Believing that the East Palo Alto community should be able to set its own agenda, civil rights activist Barbara Maxwell Mouton, ’72, led ballot efforts that resulted—after a court battle decided by the state Supreme Court—in the city’s incorporation in 1982. She died March 13 of liver failure. She was 82.
Mouton, who had been an administrator at Nairobi Day School, served as mayor of East Palo Alto from 1983 to 1986 and a city council member for four years afterward. Her civic involvements included Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto, the Girls’ Club of the Mid-Peninsula and the Community Development Institute.
She was predeceased by her husband, David, and son David Jr., and survived by six children—Maisha, Lauriene and Martin Mouton, and Barbara George, Manon Patterson and Robin Blair.
