Frances Crowe

Frances Crowe (b. Carthage, Missouri, 1919) is a prominent American peace activist and pacifist from the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts.

She holds degrees from Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri (1939) and Syracuse University (1941), and conducted graduate work at Columbia University and The New School for Social Research.

Crowe worked in a factory during World War II. In 1945, following the bombing of civilian populations in Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, she became a peace activist. Her participation in numerous protests has led to arrests, trials, and imprisonment. She has been active in the Society of Friends, American Friends Service Committee, and War Resisters League, and co-founded the Traprock Peace Center (based in Deerfield, Massachusetts) and the Committee to End Apartheid (based in Springfield, Massachusetts). In the 1960s, she founded the Northampton, Massachusetts chapter of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the Sane Nuclear Policy Committee, and the Valley Peace Center (based in Amherst, Massachusetts), and has also participated in the activities of Women Against the War and Amnesty International.

In 1967, during the Vietnam War, she worked as a draft counselor, providing counseling to over 2,000 people about applying for conscientious objector status by the war's end. [http://traprockpeace.org/frances_crowe.html] She continues to be an advocate for conscientious objectors. Stating that she cannot pay for killing, she has become a war tax refuser since the beginning of the Iraq War. [http://traprockpeace.org/frances_crowe.html] She is also one of the core members of the Northampton Committee to Stop the War in Iraq.

For her lifelong commitment to the Peace Movement and her unrelenting opposition to war through war tax resistance and eco-pacifist lifestyle, she was awarded the Courage of Conscience award May 4, 2007, by the Peace Abbey in Sherborn, Massachusetts. [ [http://www.peaceabbey.org/awards/cocrecipientlist.html The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Recipients List ] ]

Crowe lives in Northampton, Hampshire County, Massachusetts. She married Thomas Crowe in 1945 and has three children. An archive of her papers is kept at the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. [http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/sophiasmith/mnsss233.html]

References

External links

* [http://traprockpeace.org/frances_crowe.html Frances Crowe page]
* [http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/sophiasmith/mnsss233.html Frances Crowe Papers] at Smith College
* [http://www.google.com/u/Traprock?q=Frances+Crowe&sa=Google+Search Additional Frances Crowe information]

Listening

* [http://traprockpeace.org/frances_crowe.html Frances Crowe interview]
* [http://traprockpeace.org/co_crowe_11nov04/index.html Frances Crowe presentation] from "I am a Conscientious Objector," Traprock Peace Center's Veterans Program held at Greenfield Community College, Greenfield, Massachusetts, November 11, 2004
* [http://www.traprockpeace.org/peace_rally_vt_30july06/ Frances Crowe speech] on promoting and using alternative media at Rally for Peace in Brattleboro, Vermont, July 30, 2006