James A. Corbett

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For other people with the same name, see Jim Corbett (disambiguation).

James A. "Jim" Corbett (October 8, 1933 – August 2, 2001) was an American

rancher, writer, Quaker, philosopher, and human rights activist and a co-founder of the Sanctuary movement. He was born in Casper, Wyoming, and died near Benson, Arizona
.

Life

The son of a teacher and a substitute teacher, Corbett was descended from European-American settlers and

husbandry.[3][4] He also was librarian and philosophy instructor at Cochise College in Arizona.[1] In the early 1960s Jim Corbett became a Quaker and an opponent of the Vietnam War.[1]

Sanctuary Movement

In 1981, while living in Arizona, he became aware of

Geneva conventions barring countries from deporting refugees back to countries in the middle of civil wars (non-refoulement), to justify their actions.[5] They found support for their work in Quaker meetings (congregations) in Arizona and Chicago, Illinois, as well as south Texas. Eventually, other communities in many states, including California, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, and others.[citation needed] This movement, which became known as the Sanctuary movement, eventually involved over 500 congregations, and helped hundreds if not thousands of refugees find freedom in the U.S.[6]

Corbett and ten others around Tucson, Arizona were arrested for their work, as it violated U.S. immigration laws. He was eventually acquitted.[1] He continued to assist refugees and to write on various topics of social justice.

Books

Corbett was among the most intellectual of the movement's proponents, and he wrote and published widely on the topic. His two books were Goatwalking (1991) and Sanctuary for All Life (posthumously published in 2005).

Environmental activism

Jim Corbett is credited with helping a group of ranchers in southeast Arizona get beyond the long-standing rancor between ranchers and environmentalists and work together to protect open space in the early 1990s.[7]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e New York Times obituary
  2. ^ Friends United Meeting: Quaker Life Archived November 22, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ Seven Obituaries = James Corbett
  4. ^ Goatwalking. – book reviews
  5. ^ JIM CORBETT – Sanctuary, Basic Rights, and Humanity's Fault Lines
  6. ^ Altman, Micheal (1990). "The Arizona Sanctuary Case". Litigation. 16 (4): 23–54.
  7. ^ "New Life in the Badlands". Nature.org. The Nature Conservancy. October 1, 2015.

References

  • Davidson, Miriam, Convictions of the Heart: Jim Corbett and the Sanctuary Movement (University of Arizona Press, 1988).
  • Nature Conservancy magazine, Oct/Nov 2015, p. 38.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_A._Corbett&oldid=1179242813"