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Women's Suffrage

Virginia SOL

USII.5 The student will apply history and social science skills to understand the social, political, economic, and technological changes of the early 20th century by

d. describing the events and leaders that lead to prohibition, the Women’s Suffrage Movement, and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, including, but not limited to Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Burns, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Carrie Chapman Catt, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Sojourner Truth;

Sharing Mabel Ping-Hua Lee's Story

"Mabel Ping-Hua Lee was born on October 7, 1897, in Guangzhou (Canton City), China. Her father, Dr. Lee Towe, was a missionary pastor, and he moved to the United States when she was four years old. Lee stayed in China with her mother and grandmother and studied Chinese with private tutors. When Lee was nine years old, she won an academic scholarship called the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship that allowed her to relocate to the United States to attend school. The Lee family moved in 1905 to Chinatown in New York City, and Mabel Lee attended Erasmus Hall Academy in Brooklyn, New York. Lee became involved in activism and women’s rights very early on. By the time she was sixteen years old, Lee helped to lead a suffrage parade on horseback in New York City. Held on May 4, 1912, the parade started in New York’s historic Greenwich Village and was attended by almost ten thousand people."

National Women's History Museum Biography

"Chinese Girl Wants Vote. Miss Lee...to ride in Suffrage Parade." (NYT)

NewYorkTribune-Mabel_Lee- April 13, 1912.pdf

"I cannot too strongly impress upon the reader the importance of this consideration, for the feministic movement is not one for privileges to women, but one for the requirement of women to be worthy citizens and contribute their share to the steady progress of our country towards prosperity and national greatness."

The Meaning of Woman Suffrage, 531

The Meaning of Woman Suffrage

Miss Mabel Lee, Barnard College in The Chinese Students Monthly Publication

Mabel_Lee_TheMeaningofWomanSuffrage.pdf

While mainstream suffrage movements tell the stories of Susan B. Anthony, Mabel Lee was an incredible advocate for pushing for women's rights and the mobilizing the Chinese American community.

"But the real democratic idea is to have a really natural aristocracy by giving equality of opportunity in order to let every man prove his merits.

And in the feministic movement, these opportunities are again applying the same misrepresentation by saying that the feminists wish to make women like men, whereas the feminists want nothing more than the equality of opportunity for women to prove their merits and what they are best suited to do" (page 528).

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