Today is the 58th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. It’s a day of great celebration on behalf of social justice!

In the case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. An earlier doctrine allowed for “separate but equal” facilities for black students and white students. But the Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education stated that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Within months, the Court also required public schools to move forward with racial integration “with all deliberate speed.” The significance of the case was huge, given that education has a big impact on a person’s ability to participate more fully in society.

Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark case. But it wasn’t the first time the issue of segregated public schools had been raised. That path for justice was well-worn, long, and arduous.

Today, I celebrate this historic case and all those who played a role in it! I also pray for people who face discrimination in today’s world, that through persistence and faith, the walls of intolerance and injustice will one day come tumbling down.

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Join us for a live prayer webcast this evening at 6 p.m. Central Time at aNunsLife.org/live. On Wednesdays at 6 p.m. Central Time, join us for Ask Sister, a live webcast where we take your questions and insights about God, faith and religious life.

We offer this Saints Novena in gratitude for the ways God lives and moves and has being in the lives of all the saints who are part of this online community. We give thanks for you and for the gift of God that you are to us and to the world. It is because of people like you that there is this awesome place of hospitality and gospel community. This novena is written by the A Nun’s Life Community.

7 Saints Novena – Dorothy Day – by Bcoop

Reflection: Dorothy Day (born: November 8, 1897; died: November 29, 1980)

Dorothy Day on picket line with farm workers in Lamont, California, 1973

I wonder how Dorothy feels about being “nominated for official sainthood”? She is reputed to have said: “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.” Saints do run the danger of being “photoshopped” – all their quirks and warts smoothed away until they appear as bland as marshmallows. That might be more difficult to do with Dorothy.

Dorothy’s whole life was marked by concern for the injustices of society and the plight of destitute people. She spent her life joining charity and justice. As she said: “There was a great question in my mind. Why was so much done in remedying social evils instead of avoiding them in the first place? . . . Where were the saints to try to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves but to do away with slavery?” (Long Loneliness, p. 45)

Dorothy’s first job as a journalist was with the New York Call, a socialist newspaper. Her reporter colleagues were socialists, communists, labour organizers for the American Federation of Labour and the Industrial Workers of the World and various free thinkers and anarchists opposed to conscription and the entry of the United States into World War I.

The labour movement, socialist ideas, and her own experiences of hardship had a strong influence on Dorothy’s commitment to social justice. At the same time, she was searching for some inner connection with the God who was enticing her. Brought up in a nominally Protestant home, Dorothy was drawn to the ritual of the Catholic Church.

In 1927 Dorothy’s daughter, Tamar, was born and was baptized in the Catholic Church. Dorothy said: “I did not want my child to flounder as I had often floundered. I wanted to believe, and I wanted my child to believe, and if belonging to a Church would give her so inestimable a grace as faith in God, and the companionable love of the Saints, then the thing to do was to have her baptized a Catholic.”

Dorothy’s interest in religion, as well as the birth of Tamar, led to the break-up of her common-law marriage. This freed her to be received into the Catholic Church and started her on a search to bring together her faith and her social values.

In 1932 Dorothy met Peter Maurin and the Catholic Worker was born. These communities still work to fulfil these words of Dorothy: “The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?”

Prayer:  Help us dear Dorothy, to overcome our fear with love, our selfishness with compassion, and our anger with peace.

Suggested Reading:

• Main website for the Catholic Worker
• Social Justice Teachings, Catholic Worker House in Oklahoma City

Join A Nun’s Life Community for a day of events in honor of All Saints! See the schedule for the day’s events in the sidebar to the right. And please consider participating in A Nun’s Life fundraiser going on now through November 9. We need to raise $10,000 for much needed equipment and supplies. See our fundraiser page for more information. You may be eligible to win a brand-new iPad 2!

AS068 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on April 15, 2011, at the Motherhouse of the Racine Dominicans. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org Ministry. Topics include: making your own scapular, opposing human trafficking, becoming a nun, the Stations of the Cross.

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• Can you make your own scapular?
• How can scapulars be blessed, and what does the blessing do?
• Do the Racine Dominican sisters have associates, and if so, what is associate life like?
• The call to social justice–how the Racine Dominicans and other sisters are working against human trafficking?
• Ways to pray the Stations of the Cross, including an app for your smart phone!

Do you have a question for us? Visit our new portress Sister Mary Evoca http://anunslife.org/contact/and leave a message for us. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

Don’t miss this article by Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen, “Quietly Doing God’s Work” (April 17, 2008). Here’s a quote from the article:

At approximately the same time the pope was standing in the White House, Sister Carmen Soto was standing in a food pantry on Monroe Street in Mount Pleasant, 3 miles north of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave….