Daniels, Jonathan Myrick, 1939-1965

Jonathan Myrick Daniels (March 20, 1939 – August 20, 1965) was an Episcopal seminarian and civil rights activist. In 1965, he was killed by a special county deputy, Tom Coleman, who was a construction worker, in Hayneville, Alabama, while in the act of shielding 17-year-old Ruby Sales.[1] He saved the life of the young Black civil rights activist. They were both working in the nonviolent civil rights movement in Lowndes County to integrate public places and register Black voters after passage of the Voting Rights Act that summer. Daniels' death generated further support for the civil rights movement.

In 1991, Daniels was designated as a martyr in the Episcopal church, and is recognized annually in its calendar Born in Keene, New Hampshire, graduating from the Virginia Military Institute. In the fall of 1961, Daniels entered Harvard University to study English literature. Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, starting his studies in 1963 and expecting to graduate in 1966. In March 1965, Daniels answered the call of Martin Luther King Jr., who recruited students and clergy to join the movement in Selma, Alabama, to take part in the march for voting rights from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery. On August 14, 1965, Daniels was one of a group of 29 protesters, including members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), who went to Fort Deposit, Alabama, to picket its whites-only stores. All of the protesters were arrested. . But barring the front was Tom L. Coleman, an unpaid special deputy who was holding a shotgun and had a pistol in a holster. Coleman threatened the group and leveled his gun at seventeen-year-old Ruby Sales. Daniels pushed Sales down and caught the full blast of the shotgun. He was instantly killed by the shot.