You have to disperse.

You're ordered to disperse.

This march will not continue.

On Sunday, March 7th, 1965, in Selma, Alabama, state and local police clubbed and teargassed civil rights marchers as they began the 52 mile march to Montgomery.

The Alabama State Capitol.

They were marching for the rights of African-Americans, who had been beaten and harassed when attempting to register to vote.

Jonathan Myrick Daniels, a 25 year old student at the Episcopal.

Theological Seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts, watched the dramatic television coverage of the violent events in Selma.

That evening.

Jonathan heard the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr call on the northern clergy to come to Selma and help complete the historic march to Montgomery.

Jonathan decided to answer that call.

Jonathan's journey from the seminary to the streets of Selma took him from a safe and privileged world, and thrust him into a world of violence and danger.

Unlike most of the Selma marchers, he remained in Alabama and worked on a number of civil rights projects.

On August 20th, 1965, Jonathan Daniels was shot to death by a deputy sheriff outside a small grocery store in Hayneville Alabama, while attempting to protect Ruby Sales, a 17 year old.

SNICK worker.

Why did Jonathan place his life in jeopardy?

Why did he choose to play a fateful part in the most significant domestic drama of his times?

Why did Jonathan, in his sermons, writings and life, embrace the words of the prophet Isaiah?

Also, I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send, and who will go for us?

Then said I, here am I.

Send me.

Jonathan Daniels was born on March 20th, 1939, in Keene, New Hampshire, the first child of Doctor Phillip and Constance Daniels.

A predominantly white, middle class community.

Keene had little contact with the seething racial and class conflicts that were breaking out in either the South or the North.

However, the roots of Jonathan's activism were firmly set in Keene.

The man who was most influenced me was my father, whose sacrificial practice of medicine and deep concern for human pain early shaped my conviction that a day's work never ends, and that because of the ubiquity of need and suffering, possessions are an embarrassment.

Daddy volunteered, during World War two, when he had a relatively new practice.

Medical practice started from the house, and my mother was only recently aware that she was pregnant with me, but he felt he had no choice, that he had to go.

Doctor Daniel served with distinction in the European theater.

After the war, he returned to Keene.

Doctor Daniels was such a devoted physician that he spent a lot less time with his family than other people were able to do with their family.

I think the children just missed having him, closer to them over a good many years.

Throughout his school years, Jonathan struggled to achieve his identity in a very competitive male world.

There were several boys now leading athletes in school.

These classmates formed the sinecure of a small, closed click to which I was not able to gain admittance.

And to this day have not.

This now seemingly trivial failure inflicted a deep wound, the scar of which has never completely healed.

Jonathan was a complex young man.

He could be serious, prankish, funny, rebellious, and moody.

John had a wonderful sense of humor.

I remember a trip to New York.

I was probably about 13, which would have made him 17, and he was outfitted in a very narrow, sleazy looking pair of shades and a trench coat and some kind of a hat.

And I had on one of my slinky little sheath dresses.

Well, we all we looked like, you know, we were up to something that we weren't.

But he got a big kick out of the impression that we left.

Unlike most of his peers, Jonathan turned to literature, the arts, and especially religion.

I really loved to especially read exciting tales of valiant knights and fair ladies and dreamed beautiful, fantastic dreams of myself as a great hero, great music and my writing are escape valves.

Although these I consider primarily as instruments of my personal salvation.

Although I am not by any stretch of the imagination, a good Christian, my religion has exerted a powerful and I hope, growing influence on me.

I have gained a tremendous amount of meaning from my life at religious youth camps.

Of all the things that have enriched and enhanced my life, I think that my religion has come to mean the most to me.

Jonathan was drawn to the elaborate ritual of the Episcopal Church.

During his senior year, he left his family's.

Congregational church to become an Episcopalian.

Jonathan's attraction to the ministry, noted by his classmates, is reflected in his writings.

