Day, Dorothy

Day, Dorothy

(born Nov. 8, 1897, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Nov. 29, 1980, New York City) U.S. journalist and social reformer. While a scholarship student at the University of Illinois (1914–16), she read widely among socialist authors and soon joined the Socialist Party. In 1916 she returned to New York to work for the radical journals The Call and The Masses. With the birth of her daughter (1927), she broke her ties with radicalism and converted to Roman Catholicism. After writing for the liberal Catholic journal Commonweal, in 1933 she and Peter Maurin (1877–1949) cofounded The Catholic Worker, which expressed her view of “personalism.” She sought to aid the poor by establishing urban “hospitality houses” as part of the Catholic Worker movement. After Maurin's death, she continued to publish the paper and manage the hospitality houses. Although her outspoken pacifist views were criticized by Catholic conservatives, she influenced Catholic liberals such as Thomas Merton and Daniel and Philip Berrigan.

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Day, Dorothy (1897–1980) social activist; born in New York City. A radical activist and writer, initially Marxist, she became a Catholic in 1927. In 1933, with Peter Maurin, she founded the Catholic Worker movement, devoted to aiding the poor through "hospitality houses" and other facilities and promoting a philosophy of personal Christian social activism, as represented in the Catholic Worker newspaper. Deeply spiritual, she was widely regarded as a modern-day saint. Her writings include a 1952 autobiography, The Long Loneliness.