Email to Friend
Remembering Jonathan M. Daniels 45 years after Selma
Hundreds gather for commemorations in Alabama, Wyoming
Bishop Todd Ousley of the Episcopal Diocese of Eastern Michigan was a featured speaker at an Aug. 14 pilgrimage that drew hundreds to Hayneville, a predominantly African American town of about 1,000 residents, where Daniels was killed in 1965.
A day later and 1,400 miles away, about 40 people recalled the spirit of Daniels while attending an Aug. 15 conversational sermon with a local Muslim leader and the Rev. Rick Viet, rector of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in predominantly Anglo Cheyenne, Wyoming, with a population of about 56,000.
Organizer Mike Bell said the event was planned "to open people's eyes to the wider experience in Cheyenne as far as faith traditions go." At the heart of Daniels' self-sacrifice, he said, was "the understanding of what it means to be a neighbor."
Daniels was 25 and a student at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when he responded to a call to participate in the historic march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery along with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Afterwards, he elected to continue his studies long-distance and to stay in Alabama. He was among a group of black and white protestors standing in front of Varner's Grocery Store when a gunman opened fire. Daniels pushed 16-year-old Ruby Sales to safety and was killed by the shotgun blast.
The pilgrimage, organized by the Diocese of Alabama, drew hundreds including Hayneville Mayor Helenor Bell, former National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Chairman Julian Bond and a busload of seminarians and others from the School of Theology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.
"I teach religious history so I have taught about the civil rights movement" and wanted to visit Alabama, said Pam Cochran, who is married to a Sewanee seminarian. She came "to be a part of this commemoration of the civil rights struggle and to honor those who died. It was a wonderful service and it was great to be here."
The group retraced Daniels' steps, singing spirituals and pausing to pray at the jail where he was briefly imprisoned along with 17 others for attempting to register black voters, to the grocery store where he was fatally wounded Aug. 20, aged 26.
The pilgrimage ended at the courthouse where Daniels' killer was acquitted. "One of the most powerful moments of the service for me was when the judge's bench was transformed into an altar" for Eucharist, Ousley said about the service.
For Tamica Slaughter, a youth leader at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Birmingham, hearing the names and seeing photographs of Daniels and each of the other 12 Martyrs of Alabama was most meaningful "especially the children, the mom who drove from Michigan to help with voter registration."
She was referring to Viola Greg Liuzzo, a Detroit mother of five who was shot and killed March 25, 1965 while driving marchers back to Selma from Montgomery, allegedly by Klansmen in a passing car. Four little girls -- Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley -- also were killed when the 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham was bombed Sept. 15, 1963.
Attorney Martha Jane Patton, a lay leader at St. Andrew's Church in Birmingham, said Daniels' death changed her life.
"Because of him, I left my job and came to work for the Selma [Inter-religious] Project for several years," which continued Daniels' activism. "It had a profound impact on my life. In fact, my oldest son is named Jonathan, named after this man."
Ruby Sales later attended Episcopal Divinity School and co-founded the Spirit House Project, a Columbus, Georgia-based national organization that uses the arts, education, action, and spirituality to bring diverse people together to work for racial, economic, and social justice. Sales was scheduled to participate in the pilgrimage, but was called away because of an emergency.
In Cheyenne, Mike Bell, chair of St. Mark's Jonathan Daniels Society, reminded the Aug. 15 gathering at St. Mark's that Daniels died saving Sales, a young African American woman. But he added that: "I know that Jonathan would have willingly and without hesitation given his life for a person who was ... gay ... straight ... a gang member or someone who was in the Klan. He would have stepped in front of Tom Coleman's shotgun if that individual was a Jew ... Hindu or a Muslim."
He said the interfaith gathering hoped to educate and celebrate what it means to be a neighbor by inviting Dr. Mohamed Salih of the Islamic Center of Cheyenne to participate in the question-and-answer program with Veit, St. Mark's rector.
Salih, a retired Laramie County Community College dean, said such conversations could begin to help heal wounds and educate others "about the true tenets of our religion because we feel it has been hijacked by a few groups that do not represent Islam and its true teachings."
He said Islam teaches the values of "compassion and mercy and understanding and letting other religions live in peace. The whole history of Islam has shown that the prophet Mohammed interacted with Jews and Christians and nonbelievers ... and respects the rights of individuals to live their own way."
Cheyenne has about 10 Muslim families; with about 200 Muslims altogether in the state, he said.
St. Mark's parishioner Joel Bray said the program "fit so well within the context of Jonathan Daniels' life ... the context of idealistic Americana, freedom of speech, civil rights" and included a discussion of the controversial plans to build a mosque at Ground Zero.
Bray, 38, a Cheyenne area writer, said that Salih's response "was very American. He said that rather than asking the question why someone would want to do something like that there, ask why wouldn't someone do something like that there. I thought it was a very intelligent way to approach it in a free country."
Claire Davis, 63, an architect, said the program was excellent. "We can't be Christians if we're not tolerant, unconditionally tolerant, of everyone and I just think that a dialogue helps us to demystify and to humanize other people."
Another parishioner, Faye Mills, 57, described the program and Salih as inspirational. "It fits a lot because Jonathan Daniels responded during civil strife against black people. Right now, Muslims and Hispanics are experiencing a great deal of what black people used to and probably still do experience in some parts of the country," she said.
She said Daniels and Salih "inspire us to be a part of our world" and to be a witness to peace without hurting people in the process. "It's difficult to do," she added. "I once saw someone raging at Dr. Mo [Salih] because he was Muslim. He was extremely calm and patient, listening to them and offered a peaceful response.
"If you're going to be Christian, if you're going to be Episcopalian, you're supposed to be compassionate to your neighbor," she added. "If you run or just stay away from hateful people, from the homeless, that's not what Christ did. I feel that every day we need to step up to the plate, each person."
Eastern Michigan bishop Ousley, a descendant of slaveholders and an adoptive parent of two African American children, said that while the Episcopal Church has made great strides in dealing with racism "this will be a perpetual struggle for us.
"There's a big part of me right now that feels that some of the General Convention mandates and some of the programs we've attempted make it easy for us to check off a box, to feel that we've dealt with the racism issue and to convince ourselves that we can move on to the next thing," he said.
But, he added: "Look at the existing segregation within our congregations, at the limited numbers of African Americans and persons of color who are involved in the broader life of our church. We have a long, long way to go."
Search
