Hayneville, Alabama: Holy Ground

This is the first of a two-part series about Jonathan Myrick Daniels and the Martyrs of Alabama Pilgrimage, which will be held on August 9, 2025, in Hayneville, Alabama.

August 20, 1965, was a sweltering day in Hayneville, Alabama, the kind most of us know all too well. It was a day of tragedy, but also a day of commitment, bravery, and, ultimately, sacrifice. On that day, Episcopal seminarian Jonathan Myrick Daniels was shot and killed while shielding a 17-year-old Black girl from a racist attack.

Alabama has many sacred spaces, many of which are connected to the civil rights movement. For Episcopalians in Alabama, perhaps the most significant is Hayneville. Each year, the Episcopal Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast and the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama jointly sponsor the Jonathan Myrick Daniels and the Martyrs of Alabama Pilgrimage to honor Daniels and the 14 others who gave their lives in the fight for civil rights in the state. The pilgrimage is a reminder that the equality for which they died is a continuing sacrifice.

This year’s pilgrimage will mark the 60th anniversary of the martyrdom of Jonathan Daniels. In observance of this milestone, the preacher will be the 27th presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Rt. Rev. Michael Curry, who, as presiding bishop, was also the preacher ten years ago at the 50th anniversary pilgrimage.

The History

Born in Keene, New Hampshire, Jonathan Myrick Daniels considered a career in the ministry as early as high school and joined the Episcopal Church as a young man. He attended local schools before attending and graduating from Virginia Military Institute. In the fall of 1961, Daniels entered Harvard University to study English literature, but, in the spring of 1962, during an Easter service at the Church of the Advent in Boston, Daniels felt a renewed conviction that he was being called to serve God. Soon thereafter, he decided to pursue ordination and entered the Episcopal Theological School (now Episcopal Divinity 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. to join the civil rights movement and participate in the march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery. In Selma, Daniels stayed with the Wests, a local African-American family. Over the next few months, Daniels worked to integrate the local Episcopal church by taking groups of young African Americans to church. Church members were not welcoming. He helped assemble a list of federal, state, and local agencies that could provide assistance for those in need. He also tutored children, assisted impoverished locals in applying for aid, and worked to register voters. That summer, on August 2, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which provided 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.

On August 14, Daniels participated in a demonstration in Fort Deposit, AL, and was arrested along with about thirty other protesters. They were moved by garbage truck to the Lowndes County jail in Hayneville. The conditions in the jail were deplorable, with many men sharing small cells. The situation only deteriorated as the group spent six days in jail without air conditioning to combat the hot August weather and with sanitary facilities that could not keep up with the overcrowded conditions. Spirits were kept up by singing and praying, frequently led by Daniels.

After their release on August 20, Daniels, Roman Catholic priest Richard Morrisroe, and two African-American civil rights workers, Joyce Bailey and Ruby Sales, walked to Varner’s Cash Store to purchase a cold drink. At the entrance to the store, Thomas Coleman, a county special deputy and road construction worker, wielding a 12-gauge shotgun, challenged them. He ordered them away from the store and began firing. Daniels stepped in front of Ruby Sales to shield her. Jonathan Daniels was killed and, in the resulting melee, Morrisroe was wounded. Upon learning of Daniels’ murder, King observed that “one of the most heroic Christian deeds of which I have heard in my entire ministry was performed by Jonathan Daniels.”

A grand jury indicted Coleman for manslaughter. Richmond Flowers, Sr., the attorney general of Alabama, believed the charge should have been murder and intervened in the prosecution, but was thwarted by the trial judge T. Werth Thagard. Thagard refused to wait until Morrisroe had recovered enough to testify, and he removed Flowers from the case. Coleman claimed self-defense, although the victims were unarmed. He was acquitted of manslaughter charges by a jury that was all white (despite Lowndes County’s population being majority Black). Coleman continued working for the state highway department and died in 1997 at the age of 86 without facing further prosecution.

Ruby Sales went on to attend Episcopal Theological School. She worked as a human rights advocate in Washington, D.C, and founded the Atlanta-based SpiritHouse, which works for racial, economic, and social justice and is dedicated to Daniels.

Honoring Daniels in the Years Since His Murder

The Episcopal Church added Daniels to its Lesser Feasts and Fasts calendar of commemorations in 1991. His feast day is August 14, the day of his arrest. He is also one of six 20th-century martyrs honored in the Episcopal Church’s most recent calendar of commemorations, A Great Cloud of Witnesses.

Daniels’ death reverberated elsewhere in American society and the wider world. At his undergraduate alma mater, VMI, Daniels has been honored regularly since his death. His seminary established a fellowship in his honor the year after his death, and his graduating class established the Jonathan Myrick Daniels Memorial Lectureship to regularly bring leaders in social ethics to the campus. In Canterbury, England, Daniels is among those remembered in the cathedral’s Chapel of Saints and Martyrs of Our Own Time. He and King, who was assassinated in 1968, are the only Americans on the list of 15 individual martyrs. Others honored in the chapel include Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Oscar Romero.

The Pilgrimage

Beginning in 1997, the Jonathan Myrick Daniels Pilgrimage has been held annually. At least 200 people – some years many more – come from around the United States to participate. It begins each year on the grounds of the Lowndes County Courthouse. The hundreds who gather walk first to the jail where the protesters were held and then continue to the site of the former store where Daniels was murdered. The procession returns for a celebration of the Holy Eucharist at the courthouse, where a place that represents the denial of justice is transformed into a place of worship. The judge’s bench becomes the altar, the choir sits in the jury box, and the podium from which an attorney normally addresses the court becomes a pulpit. The service includes the reading of the names of the Alabama Martyrs. Poster-size photographs of the 14 faces, a mix of Black and white, adults and children, are placed at the front of the courtroom. A somber hymn accompanies the procession of the dead.

Hayneville is sacred ground. Visiting such a sacred place and reflecting is a profoundly poignant and inspirational experience, enabling pilgrims to resolve, repent, and carry on the work of building the Beloved Community. Rarely does a person return unchanged.

Valerie Mitchell is Co-Chair of the Diocese’s Commission on Racial Justice and Reconciliation. In the next issue of the Coastline, the other Co-Chair, Joe McDaniel, will follow up with a reflection on why it remains important for us to honor Jonathan Myrick Daniels each year.

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For more details about the Jonathan Daniels and the Martyrs of Alabama Pilgrimage on August 9, 2025, visit https://www.dioala.org/jonathan-daniels-pilgrimage/