Mabel Ping-Hua Lee

Mabel Ping-Hua Lee was a Chinese advocate for womens' suffrage in the United States. Although the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 denied US citizenship to Chinese immigrants until 1943, 16-year-old Lee mobilized the Chinese community to support the women's suffrage movement leading up to the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. Lee was also the first Chinese woman in the United States to earn a PhD in economics, and for over 40 years, Lee was head of the First Chinese Baptist Church in New York's Chinatown.