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August 14. Jonathan Myrick Daniels (March 20, 1939 – August 20, 1965) was an Episcopal seminarian and civil rights activist. In 1965, he was killed by Tom Coleman, a highway worker and part-time deputy sheriff, in Hayneville, Alabama, while in the act of shielding 17-year-old Ruby Sales from a racist attack. [1]
On August 20, 1965, Jonathan Daniels and several other civil rights activists wanted to buy a coke after getting out of jail. A few minutes later, the 26-year-old Episcopal seminary student lay dead in Alabama, having stepped in front of a shotgun blast intended for a fellow activist, Ruby Sales.
It was the beginning of the last six days of Jonathan Daniels’ life, most of which would be spent in a squalid county jail and which would end with the 26-year-old dying from a shotgun blast as he saved the life of another. He would become the 26th civil rights worker to be murdered.
The murder of Medgar Evers. The Bloody Sunday at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. This year marks a half century since a killing that hits closer to home. Jonathan Daniels, a native of...
Fifty years ago today, August 20, 1965, Jonathan Daniels was killed in Alabama. He was shot while saving the life of a young black activist. Melanie Peeples brings us a remembrance of this...
This Day in History. Aug. 20, 1965: Jonathan Daniels Killed. Time Periods: 1961. Themes: Civil Rights Movements. Jonathan Daniels, fellow seminarian Judith Upham, and a fellow activist. Source: Virginia Military Institute.
He was indicted for manslaughter in September 1965, a decision that reportedly enraged Alabama’s then-attorney general, Richmond Flowers, who felt the charge should have been murder.
