Jonathan Daniels

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Jonathan Daniels bigraphy, stories - Activists

Jonathan Daniels : biography

20 March 1939 – 20 August 1965

Jonathan Myrick Daniels (March 20, 1939 – August 20, 1965) was an Episcopal seminarian, killed for his work in the American civil rights movement. His death helped galvanize support for the civil rights movement within the Episcopal church. He is regarded as a martyr in the Episcopal church.For example, his image is included in the webpage of St Andrew’s Episcopal Church of Birmingham, Alabama, see http://www.standrews-birmingham.org/ One of the five elementary schools in his hometown of Keene, New Hampshire is named in memory of him.

Aftermath and Commemoration

The murder of an educated, white, priest-in-training who was defending an unarmed teenage girl helped shock the Episcopal Church into facing the reality of racial inequality that it had tacitly participated in and continued. Daniels’ death helped put civil rights on the map as a goal for the church as a whole, and reminded many upper class white Episcopalians that this struggle was not nearly so distant as they had imagined it to be.

In 1991, Jonathan Myrick Daniels was designated a martyr of the Episcopal Church, one of fifteen modern-day martyrs, 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 Episcopal Diocese of Alabama and the Episcopal Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast sponsor a yearly pilgrimage in Hayneville on August 14, commemorating Daniels and all other martyrs of the civil rights movement.

Ruby Sales, the teenager whose life Daniels saved, went on to attend Episcopal Theological School (now Episcopal Divinity School) herself, and has gone on to work as a human rights advocate in Washington, D.C. as well as founding an inner-city mission dedicated to Daniels.

Virginia Military Institute created the Jonathan Daniels Humanitarian Award in 1998, of which former President Jimmy Carter has been a recipient.

One of the five elementary schools in his hometown of Keene, New Hampshire, is named after him. He is also one of forty martyrs memorialized at Southern Poverty Law Center’s Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. In 2010, a commemorative pilgrimage in Hayneville included Ruby Sales and Bishop Todd Ousley of the Episcopal Diocese of Eastern Michigan.

A sculpture group dedicated in Daniels’s memory is on the grounds of The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Kentucky. from Flickr. In a forest glade, a bronze kneeling figure of Christ agonizes over offering himself up for sacrifice while, off to the side, three of his disciples huddle together asleep. from Flickr. The Garden of Gethsemani (1965–66) was created by sculptor Walker Hancock.

Daniels was the subject of University of Mississippi history professor Charles Eagles’s 1993 book Outside Agitator: Jon Daniels and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, which won the Lillian Smith Award that year.

A play by Lowell Williams, Six Nights in the Black Belt, chronicles the events around the murder of Daniels. It also highlights the relationship between Daniels and then Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee member Stokely Carmichael, with whom he shared a cell.

Daniels was portrayed by Mackenzie Astin in the film Selma, Lord, Selma.

Civil Rights work

In March 1965, Daniels answered the call of Dr. Martin Luther King, who asked that students and clergy come to Selma, Alabama, to take part in a march to the state capital in Montgomery. Daniels and several other seminary students left for Alabama on Thursday, and had intended to only stay the weekend, but Daniels and friend Judith Upham missed the bus home. Forced to stay a little longer, Daniels and Upham realized how badly it must appear to the native civil rights workers that they were only willing to stay a few days. Convinced they should stay longer, the two went back to school just long enough to request permission to spend the rest of the semester in Selma, studying on their own and returning at the end of the term to take exams. Daniels stayed with a local African-American family, the West family. During the next months, Daniels devoted himself to integrating the local Episcopal church, taking groups of young African-Americans to the church, where they were usually scowled at or ignored. In May, Daniels traveled back to school to take his semester exams, and having passed, he came back to Alabama in July to continue his work. Among his other 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.