Theo Lacy, Overell trial, oral histories & colonias

Tomorrow (or today, depending on when you read this) will be the 158th birthday of Orange County’s second Sheriff, Theo Lacy. He was born in Lacy Springs, Alabama on April 22, 1850. The photo of him above was taken in the 1890s.
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Thomas Rupp points out something I didn't know about the famous 1947 Overell murder trial in Santa Ana. It seems it inspired a 1950s Otto Preminger-directed movie, "Angel Face," starring Jean Simmons and Robert Mitchum. Little of the true story made it to the screen -- Both in terms of the facts of the case, and the fact that the real Beulah Overell looked more like Mitchum than Simmons.
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CSUF’s Center for Oral & Public History (COPH) has already conducted over 100 interviews for the MCAS El Toro Oral History Project. Another sixty should be recorded by July.
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Bob Johnson’s new book about Orange County’s African American community in the 1960s should be winging its way to the printer by July. The book is edited by Johnson, Charlene Riggins, and grad student Monty Starks, and will be published by COPH.
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COPH also recently accepted two pre-existing projects into its collection. The first is a set of 52 oral histories from the Bowers Museum, which documents life in O.C.’s colonias and barrios, including Delhi, El Modena, Independencia, Logan, Placentia, and Santa Anita. The second set includes 29 interviews with Chicano leaders, conducted by Jerry Rosen in the 1960s and 1970s.