He wrote a short story in which he prophetically tells the tale of a heroic slum priest, shot while protecting a young woman.

During his high school years, however, Jonathan displayed no interest in or knowledge of the major civil rights conflicts of the 50s, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Focused on his own world, Jonathan, at the end of his senior year, remained introspective as he dreamed of what lay before him.

In etching this portrait of myself, I am trying above all else to rediscover myself, to perceive clearly my personality and my nature, to find my course in this trackless maze of lost stars.

Jonathan's decision to attend the Virginia military Institute or VMI in Lexington, Virginia, after his high school graduation in 1957, surprised almost everyone.

Why was he attracted to the military?

I think part of it was, was that desire for order and for organization, for discipline in his life, desire for it, a feeling that he needed it.

Jonathan Myrick Daniels also admired his ancestors, who had served in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.

His memories of his father's military service and his childhood trips to the South to visit his father during the war also drew him to VMI.

I remember countless now cherished incidents that occurred during those years.

I think of the South as my adopted home, and because of this, I cannot help but sympathize with her.

In fact, I must confess that I have a great affection for the gallant and valorous but misguided Johnny Rebs.

Jonathan's romantic vision soon clashed with the realities of race relations in the South.

There was not a single African American enrolled at VMI, and Lexington, Virginia was totally segregated.

He also learned that the life of a first year student at VMI was harsh and demeaning.

This is pure, unadulterated hell.

Many of my brother rats have quit.

Two have not gone home, what with bracing a rigid and painful position of attention, all the abuse from upperclassmen, and too much studying to be done in too little time.

In short, a perpetual rat race.

The life of a rat is somewhat less than a theory of bliss.

Jonathan was particularly disturbed when he learned that one of his brother, rats, who had left after only five days, had committed suicide at home.

I looked at John.

The first thing I remember his talking about was.

The pain that he was suffering as a result of the rat line.

He could not say that a system, that inflicted so much pain and suffering could possibly have any good about it.

He was willing, on a personal basis, to do what it was necessary in order to go through it.

But he really wondered if, in doing that, he was endorsing a process that was inhumane.

Jonathan survived his year as a rat and later as an upperclassman and editor of the school newspaper.

He became a friend and defender of the younger cadets.

In December 1959, Doctor Daniels died.

For the first time in his life, Jonathan questioned his faith and his religious calling.

The impact of his father's death was a very strong one, based on the fact that Jonathan had looked up to his father as a role model.

Somebody that had been so caring for other people should die so young.

Was a hard thing for John to deal with.

Jonathan abandoned his plans to become a minister.

In the spring of 1961 he received notice that he had been accepted as a graduate student in the English department at Harvard University.

Jonathan graduated from VMI with honors and was chosen class valedictorian.

Jonathan Daniel stood out as a strong leader in that group, but in an entirely different way.

He wasn't flashy.

He wasn't dramatic.

He wasn't flamboyant, but someone of, of great dignity, of a man who ran deep.

It appeared to me, a man who commanded respect.

And I had one other thought.

To me, there was an element of sadness about him, as if things would not work out as he had hoped they would.

After graduation, Jonathan spent the summer in Washington, D.C., working in the Senate Post Office.

I took the job, hoping for a summer of fun and independence, and careful thought about at least the most pressing of my problems.

What I managed to achieve was a case of severe depression.

It was a lonely experience.

Jonathan's experiences as a graduate student at Harvard University only deepened his depression.

This year, I have undergone what has been variously described as an identity crisis, a delayed grief experience, a religious crisis, and a work paralysis.

In a way, I think each is accurate enough, and I am aware of a great deal of interreaction.

There have been a number of external complications as well.

That spring, Jonathan was overwhelmed with family problems.

Mrs. Daniels was attempting to cope with the family's deteriorating financial situation, and his sister Emily was experiencing severe emotional difficulties.

Jonathan's mood is reflected in this poem dedicated to Emily, I hear, and the scream of the wind.

Oh mistral, My mistral.

