page_title: Jonathan Daniels
section_title: Civil rights work
hierarchical_section_title: Jonathan Daniels / Civil rights work
caption_attribution_description: English: Old Hayneville Jail - Hayneville, Alabama (Jan. 2013).
context_page_description: Jonathan Myrick Daniels was an Episcopal seminarian and civil rights activist. In 1965, he was murdered by a shotgun-wielding special county deputy, Tom Coleman, who was a construction worker, in Hayneville, Alabama, while in the act of shielding 17-year-old Ruby Sales. He saved the life of the young Black civil rights activist. They were both working in the 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.
context_section_description: 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. Daniels and several other seminary students left for Alabama on Thursday, intending to stay the weekend. After Daniels and friend Judith Upham missed the bus home, they had second thoughts about their short stay. The two returned to the seminary just long enough to request permission to spend the rest of the semester working in Selma, where they would also study on their own and return at the end of the term to take exams.
  In Selma, Daniels stayed with the Wests, a local African-American family. During the next months, Daniels worked to integrate the local Episcopal church by taking groups of young African Americans to the church. The church members were not welcoming. In May, Daniels returned to the seminary to take his semester exams and passed.
  Daniels returned to Alabama in July to continue his work. He helped assemble a list of federal, state, and local agencies that could provide assistance for those in need. He also tutored children, helped poor locals apply for aid, and worked to register voters. That summer, on August 2, 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act which would provide broad federal oversight and enforcement of the constitutional right to vote. Before that, blacks had been effectively disenfranchised across the South since the turn of the century.
caption: Old Hayneville Jail where Daniels and others were held
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