Fran Leeper Buss, 1942-

A minister with United Campus Christian Ministry and a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Arizona, Buss has been a community organizer since the late 1960s, when she herself was struggling to survive as an ill, divorced mother of three, dependent on welfare for support. FLB founded and directed the Women's Crisis and Information Center in Fort Collins, Col. (1971-1973), worked in community outreach in Denver and Las Vegas, and taught at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, and the University of Arizona.

She is the author of four books. La Partera: Story of a Midwife (1980) and Dignity: Lower Income Women Tell of Their Lives and Struggles (1985) draw on these interviews FLB conducted over a number of years; she has also published Journey of the Sparrows (1991) and Forged under the Sun: The Life of Maria Elena Lucas (1993). Her photograph exhibit, "Stepping from the Shadows: Portraits of Poor and Working-Class Women," was shown in various locations, 1985-1989.

As part of a collaborative project of the Southwest Institute for Research on Women and the Schlesinger Library, this collection of interviews by FLB was transcribed, indexed, duplicated, and processed with funds from the Ford Foundation. Copies of the interview transcripts only were deposited at the New Mexico State University Library, the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, the University of Arizona Library, the General Library at the University of California, Davis, the Walter Royal Davis Library at the University of North Carolina, and the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University.