For more than 60 years, Gracia Molina Enriquez de Pick has been an educator, feminist, mentor of students and community activist for women’s equality, indigenous communities, labor and immigrants’ rights. She was born in Mexico City into a family of political activists, and moved to San Diego in 1957. Molina de Pick earned her teaching credential and a master’s degree through SDSU; she pursued doctoral studies at UCSD and USC. She first taught at a National City junior high school, where 70 percent of her students were Hispanic and undereducated. As a faculty member at Mesa College, she founded and wrote the curricula for the first associate’s degree in Chicano/a Studies. At UCSD, she was one of the founders and a faculty member for the university’s Third College (now named Thurgood Marshall College). She is a founder of IMPACT, an early community grassroots organization fighting for the civil rights of Mexican-Americans in San Diego, and founder of the Comision Femenil Mexicana Nacional, the first national feminist Chicana Association.
Molina de Pick has served as the Chicana Caucus Chair of the National Women’s Political Caucus and the National Council of La Raza, the first Civil Rights Advocate group for Mexican American Civil Rights. She is a published author; “Mujeres en la Historia & Historias de Mujeres,” published in 2008, highlights women in Mexican history, covering the indigenous period prior to 1492 through the first half of the 20th Century. Gracia’s most recent community involvement in education has been with the Logan Heights Library where her donation to the library’s foundation helped the library open its doors in 2009.
