The general assumption after Parks’ arrest was that she had refused to give up her seat because she was worn out from working all day. But she was quick to point out that she wasn’t physically tired at all. Instead, she said, “the only tired I was, was tired of giving in. I did not want to be mistreated, I did not want to be deprived of a seat that I had paid for. It was just time. I had not planned to get arrested. I had plenty to do without having to end up in jail. But when I had to face that decision, I didn’t hesitate to do so because I felt that we had endured that too long. The more we gave in, the more we complied with that kind of treatment, the more oppressive it became.”
Parks’ act of resistance cost her personally. She was fired from her job, and eventually she and her husband, now unemployable in Montgomery, had to leave the city in search of work. But her refusal to give up her bus seat had colossal consequences. Although she couldn’t have known it at the time, it was the spark that ignited the civil rights movement.
5 February
John Nevin Sayre
4 February 1884—13 September 1977
Episcopal Peacemaker
When the United States entered World War I in 1917, pacifists were generally loathed. They were ostracized socially, persecuted legally, and either forcibly inducted into the military or imprisoned. In both barracks and jail, they were frequently brutalized. As one Mennonite inductee recalled, “We were cursed, beaten, kicked, and compelled to go through exercises to the extent that a few were unconscious for some minutes.”
It took a brave person to object publicly to the treatment of pacifists. John Nevin Sayre, Episcopal priest, pacifist, missionary, teacher, and author, was one such person. He protested directly to Woodrow Wilson, describing in chilling detail the abuse that was going on and challenging the president to do something about it. Thanks to his efforts, Wilson agreed to the recognition of conscientious objection as a legal alternative to military service.
A native of Pennsylvania, Sayre came from an economically privileged background, attending all the right schools and meeting all the right people, and after his ordination it was expected that he would rise to prominence in the church hierarchy. But after serving as a missionary teacher in China for a couple of years, he came to the conclusion that his true calling was preaching the message of Christ’s peace. Following his defense of pacifists during World War I, he joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), working as editor, administrator, and public lecturer. He also cofounded and taught at Brookwood Labor College, an institute aimed at educating blue collar workers in order to strengthen labor unions. So far as Sayre was concerned, a great deal of the world’s violence was caused by economic injustice. He considered his work with Brookwood an extension of his pacifism.
In the years leading up to World War II, Sayre traveled around the world in the interests of peace. He toured Germany in 1921 as a FOR representative, speaking widely and collecting data on the destructiveness of war. In 1927 he traveled on horseback throughout Nicaragua, hoping to broker a peace agreement between Augusto Sandino, the guerilla leader resisting American military occupation of his country, and the United States government. Sayre never met Sandino, but his presence saved several Nicaraguan villages from bombardment at the hands of U.S. forces. During the 1930s he spoke widely on behalf of European Jews. In 1939 he helped found the Episcopal Peace Fellowship. Following the war, he traveled to a number of countries to urge the commutation of soldiers convicted of war crimes. Before ill health slowed him down, he was a frequent presence at rallies against the Vietnam War.
Two years after his death, Sayre’s devotion to peace was honored by the Episcopal Peace Fellowship’s establishment of the John Nevin Sayre Award, given every three years to a peacemaker who carries on his tradition of Christian pacifism.
6 February
Asha Hagi Elmi
6 February 1961—
The Sixth Clanswoman
In accepting the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, Asha Hagi Elmi reminded her audience that “it has always been the case in all armed conflicts that women and children are the first and last victims of war, though war is neither their desire nor their decision.” She knows what she’s talking about. As a Somali, she’s endured a civil war that’s lasted over twenty years. The long conflict has ravaged the nation’s economy and infrastructure, killed nearly half a million people, and inflicted suffering on millions more.
The civil strife in Somalia is inseparably connected to the nation’s traditional clan structure. There are five male-dominated clans or tribes within the nation, and the tensions between them are long-standing. Since these tensions erupted into outright civil war in the mid-1980s, women like Asha Hagi who married outside of their clan have been rejected by both their birth and their marriage clans. In describing her own situation, she speaks for thousands of Somali women. “My clan of marriage saw me as a stranger, an outsider and at times a traitor. They didn’t want me to know or even listen to what was being said. In my clan of birth, they also saw me as an outsider. My relatives saw me as someone who did not belong to them because I had this ‘other part’ that was related to the enemy. They didn’t want me to know their conversations and plans.”
Realizing that the traditional clan system left no room for women’s voices—voices that typically cry the loudest for peace—Asha Hagi organized the Sixth Clan, a unification of women from the five traditional clans. The Sixth Clan works to encourage women’s political participation in Somalia, to advocate for the rights of women and children across all of Africa, and to ensure that women are a presence in the ongoing peace talks between the warring clans. In 1992, Asha Hagi cofounded the humanitarian organization Save Somali Women and Children in order to further the goals of the Sixth Clan.
Asha Hagi was elected to Somalia’s transitional parliament in 2004 and served for five years. During that time she participated in UN-sponsored peace talks and traveled widely throughout Africa, advocating the rights of women and children and especially speaking out against female genital mutilation. Through her work with the Sixth Clan, women in Somalia have a louder voice in the political and peacemaking process. As she says, “Through the Sixth Clan, we have transformed the women’s role from the traditional ululation to indispensable stakeholders for national peace and political process. We have also taken women from the periphery to the negotiating table as equal partners and decision-makers. Women are no longer passive observers, but instead active participants. We have challenged the social cultural paradigm and carved out women’s political space in the national political dispensation.”
7 February
Dom Hélder Câmara
7 February 1909—27 August 1999
Ending the Spiral of Violence
The “bishop of the slums,” as Roman Catholic Archbishop Dom Hélder Câmara was called, was a tiny and stooped man, partly because of physical fragility but mainly because of his tireless advocacy, in the name of Christ, for the poor and oppressed of his native Brazil. But he never thought the work too much to bear. “If people are too heavy for you,” he once said, “carry them in your heart, not on your shoulders!”
Câmara captured world attention in 1962 when, attending the Second Vatican Council in simple cassock and wooden cross, he urged his more resplendently dressed fellow bishops to give their gold and silver pectoral crosses to the poor. Conservative Catholic officials disapproved of his outspoken gospel-based concern for the poor and urged him to keep quiet. But Câmara defied them by issuing a statement at the end of the Council that made it clear to everyone where his ministry lay. “Almost 2,000 years after the death of Christ, at a time when the Declaration on Religious Liberty is to be promulgated, nearly two-thirds of humans live in a subhuman condition that makes it impossible for them to understand the true meaning of liberty.”