Jonathan Myrick Daniels

Episcopal seminarian at the Episcopal Theological School (ETS) who responded to Martin Luther King Jr.'s call for civil rights workers in Selma, Alabama. On March 11, 1965, Daniels was shot and killed by Tom Coleman in Hayneville while shielding 17-year-old Ruby Sales from gunfire. A prophetic witness to racial justice and Christian solidarity with the oppressed.

American civil rights martyr; prophetic witness to Christian solidarity with the oppressed and nonviolent resistance; example of costly discipleship and racial justice advocacy within the Anglican tradition.

Jonathan Myrick Daniels was born February 11, 1939. A native of Keene, New Hampshire, he entered the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts as a seminarian. During the civil rights era, Daniels responded to Martin Luther King Jr.'s call for supporters to come to Selma, Alabama following the Voting Rights Act marches of March 1965. While working with civil rights activists in Lowndes County, Daniels and Ruby Sales were confronted by Tom Coleman, a local white man, who fired a shotgun at close range. Daniels deliberately shielded the young Black woman with his own body, absorbing the fatal blast. Coleman was tried but acquitted by an all-white jury. Daniels' death became a symbol of costly Christian discipleship and prophetic witness against racism in the American South.

• Martyr