And smell and the scent of her hair and know.

And the mist of soft rain.

The urgent gall of silent tears.

On Easter Sunday, 1962.

Jonathan, at his most anguished moment, underwent a profound religious experience at the church of the Advent in Boston.

I made a decision which radically changed my life.

I decided to return to the church after having left quite deliberately several years before.

God followed that gift with another, as I felt his not so gentle nudge reminding me that I didn't belong in the graduate school where I was studying.

I decided then to leave my program at the end of the year, and in God's good time, to seek holy orders.

Jonathan left Harvard and returned to Keene to help support his family in the fall.

He began the application process for admission to the Episcopal.

Theological Seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

While in Keene, Jonathan gave a sermon at his hometown church, Saint James, in which he, as a prospective seminarian, voiced his vision of the ministry somebody must visit the sick and the lonely and the frightened and the sorrowing.

Somebody must comfort the discouraged, argued lovingly and convincingly with the anguished doubter, somebody must remind the sick soul that healing is within his grasp, and urge him to take the medicine when his disease seems more attractive.

Also, I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send?

And who will go for us?

Then said, I, here am I.

Send me.

That spring, Jonathan received notice that he had been accepted for admission to the Episcopal.

Theological Seminary for the fall semester.

By 1963, the Civil Rights movement had gained momentum.

Efforts to desegregate public facilities and register African-American voters had intensified.

The reactions of rabid and segregationists were often violent and repressive.

The fires of frustration and discord are burning in every city north and south, where legal remedies are not at hand.

Redress is sought in the streets, in demonstrations, parades and protests, which create tensions and threaten violence and threaten lives.

We are confronted primarily with a moral issue.

It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.

The heart of the question is whether all Americans ought to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities.

Jonathan's resistance to racism and social injustice began to deepen, though I recognize the need for profit seeking enterprise.

I cannot happily tolerate the proximity of conspicuous waste and undernourished children.

I am bitterly opposed to racial prejudice with which I have had some experience.

That fall, Jonathan left Keene and returned to Cambridge to begin his studies at the seminary.

This time, however, he was entering a world of social activism.

In September, the NAACP sponsored numerous demonstrations to pressure the Boston School Board to integrate its schools.

On September 18th, and interdenominational service was held on the Boston Common to protest the bombing of the 16th Street.

Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama three days earlier.

Four girls attending Sunday school had been killed in the blast.

In October, Jonathan became a member of the NAACP.

In Boston and throughout the country, the church now played a major role in the civil rights and social justice movements, and Jonathan became directly involved when he did his seminary field work as a youth counselor at Christ Church in Providence, Rhode Island.

He lived and worked in the parish and for the first time ministered to the poor and often dispossessed.

At that time in the early to mid 60s, were much involved in the Cathedral in Providence, and trying to find ways in which the church could relate to some of the real urban issues.

Jonathan was really involved and very much with individuals, especially young individuals in the community.

And John had a kind of real gift, the same to me of establishing rapport with young people.

People tended to trust him.

They tended to seek him out.

They tended to come to him when they wouldn't go to their parents or teachers or other people in the community.

As I think about Jonathan, I think that, that when he first came to us that he may have intellectually understood about the problems that existed in, in, the whole atmosphere related to the racial, situation.

I think that what happened when he came to South Providence was he was able to then put a face to what he had been learning about what he had become aware of, perhaps on an intellectual basis.

The program is invaluable to me experientially, ethically, spiritually, though I cannot make a definitive prophecy at the moment.

I am happy and thankful to confess that my new horizons are alluring.

I believe that I could serve my Lord with a glad heart in a slum.

After the Republican Party in 1964 nominated Senator Barry Goldwater, a staunch conservative, to run against President Johnson, Jonathan severed his Republican Party roots and, like many young adults, moved to the left.

I am outraged with the damned Republican Party.

Are they all psychotic?

Have got to go on the warpath.

Goldwater.

