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Pioneers

BY NANCY NG TAM

Through educating and advocating, two women secured rights and resources for fellow Chinese Americans.

The stories of Theodora Chan Wang and Virginia Kee illuminate the pivotal role that Chinese American women played in shaping activism within New York’s Chinatown. Wang advocated for Chinatown women’s education and health in the first half of the twentieth century, and her lobbying contributed to the repeal of racial restrictions on immigration and citizenship. Kee’s commitment to bringing social services to low-income immigrant families in Chinatown in the second half of the century led her to a historic career in local and state Democratic politics. Taken together, the stories of these outspoken women of action provide a small window into the important historical contributions of earlier generations of Chinese American women.

Theodora Chan Wang

Theodora Chan Wang taught the first English classes for Chinese immigrant women in New York when she was hired to run the first YWCA branch in Chinatown in 1921. At the time, it was the convention that men and women did not mix in public, and existing classes were for men and children.

Wang herself was from a family of educated women. Through her grandfather’s connections with English missionaries, her mother, Tsui Kwai Ching, was admitted to an all-boys school when it was still uncommon for families in China to send girls to school. Her mother later taught Chinese at the girls’ school that the missionaries built in her home village. She continued to teach at church after she immigrated to join her husband, the Methodist minister Lok Shang Chan, and raise their seven children in Oakland, California. Her sisters also broke the mold. After graduating medical school in Guangzhou (then Canton), one became a surgeon and the other an obstetrician.

Wang was fourteen when she came to the United States in 1910. Not knowing any English, she supplemented her studies with summer school and was admitted to the University of California, Berkeley, as a foreign student in 1916. After her graduation in 1920, the pursuit of a master’s in educational psychology at the Teachers College of Columbia University brought her to New York. But though she completed her coursework, she was not allowed to receive her teaching certificate because she was not a citizen. Like most Chinese in America not born in the country, she was categorized as an “alien ineligible for citizenship” under prevailing naturalization laws that excluded Chinese (and other Asians) from American citizenship.

Instead of returning to teach in China as she had planned, Wang found her calling engaging in teaching and social work among Chinatown’s women. She joined a small but growing number of young, educated Chinese who, shut out of opportunities in the professions of mainstream society and influenced by the values of the Progressive era, dedicated themselves to improving conditions in ethnic enclave communities.

Wang’s efforts to educate Chinatown’s women were initially opposed by a few of the men who held the community’s leadership positions at the Consolidated Chinese Benevolent Association (CCBA). When she first opened the YWCA, and for everything big she wanted to do, Wang had to first speak to Chinatown’s “mayor” and the community’s other male leaders at the CCBA. Though some disapproved (Wang thought out of fear that their wives would become smarter than them), others were open to them receiving instruction at the YWCA.

In addition to English, she taught classes for new mothers on how to care for themselves and their babies. Finding that they did not like to go to the hospital, she arranged for a female doctor to attend births at home to ensure safer deliveries.

In 1931, Wang established one of the community's first women's club, the Chinese Women's Association (CWA). The club carved out space for women and girls for recreation, learning, volunteering, and activism. High school girls read books and newspapers to older women at the CWA. Other activities included classes in English and simplified Chinese, as well as shadowboxing, sword dancing, and drama club performances.

During the Great Depression, English-speaking members like Wang went to city hall to collect food tickets and distribute food to those who needed it, though some of the foods given—cheese, butter, and oats— were not familiar to Chinese people.

The CWA also organized many successful fundraising campaigns, consistently out-raising men in war relief events during the Sino-Japanese War and World War II.

The women also participated in their first parade and performed traditionally male dragon and lion dances.

Wang and the CWA also led a mass petition campaign that pressured legislators to repeal the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1943. In one of her letters, published in The New York Times in July 1943, Wang argued that Chinese only sought equality and desired admission on the same quota basis as other nationalities. Though Chinese immigration was subsequently subject to an annual quota of only 105 for the entire country, foreignborn Chinese did, significantly, win the right to naturalize. Wang herself was among those who applied for citizenship.

A 1937 New York Times article touted Wang as stirring a “social revolution” with the founding of the CWA, noting a sea change in the visibility and roles of Chinatown’s women over the course of a generation. From seldom leaving their apartments, they could now increasingly be seen attending club meetings, becoming literate in English, and making a difference in their community.

Wang is credited as the first woman to enter the “mayor’s” office to challenge the status quo and make a change, paving the way for others to follow.

Virginia Kee

One of the many who followed Wang was Virginia Kee, a lifelong teacher who started a youth and Head Start program for low-income families in Chinatown in 1965. Her community work led to a historic foray into local Democratic politics, and Kee would make history as the first Chinese American woman to win elected office in New York State.

Kee, a Depression-era baby, recalled often moving apartments during her childhood when her parents could not make enough to pay rent. Her father, who had come as a seaman and (unintentionally) jumped ship, owned the Canton Restaurant on New York Chinatown’s Mott Street. During the recession following World War II, her father sold the restaurant and moved the family to Charlotte, North Carolina.

