Full Name Tye Leung Died 1972 Name Tye Schulze | Occupation Interpreter Nationality American | |
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Born 1887 San Francisco, California, United States Known for First Chinese American woman to cast a ballot in a primary election. | ||
TYE by Lily Tung Crystal
Tye Leung Schulze became the first Chinese American woman to vote when she cast a ballot in San Francisco on May 19, 1912. The San Francisco Call stated that she was "the first Chinese woman in the history of the world to exercise the electoral franchise." Schulze was also the first Chinese woman hired to work at Angel Island. She is a designated Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project.
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Early life
Tye Leung was born in San Francisco, California in 1887. She was one of eight children and her father was a Chinese cobbler while her mother ran a boarding house. As a teenager she was placed in an arranged marriage to a man in Butte, Montana. At 14 she was saved from the arranged marriage by Donaldina Cameron of the Presbyterian Mission Home. At the Mission she learned to speak English, studied Christianity, and helped Cameron rescue Chinese slaves by acting as an interpreter.
Back in the Bay Area
Leung was the first Chinese American to pass the civil service examinations and she was hired to work as an assistant to the matron at the Angel Island Immigration Station. There she would work with Chinese immigrants who were detained for physical examinations and interrogation upon their arrival.
In 1912 Leung was the first Chinese woman to vote in a primary election. After voting the San Francisco Examiner called the vote "the last word in the modern movement for the complete enfranchisement of women...It was the latest achievement in the great American work of amalgamating and lifting up all the races of the earth."
At Angel Island she would meet immigration inspector Charles Schulze. Intermarriage of Chinese and white Americans was illegal in California so the couple went to Vancouver, Washington to be legally married. They were married in October 1913. They had to quit their government jobs after the marriage due to racial prejudice. Schulze went to work for the Southern Pacific Company as an "inspector of office machines", and then as a superintendent of service for the Columbia Gramaphone Company. The couple had four children. Schulze died in 1935 and Leung served as a bookkeeper at the San Francisco Chinese Hospital to support her family. Leung went to work as a night-shift PBX operator at the Chinatown telephone exchange. She spent many years providing interpretation and social services to San Francisco's Chinatown residents. She passed at the approximate age of 85.
Legacy
In October 2011 the story of Tye Leung Schulze was told through a play starring actress Lily Tung.