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] 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]