New Mexico Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Daniels, who served as president of the ACLU-NM board of directors during Grace’s tenure, said, “New Mexicans have never had a more dedicated champion of our constitutional rights than Grace Williams. She never forgot that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."
“Grace was a pistol,” said ACLU-NM Co-Legal Director Phil Davis. “She had boundless energy, and could wax eloquent on civil liberties at the drop of a hat. She had a great sense of humor. She was fearless and brash about the importance of civil liberties and was willing to tell anyone, anywhere, anytime why civil liberties were critical to the fabric of American society. She stood up against mayors, and governors and legislators, and was not afraid to let them know exactly what she thought.”
As Executive Director, Grace tripled the ACLU staff, recruited volunteer attorneys from the community and organized a legal panel to steer the organization’s litigation efforts. The ACLU of New Mexico also became fully financially independent from the national ACLU due to Grace’s skillful fundraising and management.
Grace played a major role in elevating civil liberties work in New Mexico to the national stage. Under her direction, the ACLU of New Mexico won many important victories that created a lasting impact on the legal landscape, including litigation that:
- Removed religious iconography from the Bernalillo County Seal,
- Challenged infiltration of citizen organizations by the Albuquerque Police Department and
- Introduced sweeping reforms of the New Mexico corrections system in the wake of the 1980 Santa Fe penitentiary riot.
In recognition of her contributions, the ACLU of New Mexico honored Grace as Civil Libertarian of the Decade in 1992. She has also received the Albuquerque Bar Association’s Liberty Bell Award, and the Governor’s Award for Outstanding Women.
As Grace prepared to retire in 1993, longtime Albuquerque Journal writer Jim Belshaw reflected on her storied career:
“We all get irritated [with the ACLU] for the same reason. Liberty as an abstraction is sometimes easier to deal with than liberty as a reality. Which is to say that when it comes to the exercise of individual rights, sometimes all we do is talk a good game. For the past 18 years, Grace Watson Williams has dragged us, kicking and screaming, out of abstraction and into reality. It’s all in a day’s work for her.”
“We have lost one of New Mexico’s greatest champions of freedom,” said ACLU-NM Executive Director Peter Simonson. “Grace put the ACLU on the map in New Mexico. She embodies the fighting spirit of the organization and its unwavering commitment to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. She will be missed.”
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