Civil Rights Hero Memorialized At Washington National Cathedral

From Huffington-

A Massachusetts seminary student who sacrificed his life for a fellow civil rights worker 50 years ago is being memorialized in limestone near the entrance of the Washington National Cathedral.

Jonathan Myrick Daniels, a lesser-known martyr in the civil rights movement, was 26 when he stepped in front of a shotgun blast meant for 17-year-old Ruby Sales in Hayneville, Ala. That selfless act, and Daniels’ brief summer of activism in Alabama, led the Episcopal Church to recognize him as a saint in 1991. An annual pilgrimage to Lowndes County is held in his honor.

Soon, an eight-inch-high likeness of Daniels will be ready for viewing by the 300,000 people from around the world who tour the National Cathedral each year. The carving, located about 11 feet off the ground at the base of an archway molding, will be part of the cathedral’s Human Rights Porch, putting Daniels in the same company as Mother Teresa and Rosa Parks.

More here-

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jonathan-myrick-daniels-washington-national-cathedral_55c53deae4b0923c12bd06bd

Civil rights hero honored at National Cathedral

From USA Today-

 A Massachusetts seminary student who sacrificed his life for a fellow civil rights worker 50 years ago is being memorialized in limestone near the entrance of the Washington National Cathedral.

Jonathan Myrick Daniels, a lesser-known martyr in the civil rights movement, was 26 when he stepped in front of a shotgun blast meant for 17-year-old Ruby Sales in Hayneville, Ala. That selfless act, and Daniels' brief summer of activism in Alabama, led the Episcopal Church to recognize him as a saint in 1991. An annual pilgrimage to Lowndes County is held in his honor.

More here-

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/07/27/civil-rights-hero-honored-national-cathedral/30694523/

Civil rights demonstrator Jonathan Daniels remembered

From Alabama-

Civil rights demonstrator Jonathan Daniels, a seminarian from New Hampshire who came south to help the poor, was remembered Thursday as someone compelled to make a difference in reducing poverty.

Daniels made his presence known immediately as he helped impoverished residents of a Selma housing project learn how to read, but his life was cut short by a shotgun blast at a small grocery store in Hayneville.

"He was a genuine Christian who did not hate the people he was fighting or those who were trying to kill him," Selma historian Alston Fitts said following a discussion about Daniels at the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

More here-

http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/local/alabama/2015/01/17/civil-rights-demonstrator-jonathan-daniels-remembered/21931411/

Event held in Lowndes Co. honors fallen Civil Rights activist

From Alabama (with video)-

Hundreds of people from all over the country poured into Hayneville on Saturday to remember a Civil Rights activist and martyr.

The annual event is called the Jonathan Daniels Pilgrimage, and honors not only him but others who were killed in Alabama during the 1960's Civil Rights movement.

Jonathan Myrick Daniels is regarded as a hero. A Civil Rights martyr who fought and gave his life for the freedom of others.

"At that moment of death, you have no idea what legacy you leave behind," said Atlanta resident Janice Jerome.

The Episcopal seminarian was a civil rights activist and one day after being jailed for picketing an all white store, he was released. Daniels along with three other people, another white man and two black teens, then headed to a store to buy cold drinks.

More here-

http://www.wsfa.com/story/26242964/event-held-in-lowndes-co-honors-fallen-civil-rights-activist

Jonathan Daniels House to open as Episcopal Service Corps member

From ENS-

An exciting hurdle has been crossed by the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island’s Jonathan Daniels House (JDH) project, which aims to open a service-oriented intentional community for young adults. After three years of planning and preparing, last week JDH received official membership into the Episcopal Service Corps, a national network of more than 25 Episcopal young adult service programs across the United States.

As an Episcopal Service Corps community, Jonathan Daniels House will draw upon a diverse group of young adults from across the country, and plans to welcome four young adults in August of 2014. Participants will live together, work in service agencies embedded in local communities, and engage in vocational and spiritual discernment for a period of 10 months. They receive a modest stipend and are supported by a program director and mentors.

“We recognize that young people’s lives are formed by their experience in young adulthood – and that the service they provide will change them as well as those around them, said Bishop Nicholas Knisely of the Diocese of Rhode Island. “They will bring energy, vision and ideas to us and new hope to the people they serve.”

