman to get a
doctor in economics from Columbia University. Yeah. And she has
an amazing story, an amazing story with so many historical
threads and contexts and nuance throughout. So very very excited
(04:58):
to get into this one. Yeah, me too. Uh So
let's start. She was born around eight and Gang Joe, China,
and in China, she learned English at a missionary school.
She lived with her mother and her grandmother. Her mother's
name was lie Beck and she was part of the
upper class and gone show. Her father Leto which is
(05:20):
spelt some different ways in the records, like spelled t
o or t o w e. But he was a
missionary in the US. He has his own story of
coming over to the United States and being involved in
the Christian church here, and mabel Leah moved to the
United States in the early nineteen hundreds. There are some
(05:42):
conflicting days given a lot of parts of her history,
but she was there by nineteen o five and after
her father had That was after her father had already
been in the United States for years, so she spent
some time in California and Washington State, and they eventually
sold in Chinatown in New York City. The Lee family
(06:04):
was part of a movement of Chinese people from the
West Coast to the East Coast as opportunities for work
decreased and anti Chinese violence increased in the West. So
it's not as if like anti Chinese violence wasn't just
concentrated in the West. I don't want to make it
seem like there were only instances of that in a
(06:27):
specific place, because I think we like to compartmentalized regions
in the United States, as if certain things only happen
in certain places, like racism only happened in the South
and didn't happen in the North. And I don't don't
want to make it seem like that's what I'm saying here.
It's just that that there was some movement from the
west to the East. I would also like to take
(06:47):
this moment to talk about some of the context around immigration,
um that was happening with Chinese people who migrated from
China to the United States, and also some that came after,
generations came after that were born here in the United
States from people who were migrants from China. So I
think that we might have talked about this the Chinese
(07:08):
Exclusion Act before in Female First and I'm sure that
y'all have mentioned it before otherwise, um we did. I
remember we did the episode on Aphon Moi, the quote
unquote first Chinese Lady, So we might have talked about
it before. But of course it's worth a while bringing
it up again here because that policy is super relevant
because it was active for many years, many decades, which
(07:32):
is like so hard to believe how recent this history is,
but really puts a lot of things into perspective. But
Congress approved the Chinese Exclusion Act in May of eighteen
eighty two, which banned Chinese laborers from migrating to the
United States for ten years. So as it goes with law,
there are so many more rules that go into that,
(07:53):
so many more asterisks. The Act was later extended, even
though it was initially supposed to be imposed for ten years,
and then it was made permanent until the Act was
repealed in nineteen forty three with the Magnuscent Act, and
even then it wasn't like a full repeal. There was
a quota for Chinese immigrants that was set to one
hundred and five people, so there were people who were
(08:16):
exempt from those rules, like diplomats, teachers, students, and merchants
who were allowed to migrate, but they also had to
have certification stating that they were qualified to immigrate, which
has its own layer of issues. There are stories about
people who were affected by the Chinese Exclusion Act who
had to go through these these layers of questioning and
(08:40):
having to qualify your personal existence and why you're worthy
of being in a space, and just imagine how mentally,
emotionally how impactful that is in a person. So that's
another layer to delve into. But that is something that
did come up in mabel Leese life and obviously so
many other people UM that were affected by the Chinese
(09:02):
Exclusion Act. You'll see it in some of her papers
UM and her having to leave the country and come
back into the United States because there were rules around
how a person could re enter if they were a
Chinese migrant trying to leave the country and then come back.
Not as if we're unfamiliar with issues around migration right
now in the United States, but this was the case
(09:24):
in her story as well. So this law wasn't active
for many many reasons. There are many layers to it.
It was stoked by things like fear, racism, anti Chinese animosity,
economic insecurity. So yes, there are a lot of factors
that go into the reason. But this is what was
(09:46):
a part of Maple Least life as she was moving
to the United States. Immigration from China was extremely limited
during the period under the Exclusion Act. And they're the
people who were already here even before Exclusion Act um
was implemented. We're also facing violence from people who had
an anti Chinese sentiment. Yes, so, so Lee and her
(10:08):
family were able to migrate here, but she was one
of few. There weren't that many other people there at
the time who were able to make that happen. But
so when she settled in New York, she went to
Erasmus Hall High School, which was a public school in Brooklyn,
and of course people in the United States had their
(10:28):
eyes on international efforts for suffrage, so that included China,
where there was a revolution in nineteen eleven, and people
in China have been organizing for decades for women's suffrage.
So I think it's really easy to get into a
bubble and think about what's happening here in the United States.
And we've talked about women's suffrage in the United States before,
(10:50):
but there were also efforts in China, and leading up
to the revolution, women's suffrage activists opposed to Ching monarchy
which was overthrown and I Tina eleven and they supported
the equality of genders, and we're talking about things like
advocating for more political participation for women. And they didn't
(11:11):
quite get this in the newly formed Republic of China immediately,
but women stuff are just in China did remain vigilant
in their activism. So because so many white Americans views
of Chinese folks were anchored in this racism and xenophobia
and ignorance, the four movement of enfranchisement wasn't a good
(11:36):
look for the supposedly moral upstanding. These are not my words,
but like how the view of from white Americans perspective
was of the other. Specifically for Chinese people in this situation,
it's like, we're more civilized, we have all our stuff
going on, we have more of this forward movement, were
more progressive, and they were seen as more lowly by
(12:00):
lot they When I say they, I mean like Chinese people. Um.
