Dorothy Day was an American anarchist, pacifist, and devout Roman Catholic. She dedicated her life to serving the poor of Manhattan, eating and living with them. She refused to pay federal taxes, to accept government aid, and to be complicit in injustice. From time to time, her stands landed her in jail.
Her great accomplishment was to integrate these usually unrelated things into the seamless whole that was her daily life. With Peter Maurin, she founded the newspaper The Catholic Worker, which gave its name to what we call the Catholic Worker movement.
Each Catholic Worker community is independent and unique, but all take inspiration from the model she developed.
Dorothy died twenty-five years ago today. In accordance with her wishes, her family correspondence and diaries, held in the Marquette University Archives, will now be unsealed and available to researchers.