Celebrating 175 Years of History

Antioch Activists

175 Years of Antiochians Who Take Action

As part of our 175th anniversary campaign, we’re spotlighting Antiochians—past and present—who embody the College’s bold legacy of speaking truth to power and leading by example. 

For the month of April, we are celebrating the Activists of Antioch. Who would you nominate?

DeCourcy Squire

DeCourcy Squire, non graduate, class of 1971: When she and a group of Antiochians went to the Federal Building in Cincinnati in December, 1967, she only meant to hand out leaflets advocating the end of the War in Vietnam. Instead, she was arrested and jailed for months in that city’s notorious Workhouse, where she went on a prolonged, high profile hunger strike. Upon her release she wrote a paper about her experience that she submitted for cooperative education credit.

Earlier that year, Squire attended an antiwar protest in July at the Pentagon in Washington. When security attempted to detain her, DeCourcy dashed into the building, managing to evade capture for over three hours. When she was finally apprehended, she told the guards: “I don’t really care to leave.”

In 1970 she and seven other activists broke into the federal building in Rochester, NY, where they destroyed some files and removed others that documented the controversial COINTELPRO program conducted by J Edgar Hoover’s FBI against American citizens including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Squire did a year in a federal penitentiary for theft and destruction of government property. A similar raid by activists in Media, PA, led to the program’s shutdown in 1971.

Her post-Antioch life focused on prison reform with such organizations as Boston Bail Fund. She would go on to become a physical therapist. Decourcy Squire, a lifetime Quaker, has always been a “war tax resister” and refuses to pay any taxes that could pay for a war.

Susannah Way Dodds ’66

Susannah Way Dodds, class of 1866: Less an activist than an exemplar, Susannah Way Dodds lived her entire life as a liberated woman in an age when “woman’s rights” was more of an abstract concept than an achievable goal. She first came to Antioch College in 1856, but owing to financial constraints, she had to leave school frequently to earn enough money to return and continue her studies. Throughout her time at Antioch, she wore the uniform of a woman’s rights woman: the Bloomer dress. For this and her perennially short hairstyle, she was regarded as a radical. Her formidable intellect was readily apparent to her fellow Antiochians. As Irene Hardy (class of 1885) recalled “[Susannah] would have been a conspicuous figure anywhere, as the strongly individual type…I admired her then greatly and later came to know and love her. Her debates and other exercises in the literary society were looked forward to by the younger members with an eager expectancy which was seldom disappointed…It was more than a treat to be present at the debates in which Mrs. Dodds crossed swords with some of her classmates among the men.”

Following graduation, Joni studied social work, dedicating the rest of her time to advocating and organizing in favor of rights for women and labor, independence for Puerto Rico, the impeachment of Richard Nixon, fair utility rates. She was active in the nationwide socialist organization New American Movement at all levels and for 20 years published the newsletter Allegheny Socialist. 

Since the 1980s she has focused her reform efforts largely on addressing the problem of urban food deserts through the organization Just Harvest. The Joni Rabinowitz Papers, donated to Antiochiana in 1993, are extensive and central to the Student Activist Collection in the College Archives.