Grace E. Simons was an activist who lived in Los Angeles and is known for her work in preserving
Elysian Park as open space.
Biography
Simons was born in 1901[1] and grew up in Chicago.[2] In 1925 she moved to China where she met her sister, the journalist
Rayna Prohme.[3]: 131 She left Beijing in 1926 to travel, and then married Wilbur Burton on July 9, 1928 in Atlanta, Georgia.[4] Simons and Burton returned to China, this time to Shanghei where Simons first worked in a bank,[5]: 159 and then the news agency
Agence Havas.[6] Simons returned to the United States in 1937 and married Frank Glass, a journalist she had met in China.[3]: 134
Simons moved to California in 1939, where she would work as a writer and as the executive editor of the California Eagle, an African American newspaper in Los Angeles, for fourteen years.[7] While working at the California Eagle, Simons interacted with multiple people including
Martin Luther King Jr.,[8] the concert artist Khalil Nimini Ben Bezaleel,[9] and
Robert Farrell.[10] Abie Robinson, a reporter at the California Eagle, said that during a 1963 press conference
Malcolm X called Simons the best journalist he knew.[2]
In 1965 Simons started The Citizens Committee to Save Elysian Park.[11] She used multiple means to convince people to preserve the park,[12][13] even asking people to send leaves to the city council.[14] She gathered information to oppose the plan to make the area into a convention center, and ultimately went to court to prevent drilling for oil in the park, turning parts of the park into a parking lot,[7][15] a day care center,[16] and other uses over a multi-year period.[17][18] She was unsuccessful in preventing an expansion of the police academy.[19][20]
Simons died in 1985,[21] and later that year the city of Los Angeles named the community center the "Grace E. Simons Lodge" in recognition of her work to save the park.[22]
Awards and honors
In 1959 she was recognized as the best editor for Negro newspapers in Los Angeles.[23] She received an "Award of Exception Distinction" from Governor
Jerry Brown in 1967 for her work in preserving Elysian Park.[24][25] The Sierra Club in 1971,[26] and the Feinstone Environmental Awards, in 1979, recognized her for the work she did to preserve Elysian Park.[17][27] In 1993, after her death, the sculptor
Peter Shire started a memorial sculpture that sits in Elysian Park and honors Simons and her husband Frank Glass.[28][29]
^"China Again Features N. Y. News; Shanghailanders Gather in Big City: Tired of Talking". The China Weekly Review (1923-1950); Shanghai [Shanghai]. 2 March 1940. p. 14 – via
ProQuest.
^"Grace Simons, Defender of Elysian Park, Dies at 84". Los Angeles Times (pre-1997 Fulltext); Los Angeles, Calif. [Los Angeles, Calif]. 23 April 1985. p. 6.