Introducing Jonathan Myrick Daniels

Excerpts from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Daniels

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. Daniels was accepted to the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and started his studies in 1963. He expected to graduate in 1966. 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 intended to only stay the weekend, but Daniels and friend Judith Upham missed the bus home. Forced to stay a little longer, they realized how badly it must appear to the native civil rights workers that they were willing to stay only briefly. 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 the Wests, a local African-American family. On August 14, 1965, Daniels, in a group of 29 protesters, went to picket whites-only stores in the small town of Fort Deposit, Alabama. All of the protesters were arrested and taken to jail in the nearby town of Hayneville. All but five juvenile protesters 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 by a road near the jail. Daniels with three others—a white Catholic priest and two female black protesters—went down the street to get a cold soft drink at Varner's Cash Store, one of the few local stores that would serve nonwhites. They were met at the front by Tom L. Coleman, an engineer for the state highway department and unpaid special deputy, who wielded a shotgun. The man threatened the group, and finally leveled his gun at seventeen-year-old Ruby Sales. Daniels pushed Sales down to the ground and caught the full blast of the gun. He was killed instantly. The priest, Richard F. Morrisroe, grabbed Joyce Bailey, the other protester, and ran. Coleman shot Morrisroe, wounding him in the lower back. Coleman was subsequently acquitted of manslaughter charges by an all-white jury. 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, and August 14 was designated as a day of remembrance for the sacrifice of Daniels and all the martyrs of the civil rights movement.