For for people in China, of course we're exot sized,
were viewed as the other. We're seen as more lowly,
and all the other various stereotypes and things that were
and and views that were bred out of racism that
came from white American perspective. Um. So, the fact that
(12:23):
there was movement when it came to suffrage and enfranchisement
for people in China who were supposed to be this
less quote unquote lesser version of people was something that
didn't look so great to a lot of white Americans
who were invested in suffrage. So white suffragists looked to
(12:54):
Chinese suffragists in the US to learn more about efforts
in China, and also efforts about education in China, because
that was also something that women were trying to have
for movement on in the United States. In April of
nineteen twelve, Mabel and her parents, along with other Chinese
people in the community met with white activists who wanted
(13:15):
more insight on the situation. But it's interesting because if
you read, there was a lot of reporting about Mabel
and things that were happening in the suffrage space in
New York when Mabel was active, and in this situation
of the meeting with parents is positioned in a way
where it seems like the white women who were involved,
even though the woman who kind of brought this meeting
(13:37):
together says that I'm not really the suffragist kind, but
I figured it could be good to talk to Chinese
people about these issues that are affecting them while they're
here in the U S. Issues around education and around
women's rights and suffrage. Yeah, so at this meeting, Mabel
Lee spoke of her support for gender equality and education
(13:59):
for girls and suffrage and she was still young, so
she started all of this when she was a teenager.
She became known as a person who had oratory skills
and who was invested in bringing women's rights to the
forefront as a teenager. So this is while she was
in high school. She was featured in a couple of
(14:21):
New York Tribune articles in April of nineteen twelve. Around
that same time, one was called Chinese Girl once vote.
So she was positioned as a quote symbol of the
new era, when all their women will be free and unhampered.
That was a quote from that New York Tribune article.
(14:42):
And by their women, they are referring to Chinese women.
And there was another article that month in the New
York Tribune called Chinatown Awakens, in which she was called
the quote progressive Mabel Lee. She was also some sentences
later called a hopeless little suffragette. Suffragette itself are ready
being a derogatory terminology for someone who was invested in suffrage.
(15:04):
So there was I think we definitely talked about this
a lot before, because y'all know I love bringing quotes.
But how steeped in the languages, in the racism of
the day, the views towards Chinese people, And yeah, so
you can delve into that and reading that entire article,
(15:25):
It's just funny to me because there is a huge
contrast between the uplift of who Mabel Lee was, acknowledging
that she was progressive, acknowledging that she was helping the
white people in this instance learn more about her culture,
learn more about the knowledge that she had, so they
(15:46):
were coming to her for assistance, but at the same
time using language that UH showed how they viewed Mabel
and other Chinese people as inferior. So it's a huge
the dissonance happening. And then also there was all of
the other things that are just outdated language that we
(16:06):
would no longer use at all because we know that
it's just steeped in stereotyping and things like that. So yeah,
it's just interesting to see the contrast and the dissonance
happening there. But either way, there were a bunch of
articles that came out on her, and it wasn't just
in New York. There were articles around the nation who
picked up stories on what was happening. And soon after
(16:28):
the meeting that I spoke about earlier in May of
nineteen twelve, on May fourth, she was involved in a
suffrage parade, and there were also articles about this leading
up to the time and some of the fanfare and
excitement that was happening, and looking forward to this parade,
newspapers around the country printed headlines that were highlighting leads
(16:51):
involvement in the parade. There was a bunch of hoop
lah over how she was riding in on horseback, and
she was leading the initial cavalcade that was bring in
this ten thousand people for the parade. The newspapers were
specifically calling out the fact that she was Chinese as
if it were some sort of party trick. She rode
on horseback and and there's a picture of her on
(17:14):
horseback as well that she can go and look at.
But her speaking skills were praised, and her activism at
the time connected her to other activists who were in
the space, But she was still going through her own
educational process. She was the only Chinese student in her
class when she graduated from high school, and she began
(17:35):
attending Barnard College, which is a women's college in New
York City. You can see a lot of her consciousness
developing at this time, although she already had it as
an aside. You'll see a lot of the articles talk
about how her mother's feet were bound and try to
kind of position her mother as a symbol of the
(17:58):
old while her fad Mabel Lee is a symbol of
the news, saying, well, her mom came from this, but
she still apports suffrage. Look at that wow, While Mabel
Lee as an example of the this new age of
people coming up in a contrast to the tradition of
what her mom supposedly represented. But either way, she was
(18:22):
involved in a lot of clubs and activism during her
time in college as well. She was in the y
w c A, the Young Woman's Christian Association, and she
sometimes spoke about Chinese culture and history for the organization,
and during her time at Barnard she wrote a speech
(18:43):
called China's Submerged Half, which I just love that name
for like some reason. I don't know. It's just something
about the words submerged that I find really like. It
just draws me into like I wonder what this is
going to be about. I feel like that's really that's
a really interesting way to title something. Anyway, that's my
(19:04):
weirdness about words outside um. I have a quote from it.
She said, china Submerged Half has begun to emerge. And
when you recall that a battalion of Chinese young women
was organized and drilled for service in the Late Revolution,
and that a militant woman suffragist used violence towards a
deputy of the Nanking Assembly for refusing the vote for
(19:26):
woman's suffrage. You will agree with me that a part
of that half has emerged with a vengeance, and I
love that, um so um. I think the reason, going
back to words, I love submerged half because when she
says submerged half, she's referring to women, and I think
a lot of the time it's a difficulty for me
(19:48):
to position things from a way in which self identifying
as the inferior, because I think that's what the word
submerged can do. It implies that that we're starting from
a negative space. It's like you're immediately positioning yourself with
negativity in the situation. But I think she flips that
(20:12):
on it's head where it's like, Okay, we're submerged, but
we're working with so much. You know, there's vengeance that's happening.
