Going Deeper into the life of Dr. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee
By Theresa Babbitt
You may remember Dr. Grace May’s post during Asian American History month entitled, The Asian American Feminist Trailblazer: Dr. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee in which she honors the history of Asian American leaders in the church and encourages them to continue finding and using their voices today.
To review, in the 1920’s, “Dr. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee blazed a trail for women and men to make a positive and practical impact in their communities.” She did this through activism, defying the odds of gender and education, and stepping into positions of leadership that were uncommon in her day.
She was indeed a scholar activist who labored to address the roots of women’s rights during the suffrage movement and the roots of nation-building by advocating for their interdependency on one another. She believed that in order for nations to advance, women must first advance so in order that they might more fully participate and contribute to the building of the nation.
Further Reading
Interested in unpacking more?
Dr. Grace May does a skillful job of laying out a more complete biographical sketch of Dr. Mable Ping-Hua Lee and her contributions in this article in the WCIU Journal.
You can also hear directly from Dr. Mable Ping-Hua Lee in two articles featured in a recently released book entitled, Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement by Cathleen D. Cahill.