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Biography of: Dorothy Day
Author: Megan Orr

Timeline
Leadership Style
Political Philosophy

Timeline

  • November 8, 1897 Dorothy Day was born in Brooklyn, New York.
  • 1906 Day moved to Chicago's South Side. John Day, her father was out of work at this time and she began to feel shame is linked to money. In Chicago Dorothy began to gain faith in the Catholic religion. Day's father got a job with the Chicago newspaper and they moved to the North Side of Chicago into a comfortable house. Here Day began reading books that interested her about many poverty stricken places people avoided.
  • 1914 Day won a scholarship to the University of Illinois. She was reluctant in learning in traditional ways. She was more interested in reading things that led her in a radical social direction. She avoided campus social life, and insisted on supporting herself.
  • 1915 Day was interested in revolutionary journalism so she and her family moved to New York. She got a job at The Call, a socialist paper. She reported on rallies and demonstrations. She later got a job at The Masses, paper that opposed American involvement in the European War. This paper was later seized and the editors were charged with sedition. Day was a supporter of women's rights, free love, and birth control.
  • November 1917 Day went to prison because she was one of forty women outside the White House protesting women's exclusion from the electorate. At some point during this year she got pregnant and had an abortion.
  • Spring of 1918 Dorothy signed up for a nurse's training program in Brooklyn. She felt that her journalism was a meager response to a world at war.
  • 1922 She began working for a reporter. Day roomed with three women who were devout Catholic women who taught her that "worship, adoration, thanksgiving, supplication…. were the noblest acts of which we were capable of in this life."
  • 1923 Day bought a cottage on Stanten Island with money from a sale on movie rights for a novel. Here she began a four-year common law marriage with Forster Batterham, an anarchist. He opposed marriage and religion.
  • March 3, 1927 Day had a baby, Tamar Theresa day. Day wanted to have her child baptized, but Batterham was opposed to the child and the baptism. After the baptism Day and Batterham broke up.
  • December 28, 1927 Day became a member of the Catholic Church. She was still confused about how to incorporate her faith with her radical social values.
  • Winter of 1932 Day reported on a hunger march in Washington DC. She had strong thoughts about the march, but could not express them because she was Catholic and the march was organized by communists. Back in New York Day met Peter Maurin, a Frenchman 20 years older. He had embraced poverty as a vocation. Maurin encouraged Day to start a paper publicizing the Catholic teachings and highlighting peaceful transformation of society. Paulist Press was willing to print 2,500 copies of an eight-page paper for $57.00.
  • May 1 The first copies of The Catholic Worker were distributed in Union Square. December 100,000 copies were being distributed. The paper "expressed dissatisfaction with the social order and took the side of labor unions, but its vision of the ideal future challenged both urbanization and industrialism. It was radical and religious. It called on the readers to make personal responses." Day gave her cottage to the poor as a place to live. She believed that everything she had belonged to her brothers and sisters.
  • 1934 Another apartment was rented for 10 women, soon after an apartment for men was rented to house more of the poverty stricken.
  • 1935 A house was bought in Greenwhich Village for the people. The community then moved into two large buildings in Chinatown, but so many more people needed room.
  • 1933 The Catholic Worker became a national movement. By this time there were 33 spread across the country.
  • 1934 They experimented with farming communes in Stanten Island.
  • 1935 Pacifism was what got her in trouble with the Catholic Church because the Catholic people blessed the armies. Because Day and her people opposed the Spanish War of 1936 they lost two-thirds of its readers. Fifteen houses closed at the bombing of Pearl Harbor because The Catholic Worker stood by its pacifist views of opposing the war.
  • 1950's After WWII came the Cold War and Day and her people refused the annual civil defense drills.
  • June 15, 1955 Day stood on the steps in front of city hall when the defense drill happened. She prayed the entire time.
  • 1957 Day was sent to jail for five days. She also visited Koinonia, a Christian community in rural Georgia where blacks and whites lived together. This was during the cival rights movement so the community was under attack.
  • 1958 Day was again jailed for thirty days for refusing the defense drills.
  • 1959 Day went back in prison for five days.
  • 1960 Instead of a few people on City Hall's steps 500 were there. During the 60's Day was called the "grand old lady of pacifism". People such as Thomas Merton and draft dodges sought her out as a shelter.
  • 1961 2,000 people attended on the steps. Only 40 people were arrested.
  • 1962 Day was unhappy with how the church supported war so she went to Rome to the Second Vatican Council. This same year she was chosen one of 50 "Mothers for Peace" and was invited back to Rome to see the Pope.
  • 1973 Day was jailed for being a part of a banned picket line supporting farmworkers. She was 75. Many of their followers were jailed for refusing to cooperate to conscription. It was guessed that there has never been a paper that so many editors have been jailed for acts of conscience.
  • November 8, 1973 Dorothy Day was honored in the Jesuit magazine. They saw her as someone who had "the aspiration and action of the American Catholic community during the past forty years." Notre Dame University honored her with the Laetare Medal for "comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable." When she was no longer able to travel Mother Teresa visited her pinning her with a cross worn only by members of the Missionary Sisters of Charity.
  • November 29, 1980 Day died leaving no money for her funeral. All she had was given to the poor. Long before her death many people named her a saint, but she said, "Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed so easily."