It's not it's not coming from she's not coming from
a meek position, a position in which she feels like
she's incapable. Um So. She celebrated progress in terms of
things that Chinese women were doing, like establishing newspapers in
(20:33):
that speech, but she noted that a lot of things
were being said in theory and not done in practice,
and that rendering justice was urgent and that she and
other girls would have the duties of pioneers um So
she considered herself a feminist and she became part of
feminist discussions that were happening on campus through groups like
(20:57):
the Feminist Forum, and she joined the Debate Club. She
was also part of the Chinese Students Club at Columbia,
which was associated with the Chinese Students Alliance, in which
over the year she held many positions in during her
time in college, so one wonders when she had the
(21:18):
time to do anything, because she definitely seems like she
was involved in a lot. But while she was at Bernard,
she wrote for the Chinese Students Monthly, which was the
national magazine for the Alliance, and the first article she
published for it was in June of nineteen fourteen, which
was the meaning of Woman's Suffrage. In August of nineteen fourteen,
(21:42):
she went to the CSA's Eastern Conference and competed in
an oratorical contest. So she made a lot of friends
during her time who were also activist and was heavily
involved in the student community. She got a bachelor's degree
from Barnard in nineteen sixteen and where she majored in
history and philosophy, and she continued on her educational track
(22:06):
when she was accepted into the PhD program and the
Department of Political Science and Philosophy at Columbia University. She
got a scholarship to go there, and that was around
the time that the graduate school there had began to
admit some i'll be a small number of women into
(22:28):
their doctoral programs. During her time at Columbia, she remained
active in the Chinese Students Alliance and she worked with Dr.
Vladimir Simkovic, who had become her mentor and her dissertation advisor,
and he encouraged her to study historical Chinese agricultural policy.
(22:52):
Her dissertation was entitled the Economic History of China with
Special Reference to Agriculture, which is available to read online
if you're interested in such a sort of thing. Yes,
So she advocated for a balance between the old and
the new, the traditional and the modern, which makes a
lot of sense for her, and to not just cast
(23:12):
aside what was done in the past as useless. In
nineteen seventeen, Mabel also participated in another suffrage parade as
(23:34):
part of the Women's Political Equality League, and it was
that same year that New York State did enfranchise women,
but Mabel, as a Chinese immigrants, still could not vote.
In ninete, that was the year she got her first
so she became the first Chinese woman to get a
(23:56):
PhD from Columbia University. So a path after around this
time for moving forward and career was often to go
back to teach, but finding employment was difficult for Mabel
during her life. She did plan to return to China
to live to bring back what she learned um as
(24:17):
she didn't have a path to citizenship. It was a
path for a lot of women to choose to go
back to China to work, but Mabel herself never went
back permanently to China, even though she did have some
visits in her later years. Her plans, as plans tend
to do, didn't go completely as she expected. She continued
(24:42):
working at Columbia and then she did go to study
in Europe, but she had to make arrangements when she
went out of the country. As we spoke about earlier,
what immigrants had to do when it came to reentry
into the US had to qualify their reasoning for coming
back to the United it States and that they were
able to do so, and there are papers documenting her
(25:05):
process of that. She planned on setting up a business
importing Chinese herbal medicine, but her father died in November
of nineteen four and she decided to go and continue
his work. She decided to start working for the church,
and she became director of her father's mission in New
York City and started the process of making it her own.
(25:31):
The church building was rented, so she raised funds and
had a new church built at twenty one pel Street,
and a friend of hers, after she was involved in
that for many many years, suggested that she go back
to her intellectual interest, but she remained invested in a church.
She went back to China a few times in the
(25:54):
nineteen twenties and the thirties, and but like I said earlier,
she never did move back there permanently. UM but some
Chinese women were enfranchised and able to vote in nineteen
forty three when the Magnusent Act passed, but that still
didn't extend to all Chinese women. UM. The Immigration and
(26:16):
Nationality Act of nineteen fifty two and the Voting Rights
Act of nineteen sixty five did further that process along
and moved the needle on voting rights for Chinese Americans,
though that didn't solve everything, because US citizens who were
of Asian descent still faced discrimination and voting today. But
(26:38):
there were no records of Lee herself naturalizing, and it's
also not known whether she ever voted in the United States,
and she died in nineteen sixty six in New York City. Yeah,
this story is so amazing, And I love learning about
feminism and other countries and just the history of feminism
(26:59):
and their places because kind of like what you were
saying earlier, Samantha, with our problem of finding doing the
research around women around the world, is a lot of
our searches are very like American, not even English, but
like very American centered. So it's I really liked learning
about this in the context she brought about what was
(27:20):
going on in China when it came to suffrage and feminism.
And yeah, this was just she really really did so
much and she has so much writing um and as
someone who writes, I really enjoyed reading some the stuff
that she did and I was like impressed and the Yeah,
(27:41):
I too, am a word nerd, So I liked a
lot of the words that she she used and I
thought she used them so effectively, right. I think the
line that you read from her really made me think
of like superheroes where they you know, pushed their way
through out of a situation, whether they're like under debris
and have to fly out of that situation essentially, Like
(28:01):
that kind of came into mind. Um, because Yeah, that
definitely painted a picture with her words, and it was
beautifully said and also very inspiring. It's kind of like, yeah, absolutely,
we can definitely emerge with vengeance. That's amazing. Yeah, it's
the word vengeance. The association was happening there. I just
(28:23):
watch that last night. Yeah, she's all about vengeance right now.
