Biography
Jean Gump was a long-time Catholic peace and civil-rights activist who became especially focused on nuclear weapons in the 1980s, shifting from marches and lobbying to civil disobedience as part of the Plowshares movement’s nonviolent disarmament actions. Her activism emphasized personal accountability and the view that faith required direct confrontation with institutions preparing for mass violence.
On Good Friday 1986, she participated in a break-in at a Minuteman missile silo site near Holden, Missouri, where activists used symbolic actions—pouring blood and damaging parts of the facility—to protest nuclear war preparations. She was convicted and received a lengthy federal prison sentence, serving multiple years (including time at Federal Prison Camp, Alderson). Even after release, she continued direct-action peace work and was arrested again in later life during protests at Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge.
