Mabel Ping-Hua Lee was a Chinese-American women’s rights activist and Baptist minister. Born in China and raised in New York City, she earned a doctorate in economics from Columbia University in 1921—the first Chinese woman in the U.S. to do so. Lee campaigned for women’s suffrage, riding in the 1912 New York parade, but could not vote until the 1943 repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act. She led the First Chinese Baptist Church for 40 years and advocated for Chinatown’s community. In 2017, a Chinatown post office was renamed in her honor.
