Mae Churchill; Activist for Privacy and Other Civil Rights

Mae Churchill, 84, civil rights activist who crusaded against police and voting abuses. Often at odds with law enforcement authorities and others with government power, Churchill earned an award from the Liberty Hill Foundation for her lifelong efforts to protect individuals’ privacy and other civil rights. A native of Flint, Mich., she was educated at UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned a doctorate in economics. Her thesis about the economics of the motion picture industry provided data for litigation that eventually forced film studios to divest themselves of theater chains. She was a strong believer in information as a means of combating abuse and organized many groups to train youths in researching and reporting irregularities by police or other public agencies. After the 1965 Watts riots, she established Community Alert Patrol and later New Communicators to train minority youths in monitoring and publicizing police behavior. She was active in efforts to desegregate Pasadena schools and in litigation that resulted in the disbanding of the LAPD’s Public Disorder and Intelligence Division. In recent years, she organized Election Watch to combat problems with computerized vote counting. On Thursday in Pacific Palisades after a series of strokes.