Lucy Perkins Carner | |
|---|---|
 Lucy Perkins Carner, from a 1925 newspaper | |
| Born | November 30, 1886 |
| Died | February 20, 1983 (aged 96) Germantown, Pennsylvania |
| Occupation(s) | Sociologist, activist, pacifist |
Lucy Perkins Carner (November 30, 1886 – February 20, 1983) was an American sociologist, civil rights activist and pacifist. She was a national executive of the YWCA, and held national roles in peace organizations, including the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
Carner was born in York, Pennsylvania,[1] the daughter of Albert Bigelow Carner and Mary Hannah Perkins Carner. Her father taught mathematics and was active as a Presbyterian elder and trustee in York.[2]
Carner graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1908,[3] and earned a master's degree in sociology from Columbia University in 1924,[4] with a thesis paper titled "Unionizing New York City Women Office Workers."[5] She also studied at the University of Chicago and the London School of Economics in the 1930s.[6][7]
"Miss Lucy P. Carner is one of the outstanding leaders of the professional staff of the National Board of the Y.W.C.A.," reported a Pennsylvania newspaper in 1936.[6] She was executive secretary of the National Industrial Department and of the National Service Division of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA).[8][9][10] She was based in Chicago from 1937 to 1952, as head of the education and recreation divisions of the Welfare Council of Metropolitan Chicago.[11][12] After 1952, she lived in Philadelphia, where she was an adjunct professor at her alma mater, Bryn Mawr College.[13]
Carner served on the boards of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom,[14][15] American Friends Service Committee, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the War Resisters League, and the United World Federalists. She was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the National Women's Trade Union League of America,[16] and the NAACP. She was blacklisted as a speaker by the Daughters of the American Revolution.[17] She participated in sit-ins with the Congress on Racial Equality in the 1940s. Into her eighties, she was active in protests against war.[4][13]
Carner was a Quaker. She moved into a Quaker retirement home in Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1972, and she died there in 1983, at the age of 96. Her papers are in the Swarthmore College Peace Collection.[13]
