AAPI Heritage Month

Mary and Joseph Tape, Chinese immigrants who came to the U.S. as unaccompanied minors, battled for their children’s right to attend public school in San Francisco. As a result of their pioneering efforts, in Tape v. Hurley (1885), the California Supreme Court ordered San Francisco public schools to admit Chinese American children. In response, California established separate “Chinese” schools, which persisted until 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. Recognizing the role of Asian Americans in this history, in Lee v. Johnson (1971), Supreme Court Justice William Douglas wrote that: “Historically, California statutorily provided for the establishment of separate schools for children of Chinese ancestry. That was the classic case of de jure segregation involved in Brown v. Board of Education. . . . [It] was not written for blacks alone. It rests on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, one of the first beneficiaries of which were the Chinese people of San Francisco.”

In 1964, Patsy Mink became the first woman of color elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and the first Asian-American woman to serve in Congress. She also was the first Asian-American to run for U.S. President. After obtaining her law degree from the University of Chicago Law School, Mink and her family moved to Hawaii. After passing the bar exam, Mink was unable to find a job because of her interracial marriage. She started her own practice and became the first Japanese American woman to practice law in her home state of Hawaii. In Congress, Mink co-authored ground-breaking bills including Title IX, the Early Childhood Education Act, and the Women’s Educational Equity Act. After her death, Title IX was renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act in her honor.

Kamala Devi Harris is the first female, first Black, and first Asian-American U.S. Vice President. Born in Oakland, California to an Indian-born mother and a Jamaican-born father, Harris attended Howard University, one of the nation’s preeminent historically black colleges and universities. She went on to earn her law degree from the University of California, Hastings, and launched her public service career in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. In 2003, she became the District Attorney for San Francisco, and went on to be elected the first woman to serve as California’s Attorney General. In 2017, Harris became only the second Black woman and the first South Asian American ever elected to the U.S. Senate. During the 2020 Presidential race, Harris emerged as one of the top Democratic candidates. President Joseph R. Biden chose her as his running mate in August 2020, describing her as "a fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants[.]”