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Leadership Style

I would tend to classify Dorothy Day as a laissez-faire leader. She tried to influence her people and teach them to do the right thing, but she gave minimal direction. She explained to her people about the facts of society and poverty, "There are two billion people in the world today, and 150 million of these are Americans who boast of the highest standard of living." Her movement was a very personal movement. Day wrote in The Catholic Worker, "The wonderful thing is that each one of us can do something about the problem, each one of us can give his response and go as far as the grace of God leaves him." To follow Day's movement many of the actions her people did were completely personal and unrevealed. This shows that the members did not know what the other members were doing to keep the movement going. Day wanted to change the way people thought, but she knew that this had to come with education of the social problems. Day's writings were meant to be educational and were distributed in The Catholic Worker. Although I found no proof or examples of splintering in the group I think that it is probably safe to say that followers of Day went off to better the world in other ways. Since Day's social movement was so broad she had a huge organization that is a prime group for laissez-faire leadership.

In conclusion, I think that many people would find it hard to classify Day as a social movement leader. I had a hard time deciding about her leadership, but as I researched her actions I saw that her movements were obviously made. I believe that many movements can be strictly political, but instead of Dorothy day's charisma sweeping people into her cause she used her heart and strong beliefs.

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Political Philosophy

Although I do not know of many social movements, other than the obvious, I definitely see Dorothy Day as a powerful leader of a very passive social movement. She was born with the ability to see what needed to be changed in the world. She was not blind to society, and was able to take responsibility for things that most people are afraid to touch.

It is hard to classify Dorothy Day into a political philosophy of movements. Half of her movement was based on peace so she definitely was not a revolutionary radicalist. She was dissatisfied with the existing social order, and she had more patience than to use violence. Although she was not looking to overthrough the existing order she did see how we could improve substantially. I would classify Day's thoughts as radicalism. In the spokes of the wheel I would put her in the innovational spoke. Again she was completely against violence and wanted substantial change. She also pointed out that the values and practices of society are inconsistent and she hoped to change them. In an article she wrote for The Catholic Worker she expressed how she was not willing to conform to the social order. In this article she is told how to live in poverty and how to be a true brother or sister to your neighbor. She wrote, "We should not participate in those comforts and luxuries which have been manufactured by the exploitation of others." She also encouraged her followers to not take jobs that are incorporated with advertising, insurance, banking, movies and radio. Being associated with these jobs only "increases people's useless desires." Having these desires means that you are conforming to society and not helping those who live in poverty. She also discouraged people from buying imported foods from third world counties where people spend all of their time in the fields and still live in poverty. She asked us to boycott the sale of these things. As you can see Day was adamate about living in poverty and refusing to change to the existing order.

The strongest example that can be given for Day's opposition to violence is all of the time she spent in jail for opposing the Vietnam War. After opposing the Spanish Civil War Day said, "We were not of course, pro-Franco, but pacifists, followers of Ghandi in our struggle to build a spirit of nonviolence." In Day's hospitality houses she housed many draft-dodgers to show her support of opposing the war. She was after all called the "grand old lady of pacifism". I think that the best quote to sum up Day's philosophy on this social movement was:

What we would like to do is change the world-make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And to a certain extent, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of workers, of the poor, of the destitute-the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words-we can to a certain extent change the world: we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world.

Works Cited

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