Elsie Fox: Portrait of an Activist

On Mother’s Day of 2006, ninety-eight-year-old Elsie Fox stepped up to a microphone at a park in Bozeman, Montana, and called for people to wake up, remember, act, and make a difference. Spanning a century, Elsie Fox: Portrait of an Activist is the biography of feisty Elsie Fox, who is now 101 years old. It tells the story of a woman who made activism her life.

Fox was born on a remote Eastern Montana ranch and nurtured by a strong desire to be self-reliant at a time when women were expected to be good housewives. She came of age in the rip-roaring decade of the twenties and witnessed the Depression in Seattle. which led her to discover Marxism and a like-minded husband. Those relationships led her to San Francisco and the International Longshoreman and Warehouse Union where she worked for twenty-eight years.

Fox spent WWII fighting for her husband’s release from a Prisoner of War camp in the United States where he was being held as an illegal German alien. The book includes photos and paints a vivid picture of a woman who fights for what she believes, always asking, “If we don’t take action when there are problems in the world, then what are we?”

Elsie Fox: Portrait of an Activist was written by Karen Stevenson, from Miles City, Montana. Stevenson will be a guest on The Write Question February 15 and 19.

Click here to find out more about Karen Stevenson and listen to the program.