Jonathan Myrick Daniels Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Jonathan Myrick Daniels (March 20, 1939 - August 20, 1965) was an Episcopal seminarian, martyred in 1965 for his part in the American civil rights movement. His death helped galvanize support for the civil rights movement within the Episcopal church.
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2 Civil Rights Work 3 Martyrdom 4 Aftermath 5 Quotes |
Born in New Hampshire in 1939, Jonathan Myrick Daniels was the child of a Congregationalist physician. Daniels joined the Episcopal Church as a young man and considered a career in the ministry as early as high school. He attended the Virginia Military Institute after graduating from high school, where he began to question his religious faith during his sophmore year, possibly because his father died and his sister suffered an extended illness at the same time. He graduated as Valedictorian of his class and, in the fall of 1961, entered Harvard University to study English Literature. In the spring of 1962, Daniels was attending an Easter service at the Church of the Advent in Boston, and felt his doubt disappear, to be replaced with a renewed conviction that he was being called to serve God. Soon after, he decided to pursue ordination, and after a period of working out family financial problems, he applied and was accepted to Episcopal Theological Seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts, starting his studies in 1963 and expecting to graduate in 1966.
In March of 1965, Daniels heard the call of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, who was asking 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 a friend missed the bus home. Forced to stay a little longer, Daniels and his friend 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. 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 ignored, or scowled at. In May, Daniels travled 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.
On August 13, 1965, Daniels went with a group to picket whites-only stores in the small town of Fort Deposit, Alabama. The next day, all the protestors were arrested and taken to jail in the nearby town of Hayneville, where they were held for six days, having refused to accept bail until bail was made for all the arrested protestors. Daniel's fellow prisoners have recorded that the cell had barely enough room for all the men to fit in (the women were in a separate area,) was without air conditioning or adequate plumbing (the temperature was regularly over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and the toilet quickly backed up and began dumping sewage on the floor,) and that the little food they were given was often overcooked, uncooked, or full of vermin. Finally, on August 20, all the prisoners were released, without explanation and without transport back to Fort Deposit. Several of the group went to find a payphone with which to call for help, while Daniels and a few others went down the street to get a cold soft drink at Varner's Cash Store, one of the only local stores that would serve nonwhites. They were met on the front steps by an unemployed highway construction worker, Tom Coleman, who was wielding a shotgun. The man threatened the group, and finally leveled his gun at sixteen-year-old Ruby Sales. Daniels pushed Sales out of the way and caught the full blast of the gun, killing him instantly.
The cold-blooded 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 upperclass white Episcopalians that this struggle was not nearly so distant as they had imagined it to be. Daniels' killer was aquitted by a jury of twelve white men, on the grounds of "self-defense" (the killer claimed Daniels had a knife, which is extremely unlikely given that no one with Daniels saw any knife, and Daniels had just come out of a week in jail, and that the police who investigated never found any weapon.) In 1991, Jonathan Myrick Daniels was designated a martyr of the Episcopal Church (one of fifteen modern-day martyrs,) and August 14th was designated as a day of remembrance for the sacrifice of Daniels and all the martyrs of the civil rights movement. Ruby Sales, the teenager whose life Daniels saved, went on to attend Episcopal Theological Seminary herself, and has gone on to work as a human rights advocate in Washington, DC, 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. The Episcopal Diocese of Alabama and Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast sponsor a yearly pilgrimage in Hayneville on August 14th, commemerating Daniels and all other martyrs of the civil rights movement. Biography
Civil Rights Work
Martyrdom
Aftermath