In 1885, Mary Tape had written a letter to the San Francisco Board of Education to protest the

placement of her child in a white school closer to their home. Mary Tape was very well aware of
the inequality of the quality of education in the white schools compared to the Chinese schools
and wanted her child to have a better education and to leave their culture behind to be able to
better advance themselves from lower-class U.S. residents. She states that "my children don't
dress like the other Chinese… Her playmates is all Caucasian ever since she could toddle around.
If she is good enough to play with them! Then is she not good enough to be in the same room
and studie with them?" (Tape 1). She means to convince the Board of Education members of her
daughter's assimilation into the "American culture", which would guarantee Mamie's (her
daughter) first-class US citizenship, not to mention the fact that she was born in the U.S. already.
During this time as well, the public school system was heavily segregated, leaving the whites to
go to white schools, and everybody else to go to their designated races' schools. Any school that
was not white did not fare well in education, purely because they were not provided with the
proper teachers, nor the same opportunities as whites. The school system was run by protestant
white men who did not support such progressive movements as the Women's Suffrage or
Education movement, therefore minorities were treated with a great injustice in the social and
educational aspects of society. Tape addresses this prejudiced bias in her letter, stating that
"[they] are going to make all sorts of excuses to keep [her] child out off the Public schools''
(Tape 1). Not only was Mamie being denied proper education, but during this time as well were
the Chinese Exclusion Acts. These prohibited Chinese immigrants from gaining U.S. citizenship
and, if they were citizens already --by the Constitution--, prevented them from exercising the
rights they had.

Tape alludes to the Constitution to justify her daughter's American citizenship since she is
American-born. In addition, Tape also alludes to the 14th amendment, which states that "No
State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens
of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
laws" and since, as previously stated, Mamie was a U.S. citizen, the Board of Education was
violating the Constitution and the rights bestowed upon her at birth. The state of California had
no right to exclude the privileges or immunities she rightfully has as a citizen. These points Tape
creates in her letter allow one to conclude that her stance on first-class citizenship was that it was
a right, as long as you were an American citizen by law and action. However, to restate, the
Chinese Exclusion Acts made it so that, even though Mamie was U.S. born, since she still had
Chinese lineage, she was not legally considered to be an American citizen.