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Mabel Ping-Hua Lee (1896-1966) was a Chinese advocate for women's suffrage in the United States, a member of the Women's Political Equality League, and the head of the First Chinese Baptist Church in New York's Chinatown for more than 40 years. She believed that Christianity would help the Chinese people only if it was Chinese-led, rather than white Protestantism. A Chinese nationalist, she knew Hu Shih personally.

Early life and education
Mabel Lee was born in Guangzhou, China, in 1896. Her father was Lee To, a Baptist minister who emigrated to the United States and became a leading member of the Chinese community in New York's Chinatown. Her mother's name is recorded in US census documents alternately as Lennick or Libreck Lee.

Lee spent her early childhood in China, attending a missionary school where she learned English. She joined her parents in the U.S. in 1904, shortly after her father took over a Baptist mission in New York City. In New York, Lee lived with her parents at 53 Bayard St. in Chinatown.

Lee went to New York City public schools, then attended Barnard College, where she majored in history and philosophy. In the fall of 1916, while still a Barnard student, Lee ran an unsuccessful bid against T.V Soong for the presidency of the Chinese Students' Association. After receiving her undergraduate degree, Lee studied for her doctorate in political science and economic history at Columbia University. In 1922, Lee became the first Chinese woman to receive a PhD. from Columbia University. Her dissertation was titled "The Economic History of China: With Special Reference to Agriculture."

After her studies, which included a trip to France to study European Economics, the University of Amoy in China offered her a position as a dean of women.

Activism
Lee was a participant in the campaign for women's suffrage in New York state. In 1912, she led a contingent of Chinese and Chinese American women in a large parade in support of women's voting rights with Anna Howard Shaw. On horseback, she carried a banner with Shaw that stated: "N.A.W.S.A Catching Up with China". She was a member of the Women's Political Equality League. Lee wrote articles advocating for women's suffrage and gender equality, including a piece in Chinese Students' Monthly titled "The Meaning of Woman Suffrage." In 1915 she gave a speech called "China's Submerged Half" during a Suffrage workshop. In it she stated: "The welfare of China and possibly it's very existence as an independent nation depend on rendering tardy justice to its womankind. For no nation can ever make real and lasting progress in civilization unless its women are following close to its men if not actually abreast with them."

Even after New York State granted women the right to vote, Lee herself was unable to exercise that right because of the discriminatory naturalization laws of the time. The Chinese Exclusion Act, which was not repealed until 1943, barred Chinese immigrants from the process of naturalization.

Ministry
When Lee's father died suddenly in 24, she took over his role as head of the Baptist mission in Chinatown. Although this was meant to be a temporary position, it would become her life's work. Lee traveled three times to China during the 1920s and 1930s, and even had job offers awaiting her there, but she eventually chose to settle permanently in New York and focus on her father's church.

Lee began raising funds from the American Baptist Home Mission Society and local Chinese American organizations to found a Chinese Christian community center in memory of her father. In 1926, she purchased a building to open this center at 21 Pell Street in Chinatown. The center offered English classes, a medical clinic, and a kindergarten. Lee believed that an independent Chinese church was crucial for providing support and a feeling of freedom to its community members, who were otherwise marginalized and oppressed in American society. These views sometimes brought her into conflict with the larger white-led Baptist mission in New York City, and in 1954 Lee was able to secure the title for the church building on behalf of her congregation, which from then on became fully independent. Paradoxically, this independence coincided with the increasing secularization of younger generations of Chinese Americans, and led to dwindling membership at the church. However, under her leadership the church became the first "self-supporting Chinese church in America." As a bilingual Chinese-American, Lee was able to provide significant assistance to the Chinese immigrant community for example managing classes in the English language, typewriting, among many other skills.

Lee continued to run the church and community center until her death in 1966.

Legacy
In November 2017, a motion was introduced in Congress by Rep. Nydia Velazquez to rename the Chinatown Station U.S. Post Office at 6 Doyers Street in honor of Mabel Lee. The bill was passed in the U.S. House of Representatives in March 2018.

In March 2018, Lee was honored as one of a featured series of women's suffrage activists displayed on LinkNYC kiosks in New York City as part of a partnership with the Museum of the City of New York.