But yeah, and even the history of the Chinese Exclusionary
Act and what it held and the discussion as of
laid about Asian hate in general, there's a lot of
contexts that really just kind of bring it background of
what she possibly went through and trying to understand what
(28:46):
it was, because a part of the comments and conversations
within those acts actually has to do with a lot
of sexism and fetishism of Asian women in general, and
this whole idea at the beginning of uh, the exoticism
of Asian women, So you have to wonder as she
was coming here, especially with a missionary from China. There's
(29:07):
so many flips to that that I have in my
head because as a person who used to be in
the religious Christian Western Christian world, we had all of
those stories about missionaries going to China and what that
looked like, and of course coming background to be like, oh,
that's there's some problematic things with that. But then having
that flipped is a different conversation. You really, I really
(29:29):
wonder what her background looked like. But then pushing forward
with her being an advocate and a stuffer just when
it really wasn't necessary. Just for her, it was the
beginning building blocks to actually build up to what she
had hoped for a better world when it comes to
voting rights, when it comes to women's rights. But you know,
(29:50):
it's it's really interesting and I have so many questions
that obviously I'm gonna have to research about her life. Yeah,
and there is still his street of her that exists
in public for us to be able to experience her
Chinese exclusion at case Foul is in the National Archives
in New York City and the post Office in Chinatown
(30:11):
was dedicated to her in it's called the Maple Lee
Memorial Post Office. Now her work has been acknowledged in
the city and that's always a good thing. Yes, that's
good to hear. And like I said, I'm always so
happy that you bring stories because I hadn't heard of her,
and it's I love that there's an information. If you
want to know more, there is stuff that you can
(30:33):
find online. So that's always nice, right, And I would
say as an Asian woman, like I'm not Chinese, i
am absolutely Korean, but you know in my mind, like
my family name is Lee, so there may be a connection.
Not really, but we know, but it is something to see,
Like it is nice to see representation like that at
(30:53):
the time, Uh that I don't know, I don't know obviously,
it makes me said that I didn't know her history,
and I really wish I had been to see that
as someone that could have been influential, be like, wow,
here's someone who at least looked like me a little bit,
even though we're not the same ethnicity. That is an
inspiration to what has happened and was a part of
(31:14):
history and making history happen and continuing to fight in
that and being a representative. It's it's nice to see
and I'm so excited that you were able to bring
that to us because I honestly had no idea about her,
and I feel really shame. It's a shame that I
didn't know anything about her. Don't feel ashamed, it's I mean,
it's not a bad thing to not know about everybody
(31:35):
in the world, and it's a good thing that we
are able to access this information now. So yeah, I
hope that other people as well, um, learn something from
our story and able to dig a little bit deeper
into it and learn more in general about the history
of Chinese Americans in the United States, and about who
(31:56):
was involved in the breath and expansiveness of who was
involved in enfranchisement, and and the work that people did
for gaining more rights and self advocacy in in the
United States. Yes, so well said, as always used. Um,
(32:16):
is there anything else to add before we wrap up here? No,
that's all I got today. Well, thanks as always for
joining us and bringing us these amazing stories. Where can
the good listeners find you? Y'all can find me online
on Instagram at not Apologizing. You can also find me
on Twitter at Eaves Jeff co and you can find
(32:37):
more of my work at east dot com. Yes, and
here on sminty. Many many more episodes, dozens, right, dozens
of episodes. Oh, I think we're approaching That's what I'm saying,
because I want another celebration. Yeah. So many more episodes
of female First where you can learn about other people
(32:59):
in history. He did things that we're super important and
super meaningful in various histories around the world. Yes, yes,
we always love these episodes, so please check them out
if you somehow miss them listeners, and if you would
(33:19):
like to contact us, you can. Our email is Stuff
Media mom Stuff at heart dot com. You can find
us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast or on Instagram
and stuff I've Never Told You Things. As always to
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Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I'm not going to
stuff I've never told your protection of I heart radio
and it's time for another female first, which means we
are once again joined by our good friend, the wonderful,
the amazing Eaves. My goodness, it's good to be good
(00:33):
per usual. Yes, always good to have you. Anything interesting
going on, Eaves, anything of note, anything you're looking forward to? Um,
I don't know, is it okay? I don't know. I'm
even more comfortable with saying I don't know, and I
definitely don't. I don't think they're pretty I feel good.
(00:54):
Things are at level. I'm learning every day, something new,
something that's always a good thing. Um. Yeah, but yeah, nothing.
I don't have much to report, you know. I say
that is one of the things that I admire about
you as where I just sit, you continue to do
(01:14):
new things, learn new things, do things to find yourself
that I'm like, Man, you are really motivated, and I
feel like you used your time wisely. Maybe I'm projecting
because I'm like, I want to be like Eaves. Why
can't I be like Eaves? It's very sweet of you
to think that I have everything together. That is definitely
not the case. Maybe like you at least like exploring,
(01:36):
whether it's like you know, relearning meditation or watching movies
that I like. We recommend something you like, I'll watch it,
and you actually follow through. That's amazing to me. I
think you might be selling yourself a little short, because
I think one reason that we do this is because
our of our never ending curiosity, Like you have to
(01:59):
have level of like staying curious about the world and
learning new things to be able to delves deep into
research and such precurious and intricate topics as you do.
You know, And again, I'm very impressed by the people
that you bring to us, because it is other people,
the women that we've never heard of and or have
been neglected for so long that you can do these
(02:20):
deep dives. It's been also impressive, and that you're doing
the work for us. Thank you. Yes, yes, I was.
