Frances Leeper Buss
Frances Ann Barker Leeper spent most of her childhood in Dubuque, Iowa and graduated from the University of Iowa. She had three children, Kimberly Buss, Lisa Evans and Jim Leeper in an early marriage that ended in divorce. Fran moved to Fort Collins where she met her husband and life partner, David Buss at the campus ministry. Fran founded the Women’s Crisis Center and Information Center in Fort Collins and pursued a Master of Divinity at Iliff School of Theology in Denver where she developed an abiding interest in social ethics. She was ordained in the United Church of Christ in 1976. Her life with David led their family to move to Las Vegas NM, Whitewater WI, and finally in 1987 to Tucson, where she earned her Ph.D. in history from the University of Arizona in 1995.
While in New Mexico, Fran started interviewing Jesusita Aragon, the last of the traditionally trained midwives. Jesusita’s story published in 1980 as La Partera: Story of a Midwife marked the beginning of Fran’s career as an oral historian who wrote with a heart for social justice. Her writing focused on working class women with the commitment to give voices to their stories and activism. Her books include Dignity: Lower income women tell of their lives and struggles; Forged under the Sun: Forjado Bajo el Sol: The Life of Maria Elena Lucas; Moisture of the Earth: Mary Robinson, Civil Rights and Textiles Activist; Memory, Meaning and Resistance: Reflecting on Oral History and Women at the Margins, and young adult novel, Journey of Sparrows. Fran donated her 125 oral histories of poor and working class women to the Schlesinger Library of the History of American Women at Harvard University so that their inspiring stories will be accessible to future generations of feminists.