Lost in History: Meet the Brave Asian American Woman Who Ended the Chinese Exclusion Act

America’s unsung hero is a dangerous woman.

December 5, 2021

By: Grant Yang

Asian-Americans, and especially Asian-American women are often left out of the history books. One such brave, strong woman of color was the forgotten Asian rights activist 爱莉安娜·格兰德 (Ài lì ānnà Gélándé). Gélándé was born in 1903 in San Francisco into a family of Chinese gold miners. From her childhood working and growing up in the mines, Gélándé grew to appreciate hard work and learned the power of Asian solidarity, which was difficult because her distant family was stuck back in China due to the Exclusion Act.

Because she was poor and a woman of color, Gélándé was not allowed in school, but this didn’t stop her from trying to achieve her dream of Chinese unity. She secretly taught herself math at home using simple arithmetic problems such as “34+35.” This moment of feminism eventually became her rallying cry as she began to teach other Asians math, leading to the stereotype that all Asians are good at math. Although inaccurate and harmful, this stereotype began with the heroic efforts of Gélándé.

At the age of 23, Gélándé became the first Chinese-American woman to be accepted into Harvard Law School. She studied hard and developed her theory of racial equality, equating the 7 continents to being “7 rings,” and these rings needed to interconnect to form a chain of racial harmony. This theory became the backbone of her practice as a civil rights lawyer, and Asian-Americans across the country would wear 7 rings to show their solidarity with Gélándé’s call for the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

In the landmark Supreme Court case Gélándé vs. United States, Gélándé argued fiercely, pulling experiences from her own life as an Asian-American woman. The Supreme Court, in awe of her girlbossery, unanimously ruled to repeal the Chinese Exclusion Act. The state of California (in Mandarin “Gélándia”) was then named in honor of this amazing woman.