Daniels, Jonathan Myrick

(Mar. 20, 1939-Aug. 20, 1965). An Episcopal seminarian killed while working in the civil rights movement in Hayneville, near Selma, Alabama. Daniels was born in Keene, New Hampshire. He had a profound conversion experience on Easter Day, 1962, at the Church of the Advent, Boston. He entered the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In Mar. 1965 Martin Luther King, Jr. made a televised appeal for people to come to Selma to seek voting rights for all citizens. King's appeal persuaded Daniels to work in Selma under the sponsorship of the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity (ESCRU). Daniels and three companions were arrested and imprisoned on Aug. 14, 1965, for joining a picket line. They were unexpectedly released six days later. They walked to a small store. As Ruby Sales, a sixteen-year-old African American woman, approached the entrance of the store, a deputy sheriff appeared with a shotgun and cursed her. Daniels pulled her to one side and was killed by a single blast from the shotgun. His life and witness are commemorated in the Episcopal calendar of the church year on Aug. 14.