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Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker
movement, gave historian William Miller complete access to Catholic Worker
files. Miller also typed copious and detailed notes on his personal
correspondence with Dorothy Day. Daughter Carol Miller transcribed Dorothy
Day's personal diaries and journals. This material is housed at University
Archives and Special Collection of the St. Thomas University Library.
The Collection includes:
- Dorothy Day's journals (1957, 1958, 1959,
1960, 1962, 1972) transcribed from the original handwritten journals
- Dorothy Day manuscript for the "Biography
of Peter Maurin"
- Typed notes of articles published in the
Catholic Worker, 1933-1967. Subjects include Pacifism, World War II, the
Depression, Racism, AntiSemitism, and Labor)
- Notes taken from letters to Dorothy Day
and to "the Catholic Worker" (1933-1965)
- Notes from letters to Dorothy Day written
prior to the founding of the Catholic Worker (1917-1933)
- Notes from Journals of Dorothy Day
(1917-1933)
- Notes from personal interviews with former
and current Catholic Worker members conducted by Miller in the 1960's.
(Among these interviews is one with Malcolm Cowley who knew Dorothy Day in
the 1920's.)
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William D. Miller (1916-1995). Professor
Emeritus of History at Marquette University, and the first historian to
write a detailed history of the Catholic Worker in the context of American
social and intellectual history. His seminal work marked the beginning of
serious study of the Worker movement. Miller, through his friendship with
Dorothy Day, obtained possession of and unrestricted access to the Catholic
Worker/ Dorothy Day files which are now housed at Marquette University under
a number of restrictions until the year 2005.
Dorothy Day (1897-1980). Co-founder and
Editor of the Catholic Worker until her death, she has been described by
some as the most significant American Catholic of the twentieth century.
Day, with the help and inspiration of Peter Maurin, founded the Catholic
Worker movement in 1933. Catholic Workers developed a unique form of
Christian existentialism which they simply defined as "gentle personalism."
Since its founding in 1933, this grassroots Catholic lay movement has been
consistently personlist, pacifist, anticapitalist, and anarchistic. Catholic
Workers accept voluntary poverty, they feed and care for the poor, and
publish a newspaper which reflects the philosophic basis for their
existence.
Peter Maurin (1877-1949). A French peasant who had been trained as a
Christian Brother, he came to the United States via Canada in the second
decade of the 20th century. Familiar with the ideas of the French
personalists, Maurin introduced these ideas to the United States and in
doing so created the basic philosophy of the Catholic Worker Movement. With
Dorothy Day he founded this movement in 1933 and remained a part of it until
his death in 1949.
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For special inquiries about the collection,
contact Dr. Frank Sicius at
fsicius@stu.edu
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Dr. Jonathan C. Roach,
Library Administrator |
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Telephone: |
305-628-6627 |
| Email: |
jroach@stu.edu |
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Larry Treadwell IV,
Instructional Coordinator |
| Telephone: |
305-474-6860 |
| Email: |
ltreadwell@stu.edu |
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Updated March 7, 2014 |
