On the road with Jonathan Daniels

Fifty years ago today, Jonathan Daniels was shot and killed in Hayneville, Alabama.

Earlier that year, the young Episcopal seminarian was striding happily along the road from Selma to Montgomery. So was I. We didn’t know each other, and we didn’t see each other. But we shared that Alabama road and that commitment to justice—along with some 3,000 other activists, participating in what would become the most celebrated civil rights march in U.S. history.

After the march, I returned to Wisconsin to complete my college education. Daniels, who had just turned 26, also went back to his studies, at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But later that spring he returned to Alabama, joining in nonviolent protests and other actions in Lowndes County, despite warnings from local white segregationists to stay out.