Miriam Davidson papers

Miriam Davidson (b.1960) grew up in the Boston, Massachusetts, area and became a Quaker when she was eleven years old. She graduated from Yale University in 1982 with a B.A. in English and later earned her master's degree in international journalism from the University of Southern California. Davidson has worked as a reporter, editor, journalism professor, freelance writer, and author. In 1982 she moved to Texas and worked as a reporter and Lifestyle editor for the Laredo News and later served as managing editor of Third Coast magazine. Davidson was a University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, adjunct professor of journalism, 1988-89. From 1993-1996, she worked for the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, Arizona, as a correspondent covering Tucson and Nogales. As a freelance journalist her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, The Nation, the NACLA Report on the Americas, and The Progressive. Davidson's books include Convictions of the Heart: Jim Corbett and the Sanctuary Movement (1988), Lives on the Line: Dispatches from the U.S.-Mexico Border with photographs by Jeffry Scott (2000) and The Beloved Border: Humanity and Hope in a Contested Land (2021) .

The bulk of Davidson's work has been on the U.S.-Mexico border. In 1985, she moved from Texas to Tucson, Arizona, to cover the Sanctuary Movement and subsequent trial. She covered the trial for the Christian Science Monitor and the Religious News Service; her book, Convictions of the Heart was published by the University of Arizona press in 1988. The Sanctuary Movement originated in Tucson, Arizona, during the early 1980s as a means of aid to Central American refugees, especially people fleeing from the political violence in El Salvador and Guatemala. Jim Corbett (1933-2001) along with the Tucson Ecumenical Council, Rev. John Fife (b. 1940), and his congregation declared sanctuary for the refugees. The grass roots movement soon became a national movement with churches all over the United States declaring sanctuary. In 1985, sixteen activists were indicted, eleven - including Corbett and Fife - went to trial and eight were convicted of alien smuggling and other charges. Although the trial ended in 1986, the movement itself has continued and evolved over the past twenty-five years in its original mission to aid refugees.