On this day
Tye Leung Schulze cast a ballot in San Francisco as the first Chinese American woman to vote in the United States, months after California granted women suffrage; she was also the first Chinese American woman to hold a US civil-service job. (Shares May 19 with the California Alien Land Law and Yuri Kochiyama's birth.)
Gov. Hiram Johnson signed the Webb-Haney Act, barring 'aliens ineligible for citizenship'-chiefly Asian immigrants-from owning agricultural land. (Assembly passed it May 3, the date EJI uses; sources give the signing as May 19 or May 20.)
Yuri Kochiyama, born this day, survived WWII incarceration and became a leading advocate of Black-Asian solidarity and human rights-working alongside Malcolm X and helping found Asian Americans for Action. (Anchored on her birth anniversary; shares May 19 with the California Alien Land Law.)