Jean Jacobs, a San Francisco children’s’ right advocate who died Monday of cancer at the age of 85, was remembered fondly by friends and colleagues as an old-fashioned street fighter with considerable charm.
Peter Bull, the former executive director of the Youth Law Center, put it this way: “She stepped on a lot of toes, but she always did it with grace.”
Jacobs. was the first woman board president of Homewood Terrace, one of San Francisco’s oldest children’s agencies. Formed in the 1870s under another name, Homewood Terrace closed in 1977 after it merged with another organization to form the S.F.-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services.
Jacobs was also the founder of the Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth.
During her tenure on the Coleman Advocates board, the organization pushed for the passage of Proposition J, which made San Francisco the first city in the nation to guarantee a portion of its budget for children.
According to Margaret Brodkin, the executive director of Coleman Advocates, Jacobs launched her crusade for children with six people seated around a dining room table.
“It was a very grassroots movement,” Brodkin said. “She was appalled by the state of the juvenile justice system in the early ’60s.” Brodkin said that the city’s juvenile holding cells during that era resembled something out of “Oliver Twist.”
Brodkin said that Jacobs was outraged when a neighbor’s child was held for 24 hours in a steel crib locked in an isolation cell. That sparked the formation of the Citizens for Juvenile Justice, the grassroots group that eventually became Coleman Advocates in 1975.
A familiar theme in Jacob’s life, according to her colleagues, was bucking the establishment.
Jacobs was married for 38 years to Tevis Jacobs, who died in 1974. Both were active in the Reform movement and belonged to San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El, where Tevis Jacobs, the senior partner in Jacobs, Sills and Coblentz, served on the board of directors.
“But Jean didn’t play the nice-wife-from-St. Francis Woods role too well,” Brodkin said. “The judicial system back then was a bastion of white male power. And Jean had no problems taking it on.”
Bull, a founding member of Coleman Advocates and a member of the board of directors, painted a similar picture. “Frankly, it was a very racist regime in the justice system of the ’60s,” Bull said. “And the judges wielded almost absolute power. In essence, not only did they sentence juveniles, but they also were running the prison systems.”
Coleman Advocates was instrumental in transferring juvenile administrative tasks to the Youth Guidance Center, according to Bull. “That made the juvenile justice system much more equitable.”
Jacobs is survived by her companion of 24 years, Dr. Maurice Sokolow; a brother, Barney Schuck of San Diego; three daughters, Diane Moore of Davis, Leatrice Burstein of Piedmont and Lori Horne of Tiburon; a son, Stephen Jacobs of San Francisco; 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
A memorial service was held Thursday at Sinai Memorial Chapel. Donations can be made to the Jean Jacobs Child Advocacy Center, c/o Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, 459 Vienna St., San Francisco, CA 94112.