"The previous Portals described how Chinese Americans in 19th century San Francisco were subjected to racist city and state school laws. From 1871 to 1885, they were denied access to any public schools at all. It took a historic court case to force the city and state to provide schools — albeit separate ones — for Chinese residents of the city.
In September 1884, a Chinese woman named Mary Tape dressed her 8-year-old daughter, Mamie, in a checkered pinafore, tied a ribbon in her braid and took her to Spring Valley Primary School, a one-story wooden building on Union Street between Franklin and Gough streets. The school’s principal, Jennie Hurley, was uncertain what to do and appealed to the city’s new superintendent of schools, a virulent Southern racist named Andrew Jackson Moulder.
Moulder, who in his previous incarnation as state superintendent of schools had been largely responsible for California’s anti-Chinese school laws, refused to admit Mamie. Her father, Joseph Tape, appealed to the Chinese Consulate for help."
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