Jean Gore Papers

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES BY JEAN GORE'S DAUGHTERS AND OTHERS [https://www.kudoboard.com/boards/LeVbkZN5]:

Jean Claire Langerman Gore was raised in a secular Jewish home in Chicago. Her lifelong commitment to social justice, peace and women’s rights was rooted in her childhood during the Great Depression when her social worker mother brought home stories of poverty. Her first political act came at age 13, when she refused to wear silk hose because they were made in Japan, which had recently invaded Manchuria.

Jean studied psychology and social work at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan. In the 1940s, Jean worked with other left wing young people to improve economic and social conditions in the United States. It was in this group that Jean met her future husband, Jack Gore. They married in 1946 and were partners in activism and raising their daughters until his death in 1970.

While living in Albuquerque, (New Mexico) in the 1950s, Jack and Jean were involved with the local NAACP chapter. They moved to Boulder (Colorado) in 1958. Jean received her teaching certificate from the University of Colorado-Boulder in 1964, and her master’s of education from the Juarez-Lincoln branch of Antioch College in 1974. As an elementary school teacher, Jean created Rainbow Press at University Hill Elementary School, which continues to publish books written by children about their own lives and experiences. She joined the Educators for Social Justice and founded the Nuclear War Education Committee. She worked with the Mountain View Center for Environmental Education and honed her skills at the Bank Street School of Education in New York. She also was one of the founders of the Reading to End Racism project in the Boulder Valley Schools.

In the 1960s Jean founded the Boulder branch of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) as part of the opposition to the Vietnam war. Jean chaired the Jane Addams Book Award committee for WILPF for six years and was president of the U.S. branch of WILPF for many years. She attended a peace seminar with women from the U.S. and the Soviet Union in 1983 to discuss ending the nuclear arms race, and in 1986 she arranged for these women to meet again in Colorado. She led a women’s group to China in 1985 as guests of the All-China Women’s Federation. In the 1990s, she traveled with WILPF to Cuba to bring needed supplies and show support for Cuban women. Her abiding concern for peace led her to chair the Middle East program for the Colorado office of the American Friends Service Committee from 1979-1981.

Wearing her many hats from many affiliations, Jean traveled to Israel/Palestine to meet with people striving for peace there in the early 1980s. In 1992, Jean joined a Food First/Earthwatch expedition to India to study the unique qualities of the state of Kerala that made it a United Nations development model. She went to Guatemala in 1993 as part of a Peace Brigade International delegation accompanying the first group of Guatemalan refugees returning from Mexico. Jean represented U.S. WILPF in 1995 at the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

With Ruth Correll, Jean started the Colorado Women’s Agenda, a statewide coalition of advocacy groups. She was a founding member of the Raging Grannies, a group of activist singers that swapped the lyrics from popular songs for political commentary.

At 80, Jean moved into Frasier Meadows Retirement Community (FMRC), in Boulder. She started an English as a Second Language program for FMRC staff who hail from all over the world, and trained residents as reading tutors for emerging bilingual students who came weekly from a nearby middle school. She also started a group called “Women to Women” to discuss the problems of the world; when FMRC men asked to be included, the title morphed to “People to People.” At Frasier, Jean found a warm and vibrant community with which to spend her last sixteen years.

Jean Gore died in August 2021. She is survived by her daughters Linda Gore (Michael Covey) and Mim Campos.