By Alia Beard Rau | The Arizona Republic
Former state lawmaker and human rights activist Manuel “Lito” Peña, Jr., who spent 30 years in the Arizona Legislature, has died. He was 88.
Mr. Peña was born on a cattle ranch in Cashion but attended school in Tolleson.
He was drafted into the Army in 1945, became a heavy weapons specialist and served in Korea before being honorably discharged. He later trained as a butcher and worked in his father’s grocery store in Tolleson, and then worked as an insurance broker. It was through these interactions with the community that he became interested in politics, according to online archival records from the Arizona State University Libraries.
Mr. Peña organized Tolleson’s first voter-registration drive in 1946.
