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September 25
Saint Euphrosyne, bell hooks, and the Little Rock Nine
David Barnhart
September 25, 2025
Bean blossom, 2025. Own photo.
In 1957, from September 23rd through the 25th, the world watched as the Little Rock Nine integrated Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. Though they were escorted by police, they faced a violent white mob of nearly 1000 people, and had to be removed from the school. The following day, accompanied by the National Guard, they completed a full day of school. The National Guard would continue to patrol the school and enforce the integration order for the rest of the school year.
Today is also one of several feast days (today’s in the Greek Orthodox Church) of Saint Euphrosyne of Alexandria, who lived from 410–470. When she turned 18, her father was going to force her to marry, so she escaped, dressed as a man, and lived as a monk for the next several decades. Eventually her father, seeking spiritual counsel for his grief, came to the monastery, and she became his mentor. She revealed that she was his daughter, whom he thought had died.
Today is the birthday, in 1952, of bell hooks, educator, author, and activist. Her writing and teaching on gender, race, capitalism, and just being human have had a powerful effect on many who work for collective liberation. She died in 2021.
Today also marks the death, in 2011, of Wangarĩ Maathai, Kenyan women’s rights activist and environmentalist, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. She advocated for grassroots community organizing to combat deforestation, and founded the Green Belt Movement.
Reflection:
Wangarĩ Maathai wrote:
“Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own - indeed to embrace the whole of creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder. Recognizing that sustainable development, democracy and peace are indivisible is an idea whose time has come.”
bell hooks wrote:
“The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.”
and
“Understanding marginality as position and place of resistance is crucial for oppressed, exploited, colonized people. If we only view the margin as sign, marking the condition of our pain and deprivation, then a certain hopelessness and despair, a deep nihilism penetrates in a destructive way the very ground of our being. It is there in that space of collective despair that one’s creativity, one’s imagination is at risk, there that one’s mind is fully colonized, there that the freedom one longs for is lost.”
and
“We can’t combat white supremacy unless we can teach people to love justice. You have to love justice more than your allegiance to your race, sexuality and gender. It is about justice.”
Prayer: Holy Spirit, teach us to love justice more than we love our allegiance to our own tribes or identities. Amen.