Elise Fox

Elsie Fox: Portrait of an Activist Elise Fox

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, this biography of feisty Elsie Fox tells the story of a woman who made activism her life. Born on a remote Eastern Montana ranch, Elsie was 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 that led her to discover Marxism and a like-minded husband. The road led to San Francisco, the International Longshoreman and Warehouse Union where she worked for twenty-eight years. Elsie 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. With photos included, Elsie Fox paints a vivid picture of a woman who fights for what she believes. She asks, "If we don't take action when there are problems in the world, then what are we?"