A great women was remembered yesterday.

[sce56]

I was fortunate enough to be invited to attended the memorial for Alice yesterday.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_q4ggTMQcLgY/SxUgimaGThI/AAAAAAAAE9U/eXegfFdXntQ/s400/zoot+suit.jpg
Los Angeles Times /

Alice McGrath's role in the infamous trial was celebrated in Luis Valdez's play "Zoot Suit," which debuted at the Mark Taper Theater Forum in 1978 and was made into a movie in 1981.

Alice McGrath was born to Russian Jewish immigrants in Calgary, Canada. Her family moved to Los Angeles in 1922, seeking a warmer climate. Alice went to both junior high and high school in Los Angeles, and soon after graduation, she became involved in progressive issues. What McGrath lacked in experience, she made up for in drive and passion. While she grew up in mostly segregated, white neighborhoods, she had a keen regard for the underdog and felt deeply about the indignities and injustices the minority groups of the city suffered.

It was a propitious moment when McGrath volunteered for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (C.I.O.) in the late 1930s. There she met a well-known labor lawyer, George Shibley, who appreciated her dedication. He remembered her when in 1942 he became associated with the controversial People v. Zammora case, in which 22 mostly Mexican American youths were being tried for the murder of José Díaz. Though McGrath was hospitalized at the very start of the trial, with a case of pleurisy, Shibley did contact her once she was well. Her association with the trial was initially modest, summarizing the day's testimonies, but it gave her the chance to become involved with the largest mass trial in California history.

McGrath remembers the injustices and biases that permeated the courtroom's atmosphere. To her, the presiding judge, Charles Fricke, was contemptuous of the boys on trial as well as their defense lawyers. George Shibley was the target of most of Fricke's ire, often induced by Shibley's numerous objections. The mood extended beyond the courtroom's walls as well. "If people were reading the commercial press," McGrath stated, "they were getting a picture of a group of gangsters, killers... a very sensationalized picture of the defendants on trial for something they deserved to be punished for."

http://www.vcstar.com/news/2010/jan/09/colleagues-of-alice-mcgrath-recall-her-life-a/
Activist Alice McGrath was a woman of strong opinions who was fearless about expressing them, Ventura County District Attorney Greg Totten said at her memorial on Saturday.

“She had the ability to disagree but not be disagreeable,” Totten said. “She had the most graceful way of telling me she disagreed. She would say, ‘You know I love you and want you to be the district attorney, but why on earth?’ ”

McGrath, who died Nov. 27 at age 92, was honored at a service at the Pierpont Inn in Ventura by a wide array of people, from fellow activists to appellate court justices.

With a string quartet providing music, McGrath’s life was recalled with a slide show that highlighted her involvement in what became known as the Sleepy Lagoon trial, a notorious conviction of a group of Mexican-Americans who were accused of killing a farmworker in 1942.

McGrath’s work to exonerate the men was memorialized in Luis Valdez’s 1978 play “Zoot Suit,” which was later made into a movie. Later, when McGrath moved to Ventura County in 1970, she set up a pro bono legal aid group.

McGrath was married three times, first to Max Schechter, the father of her two children, and then to Thomas McGrath, a college professor and poet who was blacklisted in the 1950s. She went on to become an expert in martial arts, co-writing a series of books with third husband Bruce Tegner, who died in 1986.

In 1984, McGrath made her first trip to Nicaragua, where she became a volunteer. She also was featured in Studs Terkel’s 2007 book “Coming of Age: Growing up in the Twentieth Century.”

Steven Stone, a retired justice from the Second District Court of Appeal and his successor, Justice Arthur Gilbert, spoke about their friendship with McGrath. She took the men to Cuba on one of her many missions where she would introduce prominent Americans to counterparts in other countries.

She made 86 humanitarian trips to Nicaragua, where she would deliver medicine. When asked how many people had traveled with McGrath on one of her Nicaragua trips, almost 20 people out of the standing-room-only crowd of close to 200 raised their hands.

Daniel Schechter, her son from Spokane, Wash., expressed amazement over the size of the crowd gathered to honor his mother.

“I’m overwhelmed,” he said. “I didn’t expect this many people who felt this way. I really admired the life of my mother. She was more than just a mother; she was a wonderful person.”

Daughter Laura D’Auri of Culver City said she was battling a nasty case of bronchitis in addition to dealing with the emotion of saying her final goodbyes to her mother.

“This is like closure to see all of these people who were part of her life,” D’Auri said.

The remarks by the people who spoke at the service were recorded to be added to a special Alice McGrath collection at the UCLA Library.

Fellow activist Moses Mora, who lived in a small studio near McGrath’s home and was her driver, remembered McGrath. “Alice was a very effective woman,” Mora said. “There were no wasted moments. If Alice got involved, something got done.”

During McGrath’s last moments at Community Memorial Hospital, Mora said: “I leaned over and spoke to her and told her I was going to continue her life’s work. She will live through me and through all of these people here. We are all going to be energized by Alice’s energy and spirit.”

The service featured traditional guest books as well as newspaper clippings from McGrath’s life, but tucked discreetly into a corner was a table with information and forms from the Social Justice Fund for Ventura County.

“This is who she was; she was an activist,” said Tricia Keen, who was attending the table and noted that the family thought it would be an appropriate tribute.



District Attorney Greg Totten plus Justice Arthur Gilbert, retired Justice Steven Stone and Justice Steven Perren, all of the Second District Court of Appeal, speak of working and traveling with Alice McGrath at the Pierpont Inn in Ventura.

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/dec/06/opinion/la-oe-lozano6-2009dec06
To Alice McGrath, who changed the world
Beginning with her role in the 1940s Sleepy Lagoon trial, hers was a life lived for social justice.
Opinion
December 06, 2009|By Carlos Valdez Lozano

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'I may not have changed the world," Alice McGrath once told me, "but I've lived a life I feel good about."

That's how she saw it. But the truth is, Alice did change the world.

Alice with Director Valdez answering questions from the cast during a recent showing of Zoot Suit in San Juan Bautista


http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_q4ggTMQcLgY/SxUek3OWs1I/AAAAAAAAE80/CBO2feFPh1I/s320/zoot+suit+1.jpg
McGrath's participation in the case was later celebrated in Zoot Suit, a musical drama which had a brief life on Broadway and was turned into a film starring Edward James Olmos, with Tyne Daly playing a fictionalized version of McGrath.
You can watch the Movie version of the play "Zoot Suit" here http://www.megavideo.com/?d=SD4GEF1W

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Sounds like an amazing lady

RIP Alice.

[dhpgetsit]

2. I know English can be confusing. 1 woman. 2 women.

[sce56]

3. Ooops at 5:30 in the morning I guess I was not yet fully awake!

And went back to sleep afterward.

I see the English Police are on patrol......

[sce56]

4. Afternoon kick