I was thinking about that. I was like, how does
as always find these amazing stories I've never heard? Well,
you know, the world is a vast pit of information
(02:46):
and overpopulation, notwithstanding people are being born and there are
a lot of shows to tail. I mean that makes
me really excited, um, and it really puts things into
perspective to just know how many small universes have been
created that we are able to tap into because we
(03:06):
have such a wealth of information at our fingertips. There
is a talent to being able to research and research
well because I have discovered I'm at the very cusp
of like trying to figure it out when we try
to find, you know, women around the world that series
and finding women and activists who are doing great things
that we don't talk about or talking enough about, but
(03:27):
it's still like hard to actually figure out where to
even start half the time. So I'm discovering that it
is a lot. It takes a bit of talent and
of course a lot of practice, but like all of
those days come together to find good research. So kudos,
thank you again. I love this. I love our because
(03:51):
it's early morning. I feel like we're starting off with
a warm virtual hug that like it's it's honestly just
the was to really appreciate because when you really think
that down deep into it and you're like, wow, this
is kind of amazing. Yeah, I'm done, undone with my
squashy guccy stuff. I love it. I love it. We're
(04:13):
such Eves fan girls. Yes, yes, I'll take you anything, anything,
I'll take it all perfect, perfect, well, speaking of amazing
stories and small universes, I love how you put it
like that. M who did you bring for us today? Eves?
Today we're going to be talking about Mabel ping Huai.
(04:33):
So she was Chinese American women's rights activists and she
was involved in the suffragist space. Um and I said
that she was the first Chinese woman to get a
doctor in economics from Columbia University. Yeah. And she has
an amazing story, an amazing story with so many historical
threads and contexts and nuance throughout. So very very excited
(04:58):
to get into this one. Yeah, me too. Uh So
let's start. She was born around eight and Gang Joe, China,
and in China, she learned English at a missionary school.
She lived with her mother and her grandmother. Her mother's
name was lie Beck and she was part of the
upper class and gone show. Her father Leto which is
(05:20):
spelt some different ways in the records, like spelled t
o or t o w e. But he was a
missionary in the US. He has his own story of
coming over to the United States and being involved in
the Christian church here, and mabel Leah moved to the
United States in the early nineteen hundreds. There are some
(05:42):
conflicting days given a lot of parts of her history,
but she was there by nineteen o five and after
her father had That was after her father had already
been in the United States for years, so she spent
some time in California and Washington State, and they eventually
sold in Chinatown in New York City. The Lee family
(06:04):
was part of a movement of Chinese people from the
West Coast to the East Coast as opportunities for work
decreased and anti Chinese violence increased in the West. So
it's not as if like anti Chinese violence wasn't just
concentrated in the West. I don't want to make it
seem like there were only instances of that in a
(06:27):
specific place, because I think we like to compartmentalized regions
in the United States, as if certain things only happen
in certain places, like racism only happened in the South
and didn't happen in the North. And I don't don't
want to make it seem like that's what I'm saying here.
It's just that that there was some movement from the
west to the East. I would also like to take
(06:47):
this moment to talk about some of the context around immigration,
um that was happening with Chinese people who migrated from
China to the United States, and also some that came after,
generations came after that were born here in the United
States from people who were migrants from China. So I
think that we might have talked about this the Chinese
(07:08):
Exclusion Act before in Female First and I'm sure that
y'all have mentioned it before otherwise, um we did. I
remember we did the episode on Aphon Moi, the quote
unquote first Chinese Lady, So we might have talked about
it before. But of course it's worth a while bringing
it up again here because that policy is super relevant
because it was active for many years, many decades, which
(07:32):
is like so hard to believe how recent this history is,
but really puts a lot of things into perspective. But
Congress approved the Chinese Exclusion Act in May of eighteen
eighty two, which banned Chinese laborers from migrating to the
United States for ten years. So as it goes with law,
there are so many more rules that go into that,
(07:53):
so many more asterisks. The Act was later extended, even
though it was initially supposed to be imposed for ten years,
and then it was made permanent until the Act was
repealed in nineteen forty three with the Magnuscent Act, and
even then it wasn't like a full repeal. There was
a quota for Chinese immigrants that was set to one
hundred and five people, so there were people who were
(08:16):
exempt from those rules, like diplomats, teachers, students, and merchants
who were allowed to migrate, but they also had to
have certification stating that they were qualified to immigrate, which
has its own layer of issues. There are stories about
people who were affected by the Chinese Exclusion Act who
had to go through these these layers of questioning and
(08:40):
having to qualify your personal existence and why you're worthy
of being in a space, and just imagine how mentally,
emotionally how impactful that is in a person. So that's
another layer to delve into. But that is something that
did come up in mabel Leese life and obviously so
many other people UM that were affected by the Chinese
(09:02):
Exclusion Act. You'll see it in some of her papers
UM and her having to leave the country and come
back into the United States because there were rules around
how a person could re enter if they were a
Chinese migrant trying to leave the country and then come back.
Not as if we're unfamiliar with issues around migration right
now in the United States, but this was the case
(09:24):
in her story as well. So this law wasn't active
for many many reasons. There are many layers to it.
It was stoked by things like fear, racism, anti Chinese animosity,
economic insecurity. So yes, there are a lot of factors
that go into the reason. But this is what was
(09:46):
a part of Maple Least life as she was moving
to the United States. Immigration from China was extremely limited
during the period under the Exclusion Act. And they're the
people who were already here even before Exclusion Act um
was implemented. We're also facing violence from people who had
an anti Chinese sentiment. Yes, so, so Lee and her
(10:08):
family were able to migrate here, but she was one
of few. There weren't that many other people there at
the time who were able to make that happen. But
so when she settled in New York, she went to
Erasmus Hall High School, which was a public school in Brooklyn,
and of course people in the United States had their
(10:28):
eyes on international efforts for suffrage, so that included China,
where there was a revolution in nineteen eleven, and people
in China have been organizing for decades for women's suffrage.
