The grant was awarded to We Are One United, a Palm Springs-based nonprofit, by the California Board State and Community Corrections Violence Intervention grant program.
Cora Crawford gently laughed when she told the story of her first year in college in Texas studying to be a nurse. She was interested in nurturing. But she figured out pretty quickly she was afraid of dead people” and instead decided to change careers and go into education. The decision was a fortunate one for the children of Palm Springs.
Crawford came to the desert from Carthage, Texas, in 1951, when her husband, Samuel, came back to collect her and bring her West. He had heard that there were plenty of jobs in the desert that paid pretty well and set out for a better life, hoping to get established. He got a job with Earl Neel at the Palm Springs Nursery and soon returned to Carthage to bring Cora back with him to California. The couple landed on Section 14, in the middle of the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation, and rented a house from Samuel’s brother and his wife. With a place to live, Cora and Samuel started a family.