Suppose I might as well call myself a liberal Democrat and get it over with.

In a land of great wealth, families must not live in hopeless poverty.

In a land rich in harvest.

Children just must not go hungry.

As I listened to the president on my radio, I was reminded of Amos and Isaiah and Jeremiah and of their tough minded vision of what it means to be the people of God.

While the institutional church was busy at the task of swallowing her guilty share in wretched schools and bestial housing and murderous poverty and the loathing of the races, the sword of Christ has passed to other hands.

Selma, Alabama, at the start of 1965, was a stronghold of segregationists.

Despite a two year effort by SNICK workers and local activists, only 300 out of 15,000 eligible black voters were registered to vote.

In January, Doctor King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference targeted Selma as the next battleground in their fight for racial justice.

On the night of February 18th, Jimmie Lee Jackson was brutally beaten and shot by state troopers at a demonstration in Marion, Alabama.

Eight days later, he died.

Civil rights leaders organized a protest march from Selma to Montgomery for Sunday, March 7th.

John Lewis, SNICK chair, was one of the lead marchers.

We start walking out of downtown Selma from the church came to the foot of the bridge.

It was very quiet, almost eerie.

We continued to walk into Selma.

We came to the apex of the bridge.

We saw a sea of blue.

Alabama state troopers.

And we thought about kneeling, but before we could pass the word back for everyone to kneel, the major said troopers advance towards the group, see that they turn around and disperse.

And you saw these men putting on their gas masks, and they came toward us with knife stakes.

Beating us.

Trampling us, bull whips.

And then they started releasing the tear gas.

To this day, I don't know how I made it back across the bridge.

On national television that evening, the Reverend King urged white religious leaders and others to come to Selma and join a new effort to complete the march to Montgomery.

He wanted to see, to test.

Maybe he knew, but just to test whether the state of Alabama whether the state troopers.

Sheriff Clark and the local police would use the same force and, degree of brutality against these white citizens from the North, as they did against poor black folks from the black belt of Alabama.

There was trouble in Selma, as we all knew, from Huntley Brinkley and Doctor.

King had asked for northern volunteers.

Could I spare the time?

Did I want to spare the time?

Did God want?

I attended evening prayer as usual, and as usual, I was singing the Magnificat with a special love and reverence I have always felt from Mary's gladsome.

I found myself peculiarly alert.

Suddenly straining towards the decisive, luminous, spirit filled moment.

Then it came.

He has put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and the meek.

He hath filled the hungry with good things.

I knew then that I must go to Selma.

Jonathan and ten other students from the seminary arrived in Selma on Tuesday, March 9th.

There they joined thousands of clergy and nuns who had also answered.

King's call for another march to Montgomery.

The scheduled march was halted after negotiations with local, state and federal officials.

That evening, Reverend James Reeb, a Unitarian minister from Boston, was fatally beaten outside of Walker's Cafe in downtown Selma.

During his first week in Selma, Jonathan worked closely with Judith Upham, a student at the seminary.

They participated in numerous demonstrations, attended rallies at Brown Chapel, and joined an integrated group of worshipers at the 11:00 service at the all white Saint Paul's Episcopal Church.

When they were refused admittance, the group held a prayer service outside the church.

As the days passed, the two activists noticed that most of the white demonstrators were returning home, leaving the local blacks to face the forces of segregation and racism.

So we started debating and, well, should we stay like this was the next morning.

Moore Samuels, a priest from Los Angeles that we'd seen quite a lot of said, go take a look outside and see how many white faces you see in line.

And so we did walk a block up the street and back.

And certainly there weren't nearly as many as there had been less than a week before.

So I'd say you're right.

We have got to stay.

While in the South, Jonathan photographed and reacted bitterly to the numerous signs of a racist society.

When I ordered the coffee, all other voices stopped.

I turned from cold stares and fixed my gaze on a sign over the counter.

All cash received from sales to n .rs will be sent directly to the United Klans of America.

