Mabel Ping‑Hua Lee blended in with her peers at the parade, just as Blatch had intended. She wore the same three‑cornered hat and had it knotted with the same colored ribbons. She was “clad”—in the words of one newspaper commentator—just “like the rich and fashionable suffragettes around her, in a tight fitting black broadcloth habit.”
But compared with the white activists who were also leading the march, she did stand out. There were not a lot of Chinese girls on the front lines of the American battle for women’s suffrage.
In the months before Blatch’s parade, rumors spread that China had extended the vote to its women. The chattering classes in New York were horrified. For white women who were desperate to vote and who lived in a nation founded on the supposed ideals of freedom, it was a bitter pill. For those who harbored anti‑Chinese sentiments, it was humiliating. With the Page Act of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the United States had barred most Chinese people from crossing its borders. Implicit in the bills was the racist conviction that their mere presence posed a threat.
News of the enfranchisement of women in China complicated the narrative. How was it possible America had failed to extend to its women a right that that nation had offered theirs? Activists raced to capitalize on the scandal. In cities like New York and Boston and Cincinnati, advocates for women’s suffrage joined up with Chinese activists to get the word out, contrasting American inaction on the issue with Chinese progress.
Prejudices ran so deep that even the fact of their meeting drew attention. In The Oregonian, in April 1912, a writer crammed the newsiest bit of the article into its five‑word headline: “Chinese Women Dine with White.”
In New York, three prominent white suffragists, including Alva Belmont, called for a similar summit. The women invited a handful of activists and Chinese leaders to discuss opportunities for collaboration. Lee and her parents, a minister and a teacher who’d been permitted to settle in the United States thanks to narrow exemptions to the nativist laws, attended. Mabel was given the floor.
“All women are recognized in New York, excepting Chinese women,” Lee said. Educational institutions were closed to them. Social hubs and recreational centers excluded them. She was a well‑rehearsed public speaker. The recent revolution in China had driven scores of Chinese American students in the United States—girls in particular—to get involved in local politics. Chinese nationalist leaders preached an ethos of self‑improvement, which meant urging girls to pursue education, develop experience and expertise, and then pledge to give back to China.