LWV Honors Those Who Paved Way

It’s the final week of Women’s History month, as this is written, and this coming Saturday, Montgomery County will participate in the national Stand Up For Democracy day with a rally of its own. As we face bills that will make it harder for college students to vote by restricting the IDs they can use and making school board elections partisan in Indiana, the League of Women of Voters encourages citizens to become more educated on proposed legislation and gather to bring attention to concerns and objections.

This week’s women’s heroes, whom you may have never heard of, worked for the right to vote.

Wilhelmina Kekelaokalaninui Widemann-Dowsett

“Hope is the thing with feathers,” wrote Emily Dickinson. That hope drove Hawaiian native Wilhelmina Kekelaokalaninui Widemann-Dowsett, who led suffragists in the territory. Though women in Hawaii won the vote in 1921, the territory’s people still lacked full representation. When she died in 1929, her right to vote remained restricted.

Widemann-Dowsett lived through tumultuous times in Hawaii. According to the Diablo Valley League of Women Voters, her mother was a native Hawaiian chieftainess, and her father, a German immigrant, was a coffee planter and cabinet minister to Queen Lili‘uokalani. She married Jack Dowsett in 1888 and witnessed U.S. Marines overthrow her queen. A republic replaced the monarchy in 1893, and the U.S. later annexed Hawaii. The territory would not gain statehood until after World War II.

Widemann-Dowsett corresponded with Carrie Chapman Catt, a mainland suffrage leader, and established the National Women’s Equal Suffrage Association of Hawaii. She organized a parade of more than 500 women of all ages and ethnicities to march onto the local House floor, demanding “Votes for Women.”

The outcome? White male legislators feared Native Hawaiians would regain control of the legislature if women had the right to vote. Ultimately, women secured some voting rights, but full enfranchisement came much later.

Tye Leung Schulze

Tye Leung Schulze was the first Chinese American woman to cast a vote in the United States. She and her husband defied anti-miscegenation laws by marrying. She advocated for trafficked women and became the first Chinese American woman to work for the federal government.

In 1882, the U.S. passed the Chinese Exclusion Act to severely restrict Asian immigration, but Leung Schulze’s parents already lived in San Francisco’s Chinatown. The youngest of eight children, she attended a Christian school where she learned English. Her parents, struggling financially, sold her into household labor as a child and later attempted to marry her off at age 12 to an older man in Montana. She ran away to Donaldina Cameron, a white Presbyterian woman who helped rescue more than 3,000 women from sex trafficking. Leung Schulze assisted in these efforts.

At 23, she became the first Chinese American woman to work for the federal government, serving as a translator at Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco, where thousands of Asian immigrants were detained without due process. Known for her kindness, she helped immigrants navigate the system.

In 1912, one year after California granted women the right to vote, she cast her first ballot.

In 1913, she and Charles Schulze, an immigration officer at Angel Island, eloped to Washington state to marry legally, skirting California’s anti-miscegenation laws. Their marriage cost them their jobs. Eventually, they found other work, raised four children, and lived near San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Leung Schulze was rehired by the U.S. government after World War II, when the War Brides Act of 1945 led to a demand for interpreters. It was not until 1965 that the U.S. lifted immigration quotas on Chinese and other Asian immigrants.

Happy Women’s History Month. For those of you who wish to join the rally and hear from speakers, it will be from 1-3 p.m. Saturday at Pike Place.

The League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan, multi-issue political organization which encourages informed and active participation in government. For information about the League, visit the website www.lwvmontcoin.org; or, visit the League of Women Voters of Montgomery County, Indiana Facebook page.