I read it again.

Nausea rising swiftly and savagely as the suspicious counter boy spilled coffee over the cups.

The march to Montgomery began once again on Sunday, March 21st, a few days after Federal District Court Judge Johnson had lifted the state's ban on the march.

The march was enormous and went off quite successfully.

Tuesday night, I stood security guard at the encampment.

Wednesday night, my cohorts and I rejoined the march at the camp just outside Montgomery.

King gave a moving address.

He is certainly one of the greatest men of our times.

However, after the joyous rally in Montgomery on Highway 80 and Lounds County, four Klansmen killed Viola.

Liuzzo, a Michigan activist, wife and mother who had answered King's call.

She had been transporting a black male marcher back to Selma.

Jonathan and Judith not only remained in Selma after the march, they also chose to live with black families.

They initially stayed with the Scotts in the all black George Washington Carver Homes.

When city officials told the Scotts that they would lose their apartment and their jobs for housing two white activists, Jonathan and Judith, moved in with the West family, who lived in the same complex.

Jonathan quickly became a friend and counselor to the West children, as well as an adopted member of the family.

Then I got, you know after I got to know John, you know, it just came easy.

I didn't didn't look at the color of his skin then, you know, he didn't act no different from us.

He ate out the same dishes we ate from.

So he just ate what we ate.

He took a bath in the same bath tub we took a bath in.

Used the same commode you know, so he just, He was just like family.

In fact, he said we was is, you know, he called me his, adopted, said I adopted him.

And a lot of my neighbors tease me.

They say all the children you got.

You had to go and get a white one.

I can remember one day when I was, when I was coming up and, Jonathan was staying here, and I think I had, got my hand on my list or something, and, and Jonathan was telling me about, the good side of doing your homework and, paying attention in the classroom and and getting you work.

And, it kind of struck me back then, because first thing I thought of asking.

Well, why is white man so serious about us like this?

You know, but that night when when he sat me down and he scolded me and he talked me, and he told me why.

Why he did that.

Because he cared about me.

And he wanted me to make some out of myself.

He was the, he was just there when we needed him.

Always.

Jonathan loved his new sisters and brothers and hoped that they would return that love.

Bonnie sat astride my knee.

She smiled.

Yet there was a hesitancy in her eyes.

Her daddy smiled down at her and asked, do you love John?

Quietly but firmly, Bonnie said, no.

Part of me seemed to die inside, and I fought back tears.

When, a few days later, Bonnie pulled me down to her, cupped my face with her tiny hands and kissed me.

I knew something very important and incredibly beautiful had happened.

Jonathan and Judith were appalled that their own church was segregated.

Working as representatives of the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity, or E.S.C.R.U, they set out to integrate Saint Paul's Church.

Sunday we had one heck of a time getting into early communion at Saint Paul's with our black kiddos.

They seemed to be getting used to our presence at morning prayer, but evidently the thought of contaminating their holy cup is just too much for them.

We were made to sit in the back, and we had to wait until last, but we went to Palm Sunday communion.

The two seminary students then decided to challenge their own church hierarchy.

Father Maurice called he father Stynes and another.

E.S.C.R.U priest flew to Birmingham yesterday morning.

The five of us proceeded to the diocesan and headquarters downtown, where we picketed for a little over four hours.

Signs read Slave Gallery revived bishops sanctioned segregated slavery in Selma Church.

White supremacists knew of Jonathan and Judith's activities and labeled them white n .rs .

The two outsiders knew they had to be careful.

Sure is strange country.

Sort of like being deep within enemy lines.

The snipers are still doing their dirty work.

A hacked up black body was found today in a nearby county.

One of my good friends here, an Episcopal priest from LA, got two threats on his life today from members of the sheriff's posse.

I wonder how long the Southern White will get away with rule by terror.

Jonathan first experienced the violence of the civil rights struggle during a voter registration march in Camden, Alabama.

