Civil Rights Exec Used Cesar Chavez Statue Funds For Shoes: Probe

A former Michigan state civil rights executive was charged with one count of felony embezzlement Tuesday in the theft of $73,500 that had been set aside to commission a statue honoring Latino farm workers leader and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez, instead using the money to pay off personal credit cards and bills, pay city and state taxes, and buy shoes, authorities said.

Maria Louisa Mason, 80, of Williamston, the former executive director of the Michigan Hispanic/Latino Commission within Michigan’s Department of Civil Rights, was arraigned on the charge Tuesday in 54A District Court. Magistrate Laura Millmore set a personal recognizance bond of $10,000 and ordered Mason to appear in court at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, April 27.

Mason retired from her job in December 2015. Department of Civil Rights officials began to suspect in early 2015 that she had been siphoning the money given to the state for the Chávez memorial, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said in a news release. A subsequent investigation showed Mason had embezzled the money from February 2013 to June 2015, Schuette said.

Michigan State Police investigators said Mason made arrangements to transfer the funds to a nonprofit group and a local community center — organizations for which she had control of the bank accounts — but neither erected the statue. Instead, the investigation showed, Mason transferred the money to her personal accounts, took numerous cash withdrawals and used the money to pay debts and bills.

(For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Detroit Patch, click here to find your local Michigan Patch. Also, follow us on Facebook, and if you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

Hardened by early experience as a migrant farm worker, where he lived in miserable migrant camps, encountered corrupt labor contractors who meager wages for grinding work and endured bitter racism, Chavez organized what eventually became the United Farm Workers. He led the first successful strike against California grape growers, stressing non-violent methods, and for 30 years fought for higher wages and working conditions for farm workers in Texas, Arizona, California and Florida.

When he died in 1993 at the age of 66, he had yet to earn more than $6,000 a year and the American dream of owning a home had eclipsed him. Yet his motto “si se puede” (it can be done) endured, sealing his legacy as perhaps America’s best-known Latino American civil rights activists.

Photo: American labor leader Cesar Chavez (1927 - 1993), in the 1980s. (Photo by Victor Malafronte/Hulton Archive/Getty Images