Michelle Crone

• Interviewed on May 18 and June 3, 2015

Michelle Crone, born in 1949 as Michelle DeMarco, has had a long career of grassroots activism in support of a variety of social justice movements, especially lesbian and feminist activism and peace activism. She was an organizer for two national marches on Washington in 1987 and 1993, and she was an organizer for the National Lesbian Conference, held in Atlanta in 1991. Michelle Crone, as one of the 12-member steering committee of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, was the national coordinator for the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation that took place in Washington, D.C., on April 25, 1993, with over one million people attending.

In 1983, Michelle Crone became a central organizer of the Seneca Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice, again helping to define the group’s communal structure and organizational process. Her work with women’s festivals began with the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival in 1979 (the fourth one). She has been an organizer, coordinator, and/or producer for over 25 festivals, including Southern Women’s Music and Comedy Festival (1984), and Rhythm Fest: Women Music Art Politics (1990-95) in the South. 

Michelle Crone earned a degree in film history and anthropology from the State University of New York (SUNY), in Albany, New York, in 1986. A native of Albany, New York, Michelle Crone came to the South as a VISTA worker in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

See also:

Ginny Risk, “Rhythmfest [sic] 4,” Hot Wire 10.1 (January 1994): 28-29, 56.

Marcy J. Hochberg, “A New Attitude, a New Festival: Rhythm Fest 1990,” Hot Wire 7.1 (January 1991): 38-39, 59.

Michelle Crone, “Women’s Music Festivals and Lesbian Feminist Process,” Sinister Wisdom 104 (Spring 2017): 185-87.

Rose Norman and Merril Mushroom, “Rhythm Fest: Women’s Music, Art & Politics (1990-95), Sinister Wisdom 104 (Spring 2017): 188-95.