Erica Sherover-Marcuse; Created Workshops on Racism

Erica Sherover-Marcuse, 49, creator of workshops to help people overcome racist attitudes. Miss Sherover-Marcuse, the widow of leftist political philosopher Herbert Marcuse, developed the workshops for small groups as well as large gatherings in institutional settings. They focused on helping participants take pride in their own heritage as a means of building alliances with racial minorities. In 1976, she married Herbert Marcuse, a controversial political philosopher and professor at UC San Diego. He died in 1979 at the age of 81. Miss Sherover-Marcuse led workshops in Israel, Germany and the Netherlands as well as across the United States. In 1985, she co-founded New Bridges, an Oakland-based multicultural awareness group designed to spread her philosophy to teen-agers. In Oakland on Dec. 15 of cancer.