How did dorothy day die
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About Dorothy Day
At first, Day struggled to find her place as a Catholic. While covering the 1932 Hunger March in Washington, D.C., at age 35, she lamented the absence of the Church — which, she felt, should have been at the forefront of the march. At the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, she wrote later, “I offered up a special prayer, a prayer which came with tears and anguish, that some way would open up for me to use what talents I possessed for my fellow workers, for the poor.” The next day, she met Peter Maurin, a French immigrant and former De La Salle Christian Brother. Maurin introduced her to the Church’s social teaching and to his own vision for “a new society within the shell of the old.”
On May 1, 1933, during the depths of the Great Depression, Maurin and Day launched the Catholic Worker newspaper. Within only a few years, the paper’s circulation soared and dozens of Catholic Worker houses sprang up across the country. The movement’s members embraced a simple lifestyle (“voluntary poverty”)
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Dorothy Day
(1897-1980)
Who Was Dorothy Day?
Intrigued by the Catholic faith for years, Dorothy Day converted in 1927. In 1933, she co-founded The Catholic Worker, a newspaper promoting Catholic teachings that became very successful and spawned the Catholic Worker Movement, which tackled issues of social justice. Day also helped establish special homes to help those in need. Day was a radical during her time, working for such social causes as pacifism and women's suffrage.
Early Life
Dorothy Day was born on November 8, 1897, in New York City. She was the third of five children born to her parents, Grace and John, who worked as a journalist. The family moved to California for his job when Dorothy was 6 years old. They later lived in Chicago.
A bright student, Day was accepted to the University of Illinois. She was enrolled there from 1914 to 1916, but she abandoned her studies to move to New York City. There, Day became involved with a literary and liberal crowd in the city's Greenwich Village neighborhood. Playwright Eugene O'Neill was one of her friends at the time.
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Day, Dorothy
in: People
Dorothy Day (November 8, 1897 – November 29, 1980) — Journalist, Social Activist, Pacifist
By Harris Chaiklin, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland School of Social Work
Dorothy Day’s early life gave little indication of what lay ahead. She was bright, bookish, worked hard, and aspired to be a writer. Religion did not play a large role in the family but she always found solace in churches, regardless of denomination. She had a strong desire to be independent and at age 16 won a scholarship to the University of Illinois. The high point in her life there was to be accepted into a writers club called “The Scribblers.”
At the end of her second year her father got a job in New York and she followed the family there. There is great poignancy in her statement that, “I could not bear to have them go so far without me. … I was not as free as I thought.” (p. 54). She worked for radical publications as a reporter and editorial assistant. This suited her need to write and coincided with her growing conviction that she wa
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