“This is where the blood of the martyr was spilled,” called out Bishop Philip Duncan of the Diocese of Central Gulf Coast, and scores of men, women, and children, black and white, surged silently forward to lay their hands on the rough concrete of the storefront porch in Hayneville, Alabama, where Episcopal seminarian Jonathan Myrick Daniels was slain by a shotgun blast on August 20, 1965.
Processing from the Lowndes County courthouse square, a throng of between 500 and 600 pilgrims set off at midday, ringing small bells and carrying crosses and banners from Episcopal parishes throughout the sponsoring dioceses of Alabama and Central Gulf Coast, along with a local organization, Rural Enrichment Accessing Community Hands (REACH). The commemoration is now in its fifth year.
They walked under a broiling August sun, much the way it was 38 years ago, observers noted. Dogs barked in the distance, and local police hovered around the edge of the crowd.
But most of the marchers were white, and most were from outside the local community. Arriving in church vans and SUVs with Episcopal Church shield stickers on the rear windows, they appeared as if from out of nowhere in late morning, jamming all available parking spaces around the courthouse square and shady neighborhood streets nearby.
A passing car paused and the driver rolled down one of its windows. The passengers, several local black women, asked what was going on. “Are all these folks here to support Judge Moore and the Ten Commandments?” asked one woman inside, referring to Alabama State Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, who has been suspended from office for refusing to obey a court order to remove a two-ton stone tablet with the Ten Commandments from the state judicial building’s entrance. Hundreds of his supporters have camped out around the building, vowing to prevent removal of the monument.
‘Mighty brave’
Hayneville does not have an Episcopal church, and members of tiny St. Paul’s in Lowndesboro, about seven miles away, have only recently participated more openly in the event.
St. Paul’s hosted a dinner and Taizé service attended by 38 people the night before the pilgrimage, but of those, only one was African-American: Fannie Davis, one of the pilgrimage’s local organizers.
“I think the folks at St. Paul’s are in a difficult position. They’re being mighty brave,” said their part-time priest-in-charge, the Rev. John M. Keith. “This is a close-knit, rural county, and there are people in Lowndesboro who are kin to members of that jury who found Jonathan Daniels’ killer not guilty back in 1965.”
Black people make up about 85% of the population in Lowndes County, but they were unable to vote prior to the mid-1960s, when the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and other groups began voter registration drives which met with violent opposition from elements of the minority white community.
Daniels, who had been released earlier in the day from the county jail, was killed as he sought to protect Ruby Sales, a young African-American woman who eventually became an Episcopal priest.
Changed, but not enough
Now the county seat, Hayneville has a black mayor, Cecil Williams, who issued a greeting to the pilgrims when they assembled in the courthouse for a church service.
But the Rev. Jacquelyn Rowe, rector of Good Shepherd in Mobile, who preached at the service, warned that “we have grown too comfortable” and noted that racism is still alive and well. “Lord, change our name!” she exhorted.
One of the marchers echoed that sentiment. “This is looking back at a very hard past that Alabama has, can’t escape, and has to move away from. And frankly, as somebody coming new to the area, I’ve seen more racism than any place I’ve ever lived, and that’s white racism and black racism, and more hatred than any place I’ve ever been,” said Larry Beaury, a white parishioner at St. Francis in Indian Springs, Alabama.
Capriel Webb, 12, who is African-American, of Fairfield, Alabama, was marching in the procession with Megan Brown, 12, and Ashley Brown, 10, both of Birmingham. All three were at the Daniels pilgrimage for the first time. Webb, who hopes to be a nurse someday, said she feels that today as an American she can pursue any future she wants. “I came today to see how it was like back then,” she said.
Is the world today better or worse than it was then? “A little bit of both. The world has changed. It’s good,” observed Webb.
Outside agitator
Jimmy Rogers, one of the black teenagers with Daniels when he was killed, spoke briefly to the crowd in the packed courtroom, saying that black Alabamans appreciated the efforts of white people on their behalf during the civil rights movement.
But such whites were particularly hated by local segregationists, said one speaker. Daniels was branded as an “outside agitator,” a phrase that eventually became the title of a 1993 book about him by Charles W. Eagles.
Alabama Bishop Suffragan Mark Andrus said, “What happens here today is an opportunity for Episcopalians to search for reconciliation across all lines that divide us.”
He noted, “This is part of God’s love for the world, this experience. We are walking into this pilgrimage together. We will be changed—be open to what will work among us today. It is with such material that God changes the world.”
A group of Alabama youth and their leaders who had visited the Taizé community in France this past summer spent the night at Church of the Ascension, Montgomery, and participated in the Daniels pilgrimage events. They listened to stories told by retired priest Francis Walter, who was present in Hayneville the day Daniel was killed.
“Over the years we’ve added names, so that now we celebrate not just Jonathan but all the civil rights martyrs of Alabama,” said Walter. He noted that many local blacks were killed.
“The black teenagers from that time have been very reticent to take part in these pilgrimages,” he noted. Walter, who had a stormy career as a young, white native-Alabama priest involved in the civil rights movement, commented, “I’ve been very privileged to get older and have some validation of what I did when I was younger.”
Walter said that there is a possibility that the Jonathan Daniels story may be the subject of a play that could be performed annually in the Lowndes County Courthouse, as a dramatic version of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird is performed in another Alabama town.
The pilgrimage next year will be held on August 14, the day that Daniels is remembered in Lesser Feasts and Fasts. Already, bishops from Louisiana, West Tennessee, and North Carolina have promised to attend and bring pilgrims with them.
