Salute to the Tapes
October 26, 2009
This is Week 31 of AsianWeek’s salute to Chinese American heroes, in strategic partnership with Chinese American Heroes, a 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated to documenting the contributions of Chinese Americans to America and the world.
In this week’s historic moment, we salute “Tape.” The Tape we are referring to are Joseph and Mary Tape. Thanks to work Dr. Judy Yung put into her book, “UNBOUND VOICES – A Documentary of Chinese Women in San Francisco,” 1999 University of California Press, we know about two very special pioneers who fought against all odds over a hundred years ago to open the doors of public education in San Francisco for their daughter and all Chinese American children.
The opportunity to be educated in schools in America was denied to the early Chinese as it was for many minorities. San Francisco required them to pay an unrealistically high school tax that white children weren’t required to pay. Chinese, who have traditionally honored education as the best way to rise in the world, were especially incensed at being refused the right to an education and took legal action. The leading case was brought by the Tape family and was finally decided in 1885. Mary Tape was especially stubborn in fighting for her daughter, Mamie’s right to be educated in San Francisco public schools.
In the 1880s having a Chinese American daughter with the name of Mamie was very significant and different. Few 1st generation Chinese immigrants had integrated into American society (few white Americans would welcome them and certainly nobody in official government circles wanted them.) Without access to American education, their acquisition of English skills would be delayed for decades, perpetuating the stereotype of Chinese as perpetual foreigners and potential enemies.
The Tapes were uniquely educated and both could speak and read English. Joseph worked as an expressman, a drayman and an interpreter for the Chinese consulate. Mary had emigrated from Shanghai, and was educated by Christian missionaries. She spoke a very educated form of English. She had her own dreams and was a self-taught photographer, painter, and telegraph operator. Mary was most unusual and was far ahead of her contemporaries in dressing in Western attire and adapting to an American lifestyle. She had four children, all trained and skilled in classical European music, amazing everyone who met her. Mary Tape’s story was written up in the Morning Call newspaper in San Francisco. When her 8 year old daughter was denied entry into Spring Valley School in 1884 by Principal Jennie Hurley, Joseph and his feisty and educated wife fought back. The Tapes sued the San Francisco School Board in the case of Tape v. Hurley).
It was a very bold move for a Chinese couple to take on the American establishment. Much to everyone’s surprise, including their own most likely, the Tapes won when a superior court judge ruled in their favor, citing the 14th Amendment and California legislation that all children, regardless of race, were entitled to a public education.
The local court victory did not please the San Francisco Board of Education, who had described the Chinese as “baboons and monkeys” in 1859. The case was appealed to the California State Supreme Court. Fearing what might be another decision against them the school superintendant immediately pressed the California State Legislature to pass an “emergency” law setting up a separate “Oriental Public School” for “Chinese or Mongolians.” (White Americans and their officialdom having no idea that these nationalities have been separate culturally and historically.) This was duly made into law in Assembly Bill 268 (only repealed in 1947.) Incredibly, the State Court upheld the superior court’s judgment despite the efforts of all levels of California officialdom. Even with the courts supporting her, young Mamie Tape was accompanied by two lawyers on her first day of class at Spring Valley School. Despite the lawyers, Principal Hurley, again denied entrance with the excuse that Mamie did not have a vaccination certificate required by the Board of Education, and also said that the school was overbooked. Mamie was put on a “waiting list” that would never be called. “Separate but equal” became San Francisco’s official school policy a decade before the US Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson made those racist policies the law of the land in 1896. Left with few other choices in immediately getting the education they wanted for their children the Tapes enrolled their children in the new Chinese Primary School in San Francisco in April 1885.
Mary Tape continued her fight and wrote a letter to the Board of Education shaming the Board for being racists and hypocrites but this was ignored. Mary Tape believed in the democratic process and fought for justice through the politicians and the courts. Although unsuccessful at the time she was an extraordinary woman fighting for justice and the rights of her family whose position for equality was ultimately vindicated when all schools were officially desegregated following the US Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Her death in 1934 prevented her from seeing this vindication.
Mary Tape was lucky to live long enough though to see the day when women finally got the right to vote across the United States in 1920 with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, 144 years after the Declaration of Independence had declared that “all men are equal.” The Chinese were not the only ones who had to fight hard and long to enjoy their civil rights. Let’s hope that Mary at least enjoyed this victory.
For additional information about Chinese American heroes, please visit the Chinese American Heroes website at www.chineseamericanheroes.org.
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