Crowe worked for Bell Labs during World War II. In 1945, following the bombing of civilian populations in Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, she became a peace activist. Her participation in numerous protests led to arrests, trials, and imprisonment. She was active in the Society of Friends, American Friends Service Committee (running the local office from the basement of her Northampton, Massachusetts home for several decades), and War Resisters League, and co-founded the Traprock Peace Center (based in Deerfield, Massachusetts) and the Committee to End Apartheid (based in Springfield, Massachusetts). In the 1960s, she founded the Northampton, Massachusetts chapter of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the Sane Nuclear Policy Committee (now Peace Action), and the Valley Peace Center (based in Amherst, Massachusetts), and also participated in the activities of Women Against the War and Amnesty International.