All I can remember was that we were in a situation where there was a hill and the, the sheriff or whoever had two rifle men with their rifles aimed at us.

And then we were demonstrating and, they grabbed this one white kid and beat him over the head, and he took him out of there.

And then they opened up the tear gas on all of us.

At first I think I should gladly have procured a high powered rifle and taken to the woods to fight the battle as the Klansmen do.

I was very angry with white people.

I think it was when I got Teargassed leading a march in Camden that I began to change.

I saw that the men who came at me were themselves not free, even though they were white and hateful and my enemy, they were human beings too.

I began to discover a new freedom in the cross.

Freedom to love the enemy.

And in that freedom to will and to try to set him free.

In May, Jonathan returned to the seminary to complete his coursework.

Friends and family members who knew Jonathan could be killed in Alabama tried to convince him to remain in New England.

I can remember saying to him, you know, your mother is going out of her mind because she's just convinced something awful is going to happen.

And he said, I know, but I really need to go back down there for a while.

And I think he was.

I know that he was aware that it was dangerous.

But if something needs to be changed or addressed and you've decided to be a part of it, then you're not going to back off because somebody is chasing you down the highway.

He said that he was enthusiastic about what he was doing in the seminary, but he was even more enthusiastic about his work in the civil rights movement.

Not that he saw them as two separate things.

In fact, he said, the more I get involved in this movement, the more convinced I am of the truth of the Christian religion.

And he leaned forward and said, all of it.

He said.

You feel liberated.

You feel free.

I had realized that as a Christian, as a soldier of the cross, I was totally free, at least free to give my life.

If that had to be with joy and thankfulness and eagerness for the kingdom no longer hidden from my blind eyes.

Soon after his return, Jonathan began to work with Eugene Pritchard, a local SNICK field worker.

They traveled the impoverished countryside of Dallas and Lowndes counties documenting with camera and tape recorder the poverty, the needs, and the repression of black families.

Jean and I are out in East Selma talking with women in especially poverty stricken areas who are not receiving welfare assistance and who are in extreme need.

Each of the women we are about to interview has already been interviewed by Mr. Pritchard, who in some cases has financed visits to Doctor Dumont for the children, supplied money for soap to clean the houses and in general prepared the women for eventual contact with a local welfare agency.

One interviewee, Minny Smith, told Jonathan and Eugene that a man named Tom Coleman fired her from her housecleaning job because her daughter tried to attend services at the all white Hayneville Baptist Church.

Coleman warned Minny that she and her daughter could be bombed or set on fire with gasoline.

Six years earlier, Coleman had shotgun to death, a black convict who Coleman claimed had threatened him with a bomb.

That spring, Snicket decided to participate in the battle for voting rights in Lowndes County, fearful of the formation of a majority black electorate, segregationists had not allowed one of some 6000 eligible black voters to register to vote.

They perhaps had picked the toughest place in the United States to crack.

It was no question about it.

These great land barons in Lowndes County were not interested in equality for poor white people.

Talking about equality for black for black people were out of the question.

You could literally get killed in Lowndes County in the early 60s for not saying sir or ma'am to a white person, or for not yielding the sidewalk.

And the sheriff literally called all black folk his n .rs He said that in the courtroom, Jonathan was determined to join the SNICK effort in Lowndes County.

I explained to him that we would never let him work in Lowndes County.

You were too visible as a target.

We're not strong enough in the county to protect you.

But he was a persistence.

And, because of persistence I was meeting, we became, even though we had different positions, we became friends, began to see each other, but our position was firm.

And his insistence was also firm.

Jonathan was the first white person to really work in Lowndes County.

And so it was a new experience.

And so finally we decided that, I guess the movement should be a place where people could come and do the work.

I think Jonathan had a very, had a very unique quality, of.

Having a tremendous respect for the environment that he was in.

And he was someone who did not come into the environment trampling over customs and traditions.

On August 6th, President Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Immediately, poll taxes were challenged in the courts.