“It was in the 1940s, before the Civil Rights Movement, before the Freedom Marches, when everything was divided Black or white, so it was very confusing for a Chinese American girl, you know, twelve–thirteen years old who really grew up in Chinatown,” Kee recalled. Witnessing the stark inequalities in public facilities for Black and white people under Jim Crow made a deep impression on her. She described it as “an education for my political thinking,” which later shaped her belief in the need to stand up and fight in the political arena.

Unhappy in Charlotte, her family moved back to New York in 1949 after Kee graduated high school. To afford college, Kee worked during the day and took classes at night for more than a decade, slowly earning her undergraduate and master’s degrees at Hunter College.

Her first teaching assignment was at Junior High School 125, a majoritywhite school in Woodside, Queens, that bused in Black students during New York City's contentious struggles for school desegregation from 1961– 1963. Although Black students could attend the school, Kee was still assigned to teach white and Black students in separate classes.

Kee remembered students chanting “ching chong ching” at her in the hallways, but she gradually managed to build rapport with her students. She took on an advisory role on the student council, which actively supported the Civil Rights Movement and raised funds to send to the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). During her time as advisor, a Black student, Alfred Forbes, was elected president of the student council, and Kee traveled to participate in the March on Washington.

In 1965, Kee was reassigned to Junior High School 65 in the Lower East Side and became one of the school’s few Chinese American teachers. She found that Chinese youth street gangs were pervasive and young people from recently immigrated families needed extra academic and English language learning support, but the community had no programs to address these needs.

Taking matters into her own hands, Kee joined other educators and professionals in forming the Chinatown Planning Council (CPC), one of the community’s few social service organizations designated as a 501(c)(3), which crucially enabled it to receive government funding. Kee applied for and received newly available federal War on Poverty funds to teach a remedial summer English reading class and start a Head Start program. From these initial offerings, CPC gradually expanded its programs to provide assistance with language instruction, translation, housing, employment, and daycare, as well as recreation activities for seniors and rehabilitation for former gang members. However, although programs clearly filled a need, they had to constantly battle being defunded.

“Through CPC, I became involved in politics because I discovered that no matter what our needs were, we were never listened to because we didn’t have political power,” Kee said. recreation activities for seniors and rehabilitation for former gang members. However, although programs clearly filled a need, they had to constantly battle being defunded. “Through CPC, I became involved in politics because I discovered that no matter what our needs were, we were never listened to because we didn’t have political power,” Kee said.

In 1970, Kee achieved her first elected position to the board that decided the funding of CPC programs—the Lower East Side Community Corporation. Participation in the Corporation’s lengthy meetings was time-prohibitive, especially for working people. However, Kee felt that having a voice for Chinatown there was important, since it had significant power to review and recommend community-based programs to receive anti-poverty funding. In 1974, Kee was appointed to Manhattan Community Board 3, on which she was influential in advocating for several housing programs.

Kee also helped form the United Democratic Organization to register and mobilize Chinese American Democratic voters. As a result of their door-to-door voter registrations, Kee won her bid for delegate to the Democratic First Judicial District Convention in 1976, which was charged with nominating candidates to the State Supreme Court. In 1978, she was elected to the New York Democratic State Committee representing the 62nd Assembly District of Manhattan. In 1985, feeling that Chinatown’s concerns were not adequately represented, she challenged three-term incumbent Miriam Friedlander for her Second District City Council seat. Though she lost, her historic campaign nevertheless raised Chinatown’s and Chinese American voters’ political visibility and inspired later generations of Asian American politicians. After her defeat, she continued to be active in local and state Democratic politics, pushing for equitable political representation for Chinese and Asian Americans at all levels of government.

Considered together, the stories of Theodora Chan Wang and Virginia Kee offer a window into early Chinese American women’s activism and the changes they wrought in New York’s Chinatown through many momentous decades of American history. Wang’s work with Chinatown’s women helped reshape their public roles and visibility, and the repeal of racial restrictions on immigration and citizenship continues to affect countless generations. Recognizing that equality did not result as a default of citizenship, Kee worked to build political awareness and strength in Chinatown and became one of the first in the state to forge a path for Chinese Americans in elected office. Kee has made an equally significant impact on generations of students and families through her teaching and co-founding of CPC, which since its opening in 1965 has grown to become one of the city’s and nation’s largest social service organizations serving Asian Americans.

The Archives Connection

Oral histories with pioneering Chinese American women activists such as Theodora Chan Wang and Virginia Kee constitute long hidden gems within the collections of the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA). These oral histories, conducted during the 1980s, were part of concerted efforts by museum staff and volunteers to capture and preserve the stories of New York Chinatown’s early generations. They filled an important documentary need, since they recognized that community elders would soon pass away but their history was not being preserved by existing archival institutions. With recent generous grant funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and the Luce Foundation, museum staff are beginning to digitize, catalog, and make these invaluable interviews freely accessible on its oral history digital archive platform, OHMS.

Learn More About Oral History
at MoCA

For more on the history of Chinese Americans in New York, see:

• “Liberty High School: Learning from the Past in Building a Future” by Paul Grondahl, Fall 2001
• “Murder in Chinatown” by Mary Ting Yi Lui, Spring 2006
• “We Won’t Move” by Shouye Zhang, Winter 2021
• “Midnight Movies in Chinatown” by Kenny Ng, Summer 2022