More here-

http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2013/11/21/jonathan-daniels-house-to-open-as-episcopal-service-corps-member/

Restoring our faith

From Georgia-

“This day restores my faith in humanity”

-- Spoken by a 12-year-old

The 12-year-old who spoke the above quote was reflecting upon her experiences as a participant in the Jonathan Daniels and Martyrs of Alabama Memorial Pilgrimage which took place in Hayneville, Ala., on Saturday.

The event was organized by the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama 15 years ago to pay tribute to Jonathan Daniels, a young white seminary student from Massachusetts who was murdered along with a large array of African-Americans including the four little girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing.

Our day began at 6:30 a.m. when we met in the parking lot of St. Augustine’s of Canterbury Episcopal Church on the south side of Atlanta with a group that had traveled from Macon, Warner Robins, north Georgia and Massachusetts. The pilgrimage was organized by the Diocese of Atlanta’s Commission for Dismantling Racism and led by Bishop Robert Wright.

In 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., sent out the call for pastors and religious leaders to come to Alabama to help forge the struggle for liberation in in that state and the young seminary student Jonathan Daniels was among the folks who responded.
Read more here:

http://www.macon.com/2013/08/14/2606634/meeks-restoring-our-faith.html#storylink=cpy

Jonathan Daniels Pilgrimage in Hayneville marks progress, reminds of civil rights work remaining

From Alabama-

 The judge’s bench from which the murderer of Jonathan Myrick Daniels was declared “not guilty” in 1965 was transformed Saturday, Aug. 10, 2013, into the altar of Christian Communion in the courthouse of Hayneville, Ala.

Hayneville is midway between Montgomery and Selma and just south of the highway bloodied during the 1960s struggle for civil rights for African-Americans.

“I hope you recognize the irony of sitting in this room – where such injustice was done – as we remember that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” said the Honorable Judge Adrian Johnson, current Lowndes County District Judge.

Johnson welcomed about 300 pilgrims from around the U.S. for the 15th annual anniversary of the Jonathan Daniels Pilgrimage.

More here-

http://www.al.com/living/index.ssf/2013/08/jonathan_daniels_pilgrimage.html

Andalusia native pens play, to present program

From Alabama-

Andalusia native Marianne Merrill Weber has vivid memories of August, 1965.

She was living in Monroeville, awaiting the birth of her son. In other parts of the state and nation, violence surrounded the non-violent Civil Rights Movement.

“Most of our information was coming out of Selma and Camden,” she recalled. “We didn’t have problems in Monroeville, but we had fears of unrest. We had seen things on the national stage and wondered, ‘Is it going to spill over?’

“Camden was only 40 miles away,” she said. “We were generally not seeing violence in small towns, but when it came so close, it was particularly terrifying.”

And then came August 20, 1965. That was the day a young Episcopal seminarian working for civil rights died when he stepped forward and took a bullet a white man intended for a black woman who wanted to buy a cold soft drink in a country store.

“We didn’t know anything was happening in Hayneville,” she said. “There were not news cameras there. The first we heard was on that night’s news, that two priests had been shot.”

More here-

http://www.andalusiastarnews.com/2013/07/31/andalusia-native-pens-play-to-present-program/

Seminarian followed an unplanned path into civil rights activism

From ENS-

The Rev. Judy Upham didn’t intend to go to Selma, Alabama.
She was studying at the Episcopal Theological School (now Episcopal Divinity School) in Cambridge, Massachusetts – unusual in itself for a woman in those days – when she saw television coverage of police attacks on civil rights marchers attempting to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge en route to the state capitol of Montgomery on what some called “Bloody Sunday,” March 7, 1965.

“Dr. [Martin Luther] King went on television on Monday, asking for good Christian people to come and stand with them,” she recalled. “Some people from the seminary were going to go. I brought my checkbook because I didn’t really have time to do stuff like that. We were all standing around, watching TV. I looked at these people getting beat up by police.”
And when fellow seminarian Jonathan Daniels asked her whether she was going to Selma, “I found myself saying, ‘How are we getting there?’”

Next thing she knew, she was on a charter plane to Atlanta. Sitting between Daniels and another seminarian, she told them: “This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

More here-

http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2012/02/24/seminarian-followed-an-unplanned-path-into-civil-rights-activism/