Michael and Ruth Yarrow Coal Mining Interviews

Michael Norton Yarrow was a sociologist and organizer for peace and justice. Yarrow was born in Swathmore, Pennsylvania and was raised in southern California. He earned an undergraduate degree from Antioch College in Ohio and soon afterward joined the American Friends Service Committee as an alternative service to the draft. During the summer of 1964 he registered voters in Mississippi as part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's Freedom Summer. He received a master's degree in sociology at Cornell University and doctorate from Rutgers University. His doctoral thesis at Rutgers focused on the issues affecting the lives of Appalachian coal miners. For 18 years, Yarrow taught sociology at Ithaca College in upstate New York. While at Ithaca, Yarrow focused on efforts to create a liveable wage and end the nuclear arms race. Yarrow and his wife, Ruth, moved to Seattle, Washington in 1997. He worked in Seattle with the Western Washington Fellowship of Reconciliation where he launched the Peace Activist Trainee program. Yarrow was also active in the University Friends Meeting (Quakers), a board member of the Church Council of Greater Seattle, and the pro-soldier anti-war center Coffee Strong. Yarrow passed away in June 2014 at the age of 74.