Dorothy May Day was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Chicago, the third of five children. Even though Day’s parents were not devoted Christian, she had been interested in religion from a young age, reading the Bible, attending church, and studying catechism. At the age of 14, she was baptized and confirmed in an Episcopal church. She was also an enthusiastic bookworm, reading one book after another, from Russian literature to American social works, such as The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, that shaped her way of thinking.
After graduating high school, Day attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign for two years before moving to NYC. There, she settled on the Lower East Side and became involved with the literary and liberal bohemia, having several love affairs. With a growing interest in social causes, she searched for ways to help the workers and the poor. She joined the Industrial Workers of the World and wrote for several Socialist publications. She was arrested numerous times for her involvement in protests, and in 1917, after being jailed for protesting for women’s suffrage in front of the White House, she went on a 10 days hunger strike. In 1921, she married Berkeley Tobey, and the newlyweds traveled to Europe. Away from politics, she began working on a semi-autobiographical novel, The Eleventh Virgin, which was published three years later. By then, Day and her husband separated, and with the payments for selling the movie rights to her novel, she bought a beach house in Staten Island.
At 28 years old, Day, who thought she could not have children due to traumatic abortion, was surprised to realize that she is pregnant from her boyfriend, Forster Batterham. During her pregnancy, her connection to Catholicism has increased, and by the time her daughter Tamar was born, she was baptized and joined the Roman Catholic Church. Over the next few years, she supported herself by writing columns for local newspapers and book reviews for Catholic publications, combining her two passions – Catholicism and social activism.
In 1932, Day met Peter Maurin, and together they founded The Catholic Worker Movement. They published a newspaper titled “Catholic Worker,” in which they promoted Catholic teachings, pacifism, and social justice principles, especially highlighting the working conditions of women and African Americans. Soon, the paper gained popularity, and within three years, it was distributed to 150,000 subscribers. As part of the movement’s agenda of hospitality, Day co-founded the House of Hospitality, a settlement house providing food and clothing for those in need, as well as several communal living farms. The movement spread out of NYC, and by 1941 it had more than 30 communities in the US, UK, and Canada.
Throughout her life, she was dedicated to promoting her socialist beliefs inside her faith, writing, protesting, and campaigning for causes such as disabling nuclear weapons, equal rights for people of color, and defending the poor and the homeless. In her last years, she lived in one of the settlement houses she established in NYC. When she was 83 years old, she died from a heart attack.
To this day, The Catholic Worker Movement is active, with more than 200 communities in the US and abroad.
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