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Book author and hospitality house founder in the Catholic Worker movement (1926-2013) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Helen Caldwell Day Riley (1926–2013) was a nurse, author, and Catholic Worker hospitality house founder in the United States. Her three books— an autobiography and its sequel, and a third about the Catholic Union of the Sick — were all published between 1951 and 1956. She was African American.
Helen Caldwell Day Riley | |
---|---|
Born | December 3, 1926 |
Died | December 15, 2013 (aged 87) |
Occupation | Nurse, author, hospitality house founder |
Subject | Black Catholic autobiography |
Notable works | Books: Color Ebony (1951) Not Without Tears (1954) All the Way to Heaven (1956) All published by Sheed & Ward |
Born Helen Emmilyne Caldwell in Marshall, Texas, to Velma and George (G. O.) Caldwell.[1] At the time of her birth her mother was a kindergarten teacher, and her father, a violinist and choir director, was a professor of music at Bishop College. The family moved around to his various positions at HBCUs until he settled at Rust College in Holly Springs, Mississippi.[2][1] The family included her aunt of the same name, "Big Helen," an older half-sister, Clara, from her father's previous marriage, an older brother, George Jr., and a younger brother, William. Her father also trained as a pharmacist, so while the family was of modest income it was never destitute.[1] Of the money situation, Catholic Worker Amanda Daloisio wrote, "He believed that his gifts and talents as a musician and as a professor should be of service to the southern Black community, despite never being paid much more than a laborer’s salary."[3] Her parents divorced and remarried other people.
A Memphis paper claimed she was from Memphis, but the city only had a partial claim on her given how much the family moved around.[4] She said they lived in Missouri, Iowa, Mississippi, and Tennessee.[5] She began grade school in Iowa City, Iowa and recalled that she did not experience racial discrimination there.[1] She loved the public library and began to use it and check out books when she was six.[5] It was a traumatic shock when the family moved to Mississippi and she encountered more racially charged schools in the heavily segregated deep south. She started college early, at age 16, attending Rust College, the HBCU where her father taught music. In 1944 she enrolled in its military cadet nurse corps program that was still operating toward the end of WWII.[6] In February 1945 she entered the nursing training program at Harlem Hospital in New York.[4]
Tuberculosis interrupted her studies during her senior year at the former Cumberland Hospital, around the same time her son Butch was diagnosed with polio. She wrote her first autobiography during 19 months in a tuberculosis sanatorium first in Memphis and then at Stony Wold, New York.[7] She was able to work as a nurse after her recovery, but only as a practical nurse (RPN), since illness had interrupted her RN training.
When she was a student nurse, she encountered the Catholic faith when trained to baptize dead and dying babies born to Catholic parents.[6] When she was briefly hospitalized with appendicitis, a hospital chaplain, Fr. Francis Meenan, asked if she wanted to become Catholic, and she said yes.[5][3] After the birth of her son, whom she left with her mother while she finished school, she moved back to New York and volunteered at the Mott Street house of hospitality, sponsored by Servant of God Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin via the Catholic Worker.[4][6] She sang, and was part of a group of young people whom Dorothy Day said formed an apostolate and "managed to have a grand time."[8]
In 1951 a fire in Memphis took the lives of two Black children whose mother had left them home alone.[9][8] The tragedy and need for childcare for working mothers led Day Riley to open Blessed Martin's House of Hospitality on January 6, 1952 (the feast of the Epiphany) a storefront at 299 S. 4th Street, in the tradition of Catholic Worker houses.[1][10] It was named for now-Saint Martin de Porres, and the nursery was named in full for the saint.[11] Dorothy Day attended the opening, breaking segregation laws by staying at the house itself.[3][8] It was intended to provide shelter for the poor, particularly women and their children. Day Riley received anonymous letters challenging her authority, but Father John J. Coyne S.S.J. of the Josephites, a congregation organized specifically to work among African-Americans, supported her and rallied the group around her.[1] He blessed it with holy water at the opening when Dorothy Day was present, and he was the spiritual director of the house.[12] In 1950 they got approval for the house from Bishop William Adrian, and he also gave them $200 in startup funds.[9] The house opened on January 6, 1952, in a run-down store property near Beale Street.[1] They soon had 15-16 children whom they cared for while their mothers worked. Dorothy Day helped them purchase a house in 1954, and Day printed a fundraising appeal in The Catholic Worker.[13] Although Bishop Adrian initially did approve the house, he also became one of many white voices asking her to be less political and not try to go so quickly or be so outspoken.[3] The house had a clothing room, a library, and it offered sewing lessons.[9] A woman named Ida who lived across the street came in to help every day.[8]
The house was supported by an interracial Catholic Action study and discussion group called The Blessed Martin House Outer Circle.[14] Day Riley co-founded it with a white man from a well-off family in Memphis who arranged to meet her at Riverside Park in 1950 to discuss the group's formation. The police broke up the meeting because the park was for whites only.[15]
While recuperating from tuberculosis in Memphis, she contributed an occasional column called "Looking Things Over" to the Memphis World, an African-American newspaper.[4] A letter she wrote to friends about being turned away from the segregated Holly Springs church where she used to worship was published in The Catholic Worker, bringing her to the attention of Catholics who began an interracial study group with her in Memphis.[7][16][17] Publisher Maisie Ward wrote about Day Riley's three books for her publishing house, Sheed & Ward, in her autobiography Unfinished Business.[18] "How profound is Helen Day’s prayer about the problems of being a negro in the deep South. 'Not just a plain old wooden cross,' she prays — Yes, she will carry a cross, but it must be more clearly a cross, heavier perhaps, certainly of her own choosing. 'I’ll send you a specification' she hears herself saying to God." From 1963 to 1970 she was listed on the masthead of The Catholic Worker as one of its editors.[3] Day Riley went on speaking engagements to support the books throughout the south, as much as she was able with her other duties.
Circa 1946 Day Riley (then Caldwell) met a Navy sailor named George Day, with whom she shared what she called "a grand passion," and they were secretly married and she became pregnant.[2] Her husband was arrested by the Navy for desertion, and she obtained a quick divorce before their son, MacDonald Francis Day (known as Butch), was born.[6] The Associated Negro Press included a photo of her and Butch in some newspapers.[41] Butch had polio while she was recovering from tuberculosis, and they experienced health disparities when he was denied admission to three hospitals before they found one that would take a Black child.[9][42] He also suffered an eye injury and developed glaucoma when yet another hospital would not take him in time.[43] Day Riley's mother raised her son while she finished nursing school.
In 1955 she married a man from the hospitality house community, Jesse Richardson Riley, whom she noted was a fervent Catholic like her.[5] The couple tried to keep the Blessed Martin House open, but they were forced to close it for financial reasons in 1957, and they then moved to Barstow, California. In addition to Butch from Day Riley's previous relationship, they had four children together. She and her husband were married for 58 years, and she worked as the children's librarian at the public library in Barstow.[15] Although she was no longer the same type of activist, she remained involved in volunteer work, and in 1986 she and her husband hosted members of the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament.[9] She continued to practice her Catholic faith, and she and her husband were active in the Knights of Columbus.
She died December 15, 2013, in Barstow, California.[3]
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