Helen Caldwell Day Riley
by Anne Fullerton
I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Mrs. Helen Riley, Mrs. Alice Hanrahan, and Ms. Clare Marie Hanrahan in the preparation of this profile. Much of the material comes from Clare Hanrahan's book, Looking Things Over Again, published privately in 1984 for the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center in Memphis, TN. I also thank Phil Runkel of the Catholic Worker Archives for bringing this chapter of Catholic Worker history to my attention.
Helen Caldwell Day Riley was born in 1926 in Marshall, Texas. Her parents separated when she was ten and so she grew up both in Holly Springs, Mississippi with her father, and in Memphis, Tennessee with her mother. After attending Rust College in Holly Springs, Helen went to New York City to train as a nurse at Harlem Hospital. She worked as a neonatal nurse (LPN) at Misericordia Hospital.
As a nurse at Misericordia, she was trained to baptize all newborn infants of Catholic parents. This led her to explore the Catholic faith. She converted and was baptized into the Church. Her spiritual counselor, hospital chaplain Father Meenan, suggested that she volunteer at the St. Joseph House of Hospitality with Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. Of this experience she wrote (in Color, Ebony):
"...in all this poverty they were richer than I -- and I knew I wanted to be poor -- as they were poor."
Also while in New York, Helen met George Day (no relation to Dorothy Day) and had a son, MacDonald Francis. Day was detained by the military on a charge of desertion and Helen sent her young son to live with her mother in Memphis while she continued her nurse's training and lived at the Catholic Worker.
Helen contracted tuberculosis and spent nineteen months in a sanitarium during which time she wrote most of her first book, Color, Ebony. The tuberculosis made it impossible for her to continue her nursing studies. At that same period, Helen's son developed polio. As soon as she was permitted to travel, Helen returned to Memphis. When George was released from detainment, Helen did not pursue the relationship. Instead she moved into the Foote Homes housing project with her son, her mother, and her stepfather.
Through a letter to the Catholic Worker newspaper, Helen was connected with Bill Slavick, a white Memphian from a well-to-do Catholic family and a graduate student at Notre Dame. Their first meeting in 1950 in Riverside Park was broken up by the police because the park was a "white only" area. Together, Bill and Helen convened a multiracial Catholic discussion group.
The group petitioned to meet at a variety of places before finally being accepted at St. Anthony's, a black parish with a white pastor. The group came to be known as the "Outer Circle." To earn her living, Helen worked as an LPN in the isolation unit and with polio patients at John Gaston, the city hospital. Her son, meanwhile, was admitted for corrective surgery to the "colored" hospital, Collins Chapel, after being refused admission to three different religiously-affiliated hospitals. It was an experience among many that Helen would chronicle in her column, "Looking Things Over", for the local black newspaper, Memphis World.
In the winter of 1951, a fire near the Foote Homes project killed two young black children who were living in a garage. The fire and Pope Pius XI's encyclical, Reconstruction of the Social Order, awakened in Helen a desire to set up a Catholic Worker-style home to support the children of poor working women who labored at wages of $3/day, below even the minimum.
With Bishop William Adrian's blessing and support, Helen rented a storefront for $75/month and on January 13, 1952, the Blessed Martin House of Hospitality opened. The house was, in Helen's words, dedicated to "the alleviation of the immediate needs of the poor and indoctrination by example through voluntary poverty and the practice of the works of mercy, corporal and spiritual." Her ministry was to be a "mother to the children whose mothers must work, loving them, disciplining them, teaching them of good and of God."
The house provided hospitality, day care, and after school care for single mothers and their children, but it also had a clothing room and a library, and offered sewing instruction. The house was staffed by volunteers of both races, including a group of students from Siena College who would come in to work with the children. Helen supported the houses with royalties from her first book, Color, Ebony, and from her later one, Not Without Tears, a book she dedicated to her mother and to Dorothy Day. She also issued a mimeographed newsletter and solicited donations.
Helen sustained herself spiritually by attending Mass and singing in the choir at the nearby St. Patrick's Church. She chose to go there rather than to the "colored" parish of St. Augustine "to show I don't admit the existence of two Catholic churches established by God, one white and one colored..." Blessed Martin House consistently had a spiritual director appointed by the bishop himself.
In 1953, several months after a visit by Dorothy Day in October 1952, Blessed Martin House moved to a more spacious location with a $400 downpayment donated by Dorothy. The new house, while larger, was in a more dangerous area and alienated some of Helen's community supporters. However, Outer Circle meetings continued in the new house and new volunteers appeared.
The ongoing financial difficulties made the continuation of the house precarious. In September 1955, Helen married Jessie Riley. He helped her to run the house for several months after their wedding, but on June 1st, 1956, the Blessed Martin House closed its doors and Helen moved to California to start her new life.
Postscript
Helen and Jessie Riley just celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary last year by renewing their vows. They have two sons and two daughters (one of whom is adopted), in addition to Helen's son, MacDonald Francis. They have three grandchildren and have petitioned to adopt a great niece.
Jessie is retired after working 34 years as a civilian at a military installation. Helen worked a variety of jobs but for the last 25 years she has been working as a children's librarian at the county public library. As a children's librarian, she has been very active with creating reading and story groups for the children, and speaking in the public schools -- using her life to make African-American History more "real" to the young ones. She has a particular concern for educating about dyslexia since one of her daughters suffered from the disability. Up until this year, she also wrote a column for the local newspaper, the Desert Dispatch, called "Check It Out."
Helen and Jessie have continued to offer their home, through their church, as a temporary place of hospitality. Helen was thrilled that Dorothy Day had visited several times while on speaking tours in California and also that she had been able to host some of the participants in the Great Peace March. Both she and her husband have been involved in their local church with choir, catechism, the Knights of Columbus, and generally looking out for those in need. In true Catholic Worker spirit, her final thoughts -- and words -- were, "Come out and visit. We can always throw one more cup of water in the soup!"
Books by Helen Caldwell Day
Color, Ebony, New York: Sheed and Ward, 1951
Not Without Tears, New York: Sheed and Ward, 1954
Other Web Resources on Helen Caldwell Day Riley
Writing by Helen Caldwell Day on the Web