"The biggest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution that has to start with each one of us."

Photo by unknown photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

• HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST
• Cofounded the Catholic Worker newspaper and subsequent movement, which focuses on the Catholic tenant of helping those in need
• A suffragist, she was among the 33 women arrested outside of the White House on November 14, 1917, a night that became known as the Night of Terror because of the brutal treatment the women received at the hands of the prison guards
• Ten years later she became a member of the Catholic Church, but she struggled to reconcile her anarchist and social activist views with her newfound faith
• In 1933, she collaborated with Peter Maurin to start a monthly newspaper that addressed social issues but through a Catholic lens
• The paper supported labor unions and pacifism, criticized industrialism, and challenged readers to take an active role in helping those in need
• In less than a year, it had become so popular that 100,000 copies were being printed every month
• Day dedicated her apartment to the cause, transforming it into a Catholic Worker house of hospitality; there are now hundreds throughout the United States
• At the beginning of World War II, she cofounded the Committee of Catholics to Fight Anti-Semitism
• Refused to participate in Cold War civil defense drills, in protest of America's nuclear bombings of Japan
• Served as an unarmed guard for a multiracial community in Georgia and was almost shot while on duty

Bibliography: Forest, Jim. "Day, Dorothy." The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, Vol. 2, Oxford University Press, 2008, 11-12.

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