So I think it's really easy to get into a
bubble and think about what's happening here in the United States.
And we've talked about women's suffrage in the United States before,
(10:50):
but there were also efforts in China, and leading up
to the revolution, women's suffrage activists opposed to Ching monarchy
which was overthrown and I Tina eleven and they supported
the equality of genders, and we're talking about things like
advocating for more political participation for women. And they didn't
(11:11):
quite get this in the newly formed Republic of China immediately,
but women stuff are just in China did remain vigilant
in their activism. So because so many white Americans views
of Chinese folks were anchored in this racism and xenophobia
and ignorance, the four movement of enfranchisement wasn't a good
(11:36):
look for the supposedly moral upstanding. These are not my words,
but like how the view of from white Americans perspective
was of the other. Specifically for Chinese people in this situation,
it's like, we're more civilized, we have all our stuff
going on, we have more of this forward movement, were
more progressive, and they were seen as more lowly by
(12:00):
lot they When I say they, I mean like Chinese people. Um.
For for people in China, of course we're exot sized,
were viewed as the other. We're seen as more lowly,
and all the other various stereotypes and things that were
and and views that were bred out of racism that
came from white American perspective. Um. So, the fact that
(12:23):
there was movement when it came to suffrage and enfranchisement
for people in China who were supposed to be this
less quote unquote lesser version of people was something that
didn't look so great to a lot of white Americans
who were invested in suffrage. So white suffragists looked to
(12:54):
Chinese suffragists in the US to learn more about efforts
in China, and also efforts about education in China, because
that was also something that women were trying to have
for movement on in the United States. In April of
nineteen twelve, Mabel and her parents, along with other Chinese
people in the community met with white activists who wanted
(13:15):
more insight on the situation. But it's interesting because if
you read, there was a lot of reporting about Mabel
and things that were happening in the suffrage space in
New York when Mabel was active, and in this situation
of the meeting with parents is positioned in a way
where it seems like the white women who were involved,
even though the woman who kind of brought this meeting
(13:37):
together says that I'm not really the suffragist kind, but
I figured it could be good to talk to Chinese
people about these issues that are affecting them while they're
here in the U S. Issues around education and around
women's rights and suffrage. Yeah, so at this meeting, Mabel
Lee spoke of her support for gender equality and education
(13:59):
for girls and suffrage and she was still young, so
she started all of this when she was a teenager.
She became known as a person who had oratory skills
and who was invested in bringing women's rights to the
forefront as a teenager. So this is while she was
in high school. She was featured in a couple of
(14:21):
New York Tribune articles in April of nineteen twelve. Around
that same time, one was called Chinese Girl once vote.
So she was positioned as a quote symbol of the
new era, when all their women will be free and unhampered.
That was a quote from that New York Tribune article.
(14:42):
And by their women, they are referring to Chinese women.
And there was another article that month in the New
York Tribune called Chinatown Awakens, in which she was called
the quote progressive Mabel Lee. She was also some sentences
later called a hopeless little suffragette. Suffragette itself are ready
being a derogatory terminology for someone who was invested in suffrage.
(15:04):
So there was I think we definitely talked about this
a lot before, because y'all know I love bringing quotes.
But how steeped in the languages, in the racism of
the day, the views towards Chinese people, And yeah, so
you can delve into that and reading that entire article,
(15:25):
It's just funny to me because there is a huge
contrast between the uplift of who Mabel Lee was, acknowledging
that she was progressive, acknowledging that she was helping the
white people in this instance learn more about her culture,
learn more about the knowledge that she had, so they
(15:46):
were coming to her for assistance, but at the same
time using language that UH showed how they viewed Mabel
and other Chinese people as inferior. So it's a huge
the dissonance happening. And then also there was all of
the other things that are just outdated language that we
(16:06):
would no longer use at all because we know that
it's just steeped in stereotyping and things like that. So yeah,
it's just interesting to see the contrast and the dissonance
happening there. But either way, there were a bunch of
articles that came out on her, and it wasn't just
in New York. There were articles around the nation who
picked up stories on what was happening. And soon after
(16:28):
the meeting that I spoke about earlier in May of
nineteen twelve, on May fourth, she was involved in a
suffrage parade, and there were also articles about this leading
up to the time and some of the fanfare and
excitement that was happening, and looking forward to this parade,
newspapers around the country printed headlines that were highlighting leads
(16:51):
involvement in the parade. There was a bunch of hoop
lah over how she was riding in on horseback, and
she was leading the initial cavalcade that was bring in
this ten thousand people for the parade. The newspapers were
specifically calling out the fact that she was Chinese as
if it were some sort of party trick. She rode
on horseback and and there's a picture of her on
(17:14):
horseback as well that she can go and look at.
