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March 24
Oscar Romero, Dorothy Height, Rim Banna, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
David Barnhart
March 24, 2025
“Shame on Those Who Do Not Revolt Against Social Injustice,” by Jules Grandjouan, 1910.
Own photo, Nantes, 2022.
On this day in 1980, Bishop Oscar Romero was gunned down by a right-wing death squad during worship as he celebrated mass. Romero had been an advocate for the poor and a critic of the military government during El Salvador’s civil war. In recognition of his work for human rights, the UN established March 24 as the “International Day for the Right to Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims.”
Today is also the birthday of Dorothy Height, who lived from 1912 until 2010. She was an advocate for civil rights and women’s rights, and was an early activist for what today we call “intersectionality.” She was especially active in the YWCA. She has sometimes been referred to as “the godmother of the civil rights movement.”
Today also marks the death, in 2018, of Rim Banna, a Palestinian musician who aimed to preserve the songs of her people and who used lullabies to humanize the people vilified by the President of the United States in Lullabies from the Axis of Evil.
Today also marks the birth, in 1826, of Matilda Joslyn Gage, a suffragist and women’s rights activist who was a century ahead of her time in her ideas about feminism and religion. She was intensely critical of the way Christian theology subjugated women throughout history, and wrote about it in her book Woman, Church, and State. She was also an early historian and advocate for women inventors.
On this day in 1854, about a decade before the Civil War ended slavery in the United States, Venezuela abolished slavery.
Reflection:
In his book The Violence of Love, Oscar Romero writes:
When we struggle for human rights, for freedom, for dignity, when we feel that it is a ministry of the church to concern itself for those who are hungry, for those who have no schools, for those who are deprived, we are not departing from God’s promise. He comes to free us from sin, and the church knows that sin’s consequences are all such injustices and abuses. The church knows it is saving the world when it undertakes to speak also of such things.
He also writes:
There is no dichotomy between man and God’s image. Whoever tortures a human being, whoever abuses a human being, whoever outrages a human being abuses God’s image, and the church takes as its own that cross, that martyrdom.
Dorothy Height wrote:
You never teach a subject, you always teach a child. You teach children in a way that they will learn, and then things will fall in place for them.
Matilda Joslyn Gage wrote:
Believing this country to be a political and not a religious organisation ... the editor of the NATIONAL CITIZEN will use all her influence of voice and pen against 'Sabbath Laws', the uses of the 'Bible in School', and pre-eminently against an amendment which shall introduce 'God in the Constitution.
One more from Oscar Romero:
Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is duty.
Prayer: Teacher of all wisdom, the world is full of ideologies which regard other people as objects or obstacles. You teach us to see them as manifestations of your very self. Wrap humanity in your embrace until we can see the divine in our neighbor. Amen.