Literacy tests were suspended and federal examiners were sent south to register black voters.

Then, the very next week, six days of rioting in a Negro section of Los Angeles left behind the scenes reminiscent of war torn cities.

Whites were fearful that a black rebellion would break out in Lowndes County itself.

In the midst of this upheaval, SNICK workers began to recruit the local people to participate in a demonstration in Fort Deposit Lowndes County at a grocery store that abused black customers.

Jonathan was an effective recruiter.

I met him and we talked and I said to myself, how can a person come way from New Hampshire to get involved in what was going on in Lowndes County?

And here I live here.

I'm not even interested in it.

So by talking to Jonathan, he was very persuasive.

And there was a problem that was going on in fort deposit.

And he persuaded me to go with them that day.

And I remember looking across the street, seeing a lot of white people with banners and we said, don't get frightened.

Let's start singing.

Holding hands and singing.

Then we shall overcome.

You know.

And during that time, the white people was coming after us and they thought that we was going to run and we didn't, and they backed off.

And that's when they had us arrested.

As a gun toting cracker said to me when I observed we had a constitutional right to picket.

You don't have any rights in Fort Deposit.

We was hauled away in a great big trailer truck to the old jailhouse in Fort Deposit across the railroad track.

And I think we stayed there for a couple hours, and they transferred us to the jail.

Dearest mom, I have been in jail ever since Saturday.

The Lowndes County Jail in Hayneville, after being transferred from Fort Deposit, where a bunch of us were arrested for picketing.

We are not being bailed out because we are seeking an injunction and trying to get our cases transferred to a federal court.

The food is vile and we aren't allowed to bathe, but otherwise we are okay.

Should be out in 2 to 3 days and back to work.

On Friday, August 20th, the prisoners were told without prior notice that they would be released immediately without having to post bail.

They became frightened and suspicious.

We moved off the jail property at the orders of one of the deputies, and walked down to the corner, and we'd been standing there for about 20 minutes or so, and then some of the some of the members of the group decided they'd go and buy cold drinks at the store just half a block away, and they started towards the store.

And some of us stay there on the corner waiting for them.

A short distance from the jail grounds, Special.

Deputy Tom Coleman, the man who had threatened Minny Smith, stood in the doorway of the cash store with a 12 gauge shotgun in his hands.

Well, we got to the store.

When we got to the store.

I was in front.

John was behind John Joyce and Father Myers were they were behind me.

And when we got to the door, I think I had walked up about 1 or 2 steps.

This guy was standing in the door with the shotgun.

And he told us that the store, he said the store is closed.

And he said, if you don't get off of this goddamn property, I'ma blow your damn brains out.

Next thing I knew from that, someone had pulled me from behind and I heard a shotgun blast.

And I looked.

I saw John falling.

I saw John fall.

I heard a shotgun blast, and I saw him.

When he grabbed his stomach.

He grabbed his stomach.

And then, Father Richard Morris began to start to run with this girl.

And the man burst out and holler.

All you black n .rs get off my property!

And then he shot, Father Morris.

And then we took off running.

Everybody went, you know, all kind of ways.

I heard the shot that killed Jonathan.

I heard the shot and recall flying.

Perhaps somewhere between, you know, two and five feet from the impact.

I recall being on the road, and, I remember people talking that Jonathan was dead.

Jonathan's journey to the south was over.

Now, black activists and Alabamians would journey north to honor their friend and ally.

All the people in SNICK felt that they had to go to the, funeral for Jonathan.

While, the people from Lowndes County really insisted that we go because they didn't want to send this, dead body back without it being accompanied so that the people at least, whom sent us this life body would know that, we, the living still cared very much for, the dead.

It could be their son, but a mother son who had died thousands of mile away, from his mother's house and died on their battlefield.

And when I got there, we looked in the casket.

John was lying there, so peaceful.

Seemed like he had the same smile on his face he had all the time.

