Jonathan Myrick Daniels remembered with 50th anniversary pilgrimage, memorial at Washington National Cathedral

Jonathan Myrick Daniels was 26 when he stepped in front of a shotgun blast meant for a fellow civil rights worker, Ruby Sales, 50 years ago in Hayneville, Alabama.

That act, and Daniels’s summer of activism in Alabama, led the Episcopal Church to recognize him as a saint in 1991. An annual pilgrimage to Lowndes County is held in his honor.

Soon an eight-inch-high limestone carving of Daniels will be ready for viewing at the Human Rights Porch at the Washington National Cathedral,  putting Daniels in the company of Mother Teresa and Rosa Parks.