SAN DIEGO (Press Release)–Hispanic Jewish activist Gracia Molina de Pick, feminist, educational reformer, and philanthropist, is one of the six 2012 National Women’s History Month Honorees. Her work embodies the 2012 theme for National Women’s History Month – Women’s Education – Women’s Empowerment.
Molina de Pick’s community organizing skills developed in high school, where she was involved in post-World War II peace movements and political efforts to get women the right to vote in national Mexican elections. By 16, she founded and led the youth section of the Partido Popular, the only political party at the time that advocated women’s voting rights.
Molina de Pick moved to California in 1957, and there earned two degrees in Education. She remembers that in her early days of teaching in a school where seventy percent of the students were Hispanic, children whose only language was Spanish, were placed in classrooms for those with developmental disabilities. She was appalled by the number of Mexican students who were in those classes, and were–in her words–“Failing miserably, miserably.” She said “No way, no way”–and thus began a crusade for change.
Realizing the critical relationship between parents–especially mothers–and their children’s education, Molina de Pick built library resources and created reading opportunities to engage the whole family. On the faculty at Mesa College, she founded and wrote the curriculum for the first Associate’s Degree in Chicana/Chicano Studies, which appeared in the Plan de Aztlan, the 1970 blueprint for Higher Education for Mexican Americans. She was the founding faculty of the Third College (now Thurgood Marshall College) at the University of California San Diego, where she developed the undergraduate sequence for Third World Studies.
Molina de Pick is the founder of several organizations that bring together her passionate work on behalf of women’s equality, native communities, labor and immigrants’ rights–among them IMPACT, a community organization fighting for the civil rights of Mexican Americans in San Diego; and the Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional, the first national feminist Chicana Association. She also served on the National Council of La Raza, the first Civil Rights Advocate group for Mexican American Civil Rights.
The tireless Gracia Molina de Pick, now eighty three years old, whose early philanthropy was in the giving of her time, intelligence, and spirit has turned in later years to giving financial resources as well. “I don’t have a lot of money,” she says, “but I’m rich in so many other ways. Everything I have, I give to the causes.” Such has been the impact and inspiration of her generosity and passion that her advocacy for improved education as a key to equality was honored on January 12, 2010 by the designation of Gracia Molina de Pick Day in San Diego, California.
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Preceding provided by the Women’s Museum of San Diego