ABSTRACT
One key to a rewarding research career is selecting questions that are broad enough and personally significant enough to allow their pursuit in a sustained way. In the summer after 10th grade, I followed the social justice orientation of my Jesuit teachers at Loyola High School, volunteering in a literacy program in the heart of the Baltimore's impoverished inner city. Situated under the shadow of Johns Hopkins hospital, the school was attached to a missionary parish of the Josephite order. The students and nuns were all African-American. The pastor was Phil Berrigan, who, together with his brother Daniel, would soon become an icon of the anti-Vietnam War movement, most famously for pouring animal blood over draft files at a Selective Service office. Dan Berrigan later memorialized the ensuing trial of the “Catonsville Nine” in a stage play and book of the same name (Berrigan, 2004).
