Today, many local residents may not know about this entry in Women of Greene County, but in her time, she achieved national attention.
Caroline Foulke Urie (1873-1955)
Caroline Foulke Urie seemed destined to be a crusader for social justice. The basis for this calling might have been her Quaker upbringing and her awareness of the barriers a German gardener and her Negro playmates lived with. It wasn’t until her old age that she took public action.
Born in Richmond, IN, Urie was the oldest of a large family. She was painfully insecure and introspective. Her monied family provided her studies and travel in Europe and the United States. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College. Urie’s parents’ health demands disrupted life greatly. In 1907 she had a nervous breakdown and was confined to a “rest home” where she met another patient, Dr. John F. Urie, whom she later married.
Urie traveled with her husband whose job with the Navy Department demanded much travel. In Chicago, she worked with Jane Addams at Hull House; in Italy, she worked with Madame Montessori in childhood education. During these years she was involved in pacifism, world citizenship, Socialism, cooperatives, Friends, and tax resistance. Urie expressed her anger at social injustices through journal and letter writing, voracious book reading, and keeping notes and files on injustices in matters of race, peace, and taxes. In 1927 Urie moved to Yellow Springs; her daughter had enrolled at Antioch College and her cousin was Lucy Morgan, wife of the President of Antioch. She helped launch the Greene County Socialist Party and the Miami Valley Socialist League. These were the Depression days and hunger and homelessness were rampant. Working with others, she found answers in the Socialist philosophy and cooperative projects.
During the late 1930s, Urie was one of the key organizers of the Yellow Springs Federal Credit Union. Appalled at the high interest rates the “loan sharks” were asking, Urie called a small meeting. Because each member donated $5, they had enough money to start giving loans of $25. Now the Credit Union has assets of $7.4 million dollars.
In 1946 Urie began a plan to protest paying taxes for war. The Budget Bureau in Washington, D.C. told her 34.6% of her income tax went to the military. She decided to give that percentage of her tax to peace groups such as War Resisters League, United World Federalists, Fellowship of Reconciliation, and Friends Service Committee. To disprove any allegations of insanity she had a psychiatric exam. She wrote letters of explanation to President Truman and her senators. Her actions were the topic in local and national print media. Newsweek of March 29, 1949 ran a one-page article and photo of Urie in her bed where she was confined because of severe arthritis. She was quoted as saying, “War and preparation for war in the atomic area is a crime against humanity…As a Christian, a Quaker, a religious and conscientious objector to the whole institution of organized war, I must henceforth refuse to contribute to it in any way I can.” Urie is remembered as a woman of courage who honored what she believed.