Early on in the research for The White Devil’s Daughters, I learned about a horrific aftermath to the story I was writing. My focus was on a group of women residents and staffers of a historic safe house who fought sex slavery at the turn of the 20th century. One day, while sifting through case files with the home’s retired executive director, she suddenly turned to me and asked, do you know about Dick Wichman?
Unladylike2020
Women’s lives have long been overlooked by historians, especially the lives of women of color. But a new PBS project, UnladyLike2020, is producing 26 documentary shorts of unsung women heroes of American history.
Tye Leung Schulze, artwork by Amelie Chabannes
Part of PBS’s American Masters series honoring the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage, just aired a film about Tye Leung Schulze. She was the first Chinese American woman to work for the U.S. Federal Government and an advocate for trafficked women. You can watch the film here.
Two Historic “Safe Houses”
Cameron House, at 920 Sacramento Street in San Francisco, is famous as the place where thousands of vulnerable girls and women found their freedom in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It opened its doors in 1874 and is the setting for my book, The White Devil’s Daughters.
But it was not the first organization to supporting trafficking survivors in Chinatown.
That honor goes to the Methodist Mission Home, now located a few blocks away at 940 Washington Street. It opened its top floor two years earlier, in 1870, to provide a refuge to Chinese girls and women who’d been trafficked into labor or sex slavery. Like Cameron House, the institution now known as Gum Moon Residence Hall & Asian Women’s Resource Center still provides services to vulnerable women.
“Auntie” Tye and one degree of separation….
One of the unexpected pleasures of my book tour has been meeting readers whose own life stories overlap with the characters I write about in The White Devil’s Daughters.
After a recent talk I gave at the San Francisco Theological Seminary , a retired Chinese American woman named May Lynne Lim came up to introduce herself to me. We chatted briefly and she handed me a sealed envelope with my name inked onto it in careful handwritten script.
Tye Leung Schulze, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library
From Cameron House to Civil Rights Work
Donaldina Cameron’s work inspired many people. One of the most memorable is Marion Kwan, a civil rights activist who marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King in the 1960s.
Marion Kwan, photo by author
Born and raised in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Marion calls herself a “Cameron House kid.” When Marion’s mother immigrated from China in 1940, she was detained along with Marion’s older 7-year-old sister at Angel Island. After their release, they were met on San Francisco’s docks by one of Cameron House’s Chinese staffers, possibly Mae Wong.
Chinatown Rising
This summer, I saw the new film “Chinatown Rising” in San Francisco. It’s a new documentary directed by Harry Chuck and Josh Chuck, a father and son team. Both of them have been deeply involved with Cameron House, whose early history I explore in my latest book.
The Rev. Harry Chuck, a social activist and now filmmaker, was a youth director and then Executive Director of Cameron House. He mentioned to his son Josh, who also worked at Cameron House over the years, that he was thinking about getting rid of some film reels that had been sitting in his garage for decades. Josh asked if he could see them first.
Anti-Trafficking Pioneers
Donaldina Cameron (1869-1968) captured the nation’s imagination at the turn of the 20th century. She was an early anti-human trafficking pioneer who ran a “safe house” for vulnerable girls and young women on the edge of San Francisco’s Chinatown. A tall, auburn-haired woman with a Scottish lilt, she who fascinated headline writers and the public alike.
Staffers at 920 Sacramento Street: Donaldina Cameron center, Tien Fuh Wu standing to her right. Photo courtesy California State Library.