Mabel Lee (1896-1966) was born in Guangzhou, China. She won a Boxer Indemnity Scholarship which granted her a US visa and the Lee family moved to New York City's Chinatown. Lee became a prominent figure in New York’s suffrage movement. Lee helped lead the suffragists’ parade which was attended by ten thousand people. Lee later studied at Barnard College - an all-female school, because Columbia University did not allow women to attend. Women won the right to vote in New York State in 1917 and in 1920, the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote throughout the country. Yet Chinese women could not vote until 1943 because of The Chinese Exclusion Act. Lee still advocated for women’s voting rights, even though Chinese women did not benefit from the legislation. Lee was the first Chinese woman who got a Ph.D. in economics at Columbia University. She later published her book “The Economic History of China.”