Rose Hum Lee (1904-1964) was a sociologist trained in the famous "Chicago school" tradition of urban sociology, which focused on human ecology, natural history, and the assimilation of ethnic groups into the American mainstream. She built her career on researching Chinese immigrants in America, focusing on how they adjusted to urban life in the United States. Lee was strongly in favor of Chinese Americans leaving their traditions behind to become completely assimilated into the American way of life and she used her own family as an example of how to accomplish this.

Rose Hum Lee was born in Butte, Montana on August 20, 1904. Her father, Hum Wah Long, immigrated to the United States from the Guandong province in China in the 1870s. He arrived in California and worked his way to Montana doing various manual jobs such as ranching, laundry, and mining. He settled in Butte, Montana and became...