But her speaking skills were praised, and her activism at
the time connected her to other activists who were in
the space, But she was still going through her own
educational process. She was the only Chinese student in her
class when she graduated from high school, and she began
(17:35):
attending Barnard College, which is a women's college in New
York City. You can see a lot of her consciousness
developing at this time, although she already had it as
an aside. You'll see a lot of the articles talk
about how her mother's feet were bound and try to
kind of position her mother as a symbol of the
(17:58):
old while her fad Mabel Lee is a symbol of
the news, saying, well, her mom came from this, but
she still apports suffrage. Look at that wow, While Mabel
Lee as an example of the this new age of
people coming up in a contrast to the tradition of
what her mom supposedly represented. But either way, she was
(18:22):
involved in a lot of clubs and activism during her
time in college as well. She was in the y
w c A, the Young Woman's Christian Association, and she
sometimes spoke about Chinese culture and history for the organization,
and during her time at Barnard she wrote a speech
(18:43):
called China's Submerged Half, which I just love that name
for like some reason. I don't know. It's just something
about the words submerged that I find really like. It
just draws me into like I wonder what this is
going to be about. I feel like that's really that's
a really interesting way to title something. Anyway, that's my
(19:04):
weirdness about words outside um. I have a quote from it.
She said, china Submerged Half has begun to emerge. And
when you recall that a battalion of Chinese young women
was organized and drilled for service in the Late Revolution,
and that a militant woman suffragist used violence towards a
deputy of the Nanking Assembly for refusing the vote for
(19:26):
woman's suffrage. You will agree with me that a part
of that half has emerged with a vengeance, and I
love that, um so um. I think the reason, going
back to words, I love submerged half because when she
says submerged half, she's referring to women, and I think
a lot of the time it's a difficulty for me
(19:48):
to position things from a way in which self identifying
as the inferior, because I think that's what the word
submerged can do. It implies that that we're starting from
a negative space. It's like you're immediately positioning yourself with
negativity in the situation. But I think she flips that
(20:12):
on it's head where it's like, Okay, we're submerged, but
we're working with so much. You know, there's vengeance that's happening.
It's not it's not coming from she's not coming from
a meek position, a position in which she feels like
she's incapable. Um So. She celebrated progress in terms of
things that Chinese women were doing, like establishing newspapers in
(20:33):
that speech, but she noted that a lot of things
were being said in theory and not done in practice,
and that rendering justice was urgent and that she and
other girls would have the duties of pioneers um So
she considered herself a feminist and she became part of
feminist discussions that were happening on campus through groups like
(20:57):
the Feminist Forum, and she joined the Debate Club. She
was also part of the Chinese Students Club at Columbia,
which was associated with the Chinese Students Alliance, in which
over the year she held many positions in during her
time in college, so one wonders when she had the
(21:18):
time to do anything, because she definitely seems like she
was involved in a lot. But while she was at Bernard,
she wrote for the Chinese Students Monthly, which was the
national magazine for the Alliance, and the first article she
published for it was in June of nineteen fourteen, which
was the meaning of Woman's Suffrage. In August of nineteen fourteen,
(21:42):
she went to the CSA's Eastern Conference and competed in
an oratorical contest. So she made a lot of friends
during her time who were also activist and was heavily
involved in the student community. She got a bachelor's degree
from Barnard in nineteen sixteen and where she majored in
history and philosophy, and she continued on her educational track
(22:06):
when she was accepted into the PhD program and the
Department of Political Science and Philosophy at Columbia University. She
got a scholarship to go there, and that was around
the time that the graduate school there had began to
admit some i'll be a small number of women into
(22:28):
their doctoral programs. During her time at Columbia, she remained
active in the Chinese Students Alliance and she worked with Dr.
Vladimir Simkovic, who had become her mentor and her dissertation advisor,
and he encouraged her to study historical Chinese agricultural policy.
(22:52):
Her dissertation was entitled the Economic History of China with
Special Reference to Agriculture, which is available to read online
if you're interested in such a sort of thing. Yes,
So she advocated for a balance between the old and
the new, the traditional and the modern, which makes a
lot of sense for her, and to not just cast
(23:12):
aside what was done in the past as useless. In
nineteen seventeen, Mabel also participated in another suffrage parade as
(23:34):
part of the Women's Political Equality League, and it was
that same year that New York State did enfranchise women,
but Mabel, as a Chinese immigrants, still could not vote.
In ninete, that was the year she got her first
so she became the first Chinese woman to get a
(23:56):
PhD from Columbia University. So a path after around this
time for moving forward and career was often to go
back to teach, but finding employment was difficult for Mabel
during her life. She did plan to return to China
to live to bring back what she learned um as
(24:17):
she didn't have a path to citizenship. It was a
path for a lot of women to choose to go
back to China to work, but Mabel herself never went
back permanently to China, even though she did have some
visits in her later years. Her plans, as plans tend
to do, didn't go completely as she expected. She continued
(24:42):
working at Columbia and then she did go to study
in Europe, but she had to make arrangements when she
went out of the country. As we spoke about earlier,
what immigrants had to do when it came to reentry
into the US had to qualify their reasoning for coming
back to the United it States and that they were
able to do so, and there are papers documenting her
(25:05):
process of that. She planned on setting up a business
importing Chinese herbal medicine, but her father died in November
of nineteen four and she decided to go and continue
his work. She decided to start working for the church,
and she became director of her father's mission in New
York City and started the process of making it her own.
(25:31):
The church building was rented, so she raised funds and
had a new church built at twenty one pel Street,
and a friend of hers, after she was involved in
that for many many years, suggested that she go back
to her intellectual interest, but she remained invested in a church.