It looked like he was just.

He was.

He was just at peace.

You know, such a good, warm hearted person had to get killed.

So violent just because he wanted to buy some, some kind of refreshment from the store.

But, you know, God got a destiny set for everybody for his own reason.

I tell you, not a day goes by that I don't miss him.

Just the fact that I can't pick up the phone and call him when something amuses me in the times or the New Yorker, or when I'm reading something.

It's just so too bad to have that hole in my life instead of somebody there.

Jonathan was buried next to his father, whose life and death had profoundly shaped his son's journey.

The two soldiers now lay side by side.

Many of the nation's spiritual and political leaders paid tribute to Jonathan's sacrifice.

President Johnson sent a heartfelt telegram to Mrs. Daniels.

The Reverend Martin Luther King wrote.

The meaning of his life was so fulfilled in his death that few people in our time will know such fulfillment or meaning.

Though they lived to be 100.

The grand jury charged Tom Coleman with first degree manslaughter, not murder.

State Attorney General Richmond Flowers protested the biased handling of the case and was quickly removed from the proceedings.

40 days after the brutal slaying, an all white male jury acquitted Tom Coleman after deliberating less than two hours.

The jury agreed with Coleman and his witnesses that Jonathan had threatened him with a knife.

Is Mr. Coleman, the man that you believe or is believed to have done the shooting.

He definitely did the shooting and he confessed to having done it.

And why would you think that he would be released?

It's the southern way.

It's the southern way.

Let me ask you this.

If you had that experience to go through all over again, would you have changed anything?

I wouldn't have changed a bit.

If the same thing happened in the morning that happened that day, I would shoot them both tomorrow.

After a hasty investigation, the FBI concluded that Coleman had not been involved in a conspiracy and had not violated the federal civil rights statutes cleared of both state and federal charges, Coleman never served a day in jail and lived in Hayneville until his death in 1997.

Jonathan's violent death and the travesty of the Coleman trial shocked the nation, but this tragic event also played a major role in the reshaping of the nation's legal and political landscape.

What Jonathan was doing in Lowndes County probably would not have gotten him killed in Selma, and that is which is 30 miles from there.

And, and and and Jonathan Daniels understood that.

Stokely Carmichael understood that.

But they also knew that Lowndes County was where the action is.

If it falls, there is going to fall everywhere.

The impact on the community.

I think people even got stronger.

Usually when an incident take place, everybody get nervous and start going home.

The week following.

Well, the Sunday following the incident of the shooting.

We had people come out even the church ground was full when we filled the building up because people felt then they had to be strong.

Whenever these people.

Give their lives like that, just that in itself.

To kill a person in cold blood.

I mean, and they were killing people of their race.

That made that caused many blacks to really know and realize the power of the ballot.

They knew it was power in that ballot.

The whole jury system after Jonathan's death came under attack, and affirmative lawsuits, literally scores of them all across the South to result and to order the jury officials to put blacks names in the jury box so they could be selected at random with whites for juries.

That resulted in a great shift of power that's gone generally unnoticed.

Jonathan's sacrifice and the sacrifices of the other slain civil rights workers were not in vain.

By 1970, throughout the.

South, African Americans were voting, holding public office, serving on juries, and sharing public facilities.

Jonathan Daniels, must be looked upon as one of the martyrs, that shed his blood and gave his life to redeem not just the soul of Alabama, but the soul of a nation.

Jonathan Daniels is honored in the Martyrs.

Chapel of Canterbury Cathedral in Canterbury, England, in 1994.

His name was added to the Episcopal Church calendar as a martyr and witness to the gospel.

Numerous memorials throughout the country keep alive his story.

Jonathan's ideals and words continue to inspire others to carry on the quest for a just society.

We too, may set our faces to go to Jerusalem as he has gone before us.

We go to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

We go to stand with the captives and the blind and the oppressed.

We go in active nonresistance not to confront, but to love and to heal, and to free.

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