AANHPI History Calendar

· San Francisco, California

Tye Leung Schulze, First Chinese American Woman to Vote

achievement

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.)

Communities
  • Chinese American
Topics
  • voting
Event type
  • achievement/first
Identity lens
  • women

Sources

  • nps.gov nps.gov/people/tye-leung-schulze.htm
  • uscis.gov uscis.gov/about-us/our-history/stories-from-the-archives/tye-leung-schulze-immigration-interpreter-and-equal-rights-pioneer

Also on May 19

injustice

California Alien Land Law Signed

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.)

resistance

Yuri Kochiyama Born

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.)