Finally, the Chinese turned to the courts. In 1884, Joseph Tape, an interpreter for the Chinese consulate, and his wife, Mary, a photographer and artist, sued the San Francisco Board of Education when their daughter Mamie was denied admission to a public white primary school. The school officials argued that “the association of Chinese and white children would be demoralizing mentally and morally to the latter” and tried to label Mamie as a child of “filthy or vicious habits suffering from contagious or infectious diseases.” The Tape family submitted medical records that gave Mamie a clean bill of health, but the school board refused to budge from its position. Joseph Tape v. Jennie Hurley (the principal of the Spring Valley School) was argued at the height of violent anti-Chinese hostility in California, when the state superintendent of schools felt comfortable asserting that barring Chinese children from public schools was unconstitutional but necessary because they were “dangerous to the well-being of the state.” One Board of Education member insisted that he would rather go to jail than permit a Chinese child to enroll in school.
In Tape v. Hurley at least, the courts served justice and not public passion. The Superior Court ruled in favor of the Tape family, and was upheld on appeal by the California Supreme Court. When the board adopted a resolution to fire teachers and principals who admitted “Mongolian” children to public schools, one judge warned that he would punish the board members with contempt citations if they attempted to enforce it.
After their defeat in court, the San Francisco school board lobbied for a separate educational system for Chinese children. A bill giving the board the authority to establish an Oriental Public School sailed through the California state legislature under a special “urgency provision.” An outraged Mary Tape vented her feelings in an ungrammatical but passionate letter to the school board: “May you Mr. Moulder, never be persecuted like the way you have persecuted little Mamie Tape. is it a disgrace to be Born a Chinese? Didn’t God make us all!!! What right! Have you to bar my children out of the school because she is a chinese Descend. Mamie Tape will never attend any of the Chinese schools of your making! Never!!! I will let the world see sir What justice there is When it is govern by the Race prejudice men!!!”
(Chang 176-177)