BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY
Jonathan Daniels
| Jonathan Daniels | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 20, 1939 Keene, New Hampshire |
| Died | 20 August 1965 (aged 26) Hayneville, Alabama |
Honored in
| Episcopal Church USA |
| Feast | August 14 |
Jonathan Myrick Daniels (March 20, 1939 – August 20, 1965) was an Episcopal seminarian, known for being killed in Hayneville, Alabama while working on the civil rights movement in Lowndes County. His death helped widen support for the civil rights movement. In 1991 Daniels was designated as a martyr in the Episcopal church and recognized annually.[1][2] He is memorialized in the civil rights movement and other venues.
Biography
Born in Keene, New Hampshire, Jonathan Myrick Daniels was the son of Phillip Brock Daniels (14 July 1904 - December 1959), a Congregationalist physician, and his wife Constance Weaver (20 August 1905 - 9 January 1984). Daniels joined the Episcopal Church as a young man and considered a career in the ministry as early as high school. He attended local schools before graduating from the Virginia Military Institute.[3] There he began to question his religious faith during his sophomore year, possibly because his father died and his sister Emily suffered an extended illness at the same time. He graduated as valedictorian of his class.
In the fall of 1961, he entered Harvard University to study English Literature. In the spring of 1962, during an Easter service at the Church of the Advent (Boston) in Boston, Daniels felt a renewed conviction that he was being called to serve God. Soon after, he decided to pursue ordination. After a working out family financial problems, he applied and was accepted to the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, starting his studies in 1963 and expecting to graduate in 1966.
Civil Rights work
In March 1965, Daniels answered the call of Dr. Martin Luther King, who recruited students and clergy to come to Selma, Alabama, to take part in a march to the state capitol in Montgomery for voting rights. Daniels and several other seminary students left for Alabama on Thursday, and had intended to stay the weekend. After Daniels and friend Judith Upham missed the bus home, they had second thoughts about their short stay. The two returned to school just long enough to request permission to spend the rest of the semester working in Selma, where they would also study on their own and return at the end of the term to take exams. Daniels stayed with the Wests, a local African-American family. During the next months, Daniels worked to integrate the local Episcopal church by taking groups of young African Americans to the church; members were not welcoming. In May, Daniels returned to the seminary to take his semester exams and passed.
He returned to Alabama in July to continue his work. Daniels helped assemble a list of federal, state, and local agencies that could provide assistance to those in need. He also tutored children, helped poor locals apply for aid, and worked to register voters. That summer, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act on August 2, 1965, which would provide federal oversight and enforcement of the constitutional right. Before that, blacks had been effectively disfranchised across the South since the turn of the century.
Murder
On August 14, 1965, Daniels was one of a group of 29 protesters, including members of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee(SNCC), who went to Fort Deposit, Alabama to picket its whites-only stores. All of the protesters were arrested and taken to jail in the nearby town of Hayneville. The police released five juvenile protesters the next day. The rest of the group were held for six days; they refused to accept bail unless everyone was bailed.
Finally, on August 20, the prisoners were released without transport back to Fort Deposit. After release, the group waited near the courthouse jail while one of their members called for transport. Daniels with three others—a white Catholic priest and two female black protesters—walked to buy a cold soft drink at nearby Varner's Cash Store, one of the few local places to serve nonwhites. But barring the front was Tom L. Coleman, an unpaid special deputy who was holding a shotgun and had a pistol in a holster. He threatened the group and leveled his gun at seventeen-year-old Ruby Sales. Daniels pushed her down and caught the full blast of the gun. He was instantly killed. Father Richard F. Morrisroe grabbed Joyce Bailey and ran with her. Coleman shot Morrisroe, severely wounding him in the lower back, but stopped at that.[4]
A grand jury indicted Coleman for manslaughter. Richmond Flowers, Sr., the Attorney General of Alabama, believed the charge should have been murder and intervened in the prosecution, but was thwarted by the trial judge. He refused to wait until Morrisroe had recovered enough to testify and removed Flowers from the case. Coleman claimed self-defense and was acquitted of manslaughter charges by an all-white jury.[5][6] (Disfranchisement resulted in excluding blacks from jury duty.) Flowers described the verdict as representing the "democratic process going down the drain of irrationality, bigotry and improper law enforcement." [7] Coleman continued working as an engineer for the state highway department; he died at age 86 on June 13, 1997, without having faced further prosecution. [5]
Aftermath and commemoration
The murder of an educated, white seminarian who was defending an unarmed teenage girl shocked members of the Episcopal Church and other whites into facing the reality of racial inequality. Other members worked to continue the civil rights movement and work for social justice.
Ruby Sales went on to attend Episcopal Theological School (now Episcopal Divinity School). She works as a human rights advocate in Washington, D.C. and founded an inner-city mission dedicated to Daniels.
- A sculpture group, The Garden of Gethsemani (1965–66) by sculptor Walker Hancock, was dedicated to Daniels when installed at The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Kentucky.[8]
- In 1991, the Episcopal Church designated Jonathan Myrick Daniels as a martyr, and August 14 was designated as a day of remembrance for the sacrifice of Daniels and all the martyrs of the civil rights movement. (The church also recognizes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) Daniels is one of 15 martyrs to have been designated since the start of the 20th century.[6][9]
- Daniels was the subject of historian Charles Eagles' book Outside Agitator: Jon Daniels and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama (1993), which won the Lillian Smith Awardthat year.
- The Episcopal Diocese of Alabama and the Episcopal Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast sponsor a yearly pilgrimage in Hayneville on August 14, to commemorate Daniels and all other martyrs of the civil rights movement.
- Virginia Military Institute created the Jonathan Daniels Humanitarian Award in 1998; awardees include former President Jimmy Carter.
- One of the five elementary schools in Daniels' hometown of Keene, New Hampshire, is named after him.[1]
- Daniels is one of 40 martyrs memorialized at Southern Poverty Law Center's Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama.
- In November 2013 the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island announced its plan to open the Jonathan Daniels House, a service-oriented intentional community for young adults, as part of the national Episcopal Service Corps program.[10]
Representation in other media
- A play by Lowell Williams, Six Nights in the Black Belt, chronicles events related to the arrests in Fort Daniel, six nights in jail, and Daniels' murder. It also explores the relationship between Daniels and Stokely Carmichael, then a member of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, with whom he shared a jail cell in Hayneville.
- Daniels and his murder were referred to in the TV film Selma, Lord, Selma (1999). He was played by Mackenzie Astin.
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