Yesterday I got a call from an SSND nun, Sr Judith Best, who shared with me 3 stories about her experience of being arrested with Dorothy Day while picketing with the United Farmworkers in 1973. (They spent 10 days in a California prison camp.) 1) Dorothy gave the women in
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her cell a little talk on “Jail 101.” She told the Srs the first thing they should do was clean the toilets. Secondly: beautify the cell. Some of the women had lipstick or dental floss and they made mobiles of little signs with words like Hope and Peace, hung from the ceiling.
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2) She was beside Dorothy as she was waiting to be arrested. Dorothy engaged in conversation with a policeman who was being pretty abrasive. She asked where he was from and when he said Pennsylvania, she asked if his father was a coal miner. He said yes, and she said,
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"Oh, was your father a coal miner?" When he said yes, she told him, “I walked on the picket line with them.” And suddenly his whole manner changed and he became very protective and solicitous toward her.
3) While they were on a bus waiting to go to the courthouse for release, the Sister was asking the women for their favorite scripture quotes. Dorothy said, “Isn’t it obvious? ‘With God nothing is impossible.’”
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PS. While she was in jail, Dorothy asked all the other women prisoners to sign her jail smock. She was supposed to leave it behind but she insisted on keeping it as a souvenir. It was Dorothy's last sojourn in jail. She was 75.
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