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Dorothy May Day (November 8, 1897– November 29, 1980) was ...

Biography

Early life and education

Dorothy May Day was born on November 8, 1897, in Bath Beach, Brooklyn, the third of John and Grace (née Slatterlee) Day's five children. Her father was a sportswriter with a particular focus on horse racing. Later in life, he was a commissioner of the New York Racing Association and a partner of the Hialeah Park Race Track in Florida. In 1894, John and Grace met while the latter was studying at Eastman Business College, and they married that year at the Perry Street Episcopal Church in Greenwich Village. The Day children were of Scotch-Irish descent on their father's side and English on their mothers. Although John had been raised Congregationalist and Grace Episcopalian, none of their children were baptized or raised in any particular faith.

In 1904, the Days moved from New York to Oakland, California, where her father had taken a newspaper job. When Day was eight years old, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed her father's newspaper building, and the family moved again, this time to Chicago. They first lived on the poorer South Side until John Day found steady work as a sportswriter for the Chicago Inter Ocean. During this period, Day and her sisters were not allowed to leave the family home without permission, and so she spent most of her time reading. While she was in high school, Day became interested in left-wing politics: she read the works of leftist authors like Jack London, Peter Kropotkin, and Upton Sinclair, and was also influenced by her brother's newspaper job with The Day Book. Day also joined the Episcopal Church in her adolescence at the urging of a local pastor.

Day graduated from Waller High School in 1914, after which she attended the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on a scholarship from the Chicago Examiner. and received a scholarship to attend the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Day worked a number of jobs to support herself, including TKTKTKTK. Her adolescent readings of Kropotkin had given Day an interest in Russian literature, and while in college she read the works of Maxim Gorky, Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. She also read historical accounts of the American labor movement and joined the Socialist Party of America. Day was a member of, but not invested in, the Socialist Club in Urbana; instead, she befriended Rayna Simons and Samson Raphaelson through the Scribblers, a writing club at the University of Illinois.

Journalism and activism

Day left the University of Illinois in June 1916 and moved back to New York, where her father was employed by The Morning Telegraph. After months of unsuccessful job searching, Day joined the New York Call, a socialist newspaper, for a wage of $5 a week for the first month and $12 a week thereafter. In her position with the Call, Day met such leftist figures as Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Leon Trotsky. She also developed a close friendship with her coworker Mike Gold, who later became editor of the Daily Worker. Day resigned from the Call in 1917 after a dispute with Gold. Her final assignment was to cover Woodrow Wilson's address declaring that the United States would enter World War I.

After leaving the Call, Day joined the staff of The Masses. This job was short-lived, as most of the editorial staff was prosecuted for sedition in September 1917. Day, whose name had not been added to the masthead, escaped prosecution. In 1917, a 20-year-old Day was arrested for participating in a march with the suffragettes. She participated in the suffragettes' hunger strike to protest their arrest, but broke the fast after eight days.

After her arrest, Day returned to New York. She attempted to become a nurse but dropped out of her training at the Kings County Hospital Center. She worked as a journalist for The Liberator, another socialist magazine. A frequent visitor at the Provincetown Playhouse, Day befriended American playwright Eugene O'Neill. She underwent an abortion after becoming pregnant by Lionel Moise, a newspaper salesman. After the abortion, she married Barkeley Tobey; they spent a year in Europe, during which Day struggled with alcohol abuse, and separated when they returned to the United States.

Day moved back to Chicago after separating from Tobey, and she was jailed once more as part of a raid on the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Her experience in jail was formative for Day, who was both appalled by the conditions in which the inmates were held and touched by the kindness of her cellmates. She read the Bible during her jail stay, particularly the Psalms, but did not show any inclinations towards organized religion. Also during her time in Chicago, Day published a roman à clef titled The Eleventh Virgin, which was later sold to Hollywood for $5,000. Day used the money to leave New Orleans, where she had been staying, and move into a Staten Island cottage to continue her literary ambitions.

In 1925, she met Forster Batterham, an anarchist with whom she began a common-law marriage. In March 1927, Day gave birth to their first child, a daughter named Tamar Teresa. Tamar was baptized into the Catholic Church in July 1927 as part of Day's larger interest in the faith. When Day asked to be baptized herself in December, she separated from Batterham. After the separation, Day left Staten Island and moved into an apartment near the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Catholic Worker Movement

During the Great Depression, Day was a frequent writer for Commonweal, a Catholic magazine. In December 1932, she became acquainted with Peter Maurin, a friend of Commonweal editor George Shuster, and the two began a close friendship. Together, Day and Shuster founded the Catholic Worker Movement. The first issue of the Catholic Worker, the organization's newspaper, was printed on May 1, 1933.

Bibliography

• Coles, Robert (1987). Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc. ISBN 0-201-02829-8.
• Coy, Patrick G., ed. (1988). A Revolution of the Heart: Essays on the Catholic Worker. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. ISBN 0-87722-531-1.
• Forest, Jim (2011). All is Grace: A Biography of Dorothy Day. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. ISBN 978-2-89646-370-1.
• Klejment, Anne; Roberts, Nancy L., eds. (1996). American Catholic Pacifism: The Influence of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement. Westport, CT: Praeger. ISBN 0-275-94784-X.
• Loughery, John; Randolph, Blythe (2020). Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-9821-0349-1.
• Merriman, Brigid O'Shea (1994). Searching for Christ: The Spirituality of Dorothy Day. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. ISBN 0-268-01750-6.
• Miller, William D. (1982). Dorothy Day: A Biography. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-065752-9.
• O'Connor, June (1991). The Moral Vision of Dorothy Day: A Feminist Perspective. New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company. ISBN 0-8245-1080-1.
• Riegle, Rosalie G. (2003). Dorothy Day: Portraits by Those Who Knew Her. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. ISBN 1-57075-467-5.
• Roberts, Nancy L. (1984). Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-87395-938-8.
• Thorn, William J.; Runkel, Phillip M.; Mountin, Susan, eds. (2001). Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement: Centenary Essays. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press. ISBN 0-87462-682-X.
• Wright, Terrence C. (2018). Dorothy Day: An Introduction to Her Life and Thought. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press. ISBN 978-1-62164-157-5.