Mamie Tape, born in the U.S., is one of the earliest Asian Americans. Her parents, Joseph and Mary, were self-made, entrepreneurial Chinese immigrants. Her father found a way to continue a thriving business as a broker despite the anti-Chinese atmosphere. In claiming the rights and privileges of an American citizen for their daughter, the Tapes tried to enroll Mamie in an all-white school in San Francisco in 1884. When Mamie was denied entry because she was Chinese, the Tapes brought her legal case, Tape v. Hurley (1885), to the California Supreme Court, similar to the more famous Brown v. Board of Education (1954), these cases contested the racial segregation of schools.