She went back to China a few times in the
(25:54):
nineteen twenties and the thirties, and but like I said earlier,
she never did move back there permanently. UM but some
Chinese women were enfranchised and able to vote in nineteen
forty three when the Magnusent Act passed, but that still
didn't extend to all Chinese women. UM. The Immigration and
(26:16):
Nationality Act of nineteen fifty two and the Voting Rights
Act of nineteen sixty five did further that process along
and moved the needle on voting rights for Chinese Americans,
though that didn't solve everything, because US citizens who were
of Asian descent still faced discrimination and voting today. But
(26:38):
there were no records of Lee herself naturalizing, and it's
also not known whether she ever voted in the United States,
and she died in nineteen sixty six in New York City. Yeah,
this story is so amazing, And I love learning about
feminism and other countries and just the history of feminism
(26:59):
and their places because kind of like what you were
saying earlier, Samantha, with our problem of finding doing the
research around women around the world, is a lot of
our searches are very like American, not even English, but
like very American centered. So it's I really liked learning
about this in the context she brought about what was
(27:20):
going on in China when it came to suffrage and feminism.
And yeah, this was just she really really did so
much and she has so much writing um and as
someone who writes, I really enjoyed reading some the stuff
that she did and I was like impressed and the Yeah,
(27:41):
I too, am a word nerd, So I liked a
lot of the words that she she used and I
thought she used them so effectively, right. I think the
line that you read from her really made me think
of like superheroes where they you know, pushed their way
through out of a situation, whether they're like under debris
and have to fly out of that situation essentially, Like
(28:01):
that kind of came into mind. Um, because Yeah, that
definitely painted a picture with her words, and it was
beautifully said and also very inspiring. It's kind of like, yeah, absolutely,
we can definitely emerge with vengeance. That's amazing. Yeah, it's
the word vengeance. The association was happening there. I just
(28:23):
watch that last night. Yeah, she's all about vengeance right now.
But yeah, and even the history of the Chinese Exclusionary
Act and what it held and the discussion as of
laid about Asian hate in general, there's a lot of
contexts that really just kind of bring it background of
what she possibly went through and trying to understand what
(28:46):
it was, because a part of the comments and conversations
within those acts actually has to do with a lot
of sexism and fetishism of Asian women in general, and
this whole idea at the beginning of uh, the exoticism
of Asian women, So you have to wonder as she
was coming here, especially with a missionary from China. There's
(29:07):
so many flips to that that I have in my
head because as a person who used to be in
the religious Christian Western Christian world, we had all of
those stories about missionaries going to China and what that
looked like, and of course coming background to be like, oh,
that's there's some problematic things with that. But then having
that flipped is a different conversation. You really, I really
(29:29):
wonder what her background looked like. But then pushing forward
with her being an advocate and a stuffer just when
it really wasn't necessary. Just for her, it was the
beginning building blocks to actually build up to what she
had hoped for a better world when it comes to
voting rights, when it comes to women's rights. But you know,
(29:50):
it's it's really interesting and I have so many questions
that obviously I'm gonna have to research about her life. Yeah,
and there is still his street of her that exists
in public for us to be able to experience her
Chinese exclusion at case Foul is in the National Archives
in New York City and the post Office in Chinatown
(30:11):
was dedicated to her in it's called the Maple Lee
Memorial Post Office. Now her work has been acknowledged in
the city and that's always a good thing. Yes, that's
good to hear. And like I said, I'm always so
happy that you bring stories because I hadn't heard of her,
and it's I love that there's an information. If you
want to know more, there is stuff that you can
(30:33):
find online. So that's always nice, right, And I would
say as an Asian woman, like I'm not Chinese, i
am absolutely Korean, but you know in my mind, like
my family name is Lee, so there may be a connection.
Not really, but we know, but it is something to see,
Like it is nice to see representation like that at
(30:53):
the time, Uh that I don't know, I don't know obviously,
it makes me said that I didn't know her history,
and I really wish I had been to see that
as someone that could have been influential, be like, wow,
here's someone who at least looked like me a little bit,
even though we're not the same ethnicity. That is an
inspiration to what has happened and was a part of
(31:14):
history and making history happen and continuing to fight in
that and being a representative. It's it's nice to see
and I'm so excited that you were able to bring
that to us because I honestly had no idea about her,
and I feel really shame. It's a shame that I
didn't know anything about her. Don't feel ashamed, it's I mean,
it's not a bad thing to not know about everybody
(31:35):
in the world, and it's a good thing that we
are able to access this information now. So yeah, I
hope that other people as well, um, learn something from
our story and able to dig a little bit deeper
into it and learn more in general about the history
of Chinese Americans in the United States, and about who
(31:56):
was involved in the breath and expansiveness of who was
involved in enfranchisement, and and the work that people did
for gaining more rights and self advocacy in in the
United States. Yes, so well said, as always used. Um,
(32:16):
is there anything else to add before we wrap up here? No,
that's all I got today. Well, thanks as always for
joining us and bringing us these amazing stories. Where can
the good listeners find you? Y'all can find me online
on Instagram at not Apologizing. You can also find me
on Twitter at Eaves Jeff co and you can find
(32:37):
more of my work at east dot com. Yes, and
here on sminty. Many many more episodes, dozens, right, dozens
of episodes. Oh, I think we're approaching That's what I'm saying,
because I want another celebration. Yeah. So many more episodes
of female First where you can learn about other people
(32:59):
in history. He did things that we're super important and
super meaningful in various histories around the world. Yes, yes,
we always love these episodes, so please check them out
if you somehow miss them listeners, and if you would
(33:19):
like to contact us, you can. Our email is Stuff
Media mom Stuff at heart dot com. You can find
us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast or on Instagram
and stuff I've Never Told You Things. As always to
our super producer Christina, thank you and thanks to you
for listening Stuff when Never told you his protection by
Heart Radio. For more podcast in my Heart Radio is
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.