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Books by Philip Berrigan
Widen the Prison Gates: Writing from Jails /
Prison Journals of a Priest Revolutionary /
The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence
No More Strangers /
The Eight Beatitudes and Nuclear Resistance /
Disciples and Dissidents
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A Bio-Chronology
Philip
Berrigan
1923-2002
1923 (October 5): Born Minnesota Iron Range, near
Bemidji to Frieda Fromhart and Thomas Berrigan
1943-1945: Served in WWII, artillery officer, Europe.
1949:
Graduated from Holy Cross College.
1955:
Ordained a Catholic Priest in the Josephite Order,
specializing in inner city ministry.
1956-1963:
Taught at St. Augustine's high school, New
Orleans, a segregated all black school.
1962 (or 3?):
First priest to ride in a Civil Rights movement
Freedom Ride.
1963-1965:
Taught at a Josephite seminary, Newburgh, NY.
1966:
Published first book, No More Strangers.
1966:
Served at St. Peter Claver parish, Baltimore, MD.
October 27, 1967:
Poured blood on draft files in Baltimore
with 3 others. Known as the "Baltimore Four."
May 17, 1968:
Burned draft files in Catonsville, MD with 8
others, including his brother, Fr. Daniel Berrigan, S.J.. Action known
as the "Catonsville Nine." Convicted of destruction of
US property, destruction of Selective Service records, and
interference with the Selective Service Act of 1967. Sentenced
to prison.
1969: Published second book Punishment for Peace
(MacMillan) --
1970:
Married Elizabeth McAlister, an activist nun, Religious
of the Sacred Heart of Mary.
1970:
Became a fugitive when appeals failed. Captured and
returned to prison. Published third book Blood Brothers:
Prison Journals of A Priest Revolutionary (June 1970, edited by Vincent
McGhee)
1971:
Named co-conspirator by J. Edgar Hoover and Harrisburg
grand jury while in prison. Charged with plotting to kidnap
Henry Kissinger and blow up the utility tunnels of US Capitol
buildings. Convicted only of violating prison rules for
smuggling out letters.
1973: Published third book Widen the Prison Gates:
Writings from Jails.
Co-founded Jonah House community of war resisters in
Baltimore, MD.
1974 (April 1):
Birth of Frida Berrigan at Jonah House.
1975 (April 17):
Birth of Jerry Berrigan at Jonah House.
1975:
End of Vietnam War and beginning of focus on weapons of
mass destruction and changing U.S. nuclear policy. Actions
included pouring of blood and digging of graves at the White
House and Pentagon resulted in several jail terms ranging up to
six months.
1975:
Atlantic Life Community conceptualized as East Coast
counterpart to Pacific Life Community.
1976:
First of summer community building sessions; led to
triannual Faith & Resistance Retreats in DC.
1980 (September 9):
Poured blood and hammered with 7 others on
Mark 12A warheads at a GE nuclear missile plant, King of
Prussia, PA. Charged with conspiracy, burglary, and criminal
mischief; convicted and imprisoned. Action known as the
"Plowshares Eight;" began the international Plowshares
movement.
1980-1999:
Participated in 5 more Plowshares actions,
resulting in ~7 years of imprisonment.
1981 (November 5):
Birth of Kate Berrigan at Jonah House.
1989:
Published The Times' Discipline, on the Jonah
House experience, with Elizabeth McAlister.
1996:
Published autobiography, Fighting the Lamb's War.
2001 (December 14) :
Released from Elkton, OH prison after
nearly a year of imprisonment for his final Plowshares action.
2002 (July 12):
Underwent hip replacement surgery at Good
Samaritan Hospital, Baltimore, MD.
2002 (October 8):
Diagnosed with adenocarcinoma, cancer in the
liver and kidney.
2002 (December 6):
Died at home in Baltimore, surrounded by
family and community.
Contact: www.annefeeney.com
unionmaid@earthlink.net
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
Black World
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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January 2012
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