This month marks 60 years since Episcopal seminarian Jonathan Myrick Daniels was killed while trying to protect a Black teenager from gunfire during the Civil Rights Movement. Remembering Daniels and his sacrifice has become a focal point of the Diocese of Alabama’s racial justice efforts, and over the weekend, former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry joined the diocese’s annual pilgrimage honoring Daniels.

“We remember the martyrs and Jonathan [Daniels] … what they stood for in our lives and to help change this world,” Curry told hundreds of pilgrims Aug. 9 while preaching inside the Lowndes County Courthouse in Hayneville, Alabama.

Systemic racism today is commonly understood as the often unacknowledged and historically rooted bias and discrimination found in the U.S. criminal justice system, employment, housing, education access, health care and other areas. During the 20th century, activists like Daniels fought against the legacy of racism in those systems and for basic liberties like Black Americans’ right to vote.

“No question, [civil rights] is a long-distance run—it’s a marathon,” Curry said during a press conference ahead of the Alabama pilgrimage.

Since 1998, the Birmingham-based diocese has honored Daniels and the 13 other known Alabama martyrs by organizing an annual pilgrimage to Hayneville with support from the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast, which includes the southern half of Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. The pilgrimage usually takes place on or around Daniels’ Episcopal feast day, Aug. 14. More than 300 Episcopalians and civil rights activists registered to take part in this year’s pilgrimage, including Episcopal clergy, seminarians and lay people, as well as civil rights activists.

Daniels was a white seminarian at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts—today the New York City-based Episcopal Divinity School—who hailed from Keene, New Hampshire. On Aug. 20, 1965, he was shot and killed by Tom Coleman, a white part-time special deputy sheriff, while Daniels was trying to protect Ruby Sales, a Black teenage civil rights activist, from gunfire. He was 26 years old.

“Jonathan Daniels gave his life to protect another person, but he really, like all of the martyrs in our history, was someone who gave his life for the cause of others to make our nation truly reflect the founding ideals … a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men—all people—are created equal,” Curry said during the press conference.

The evening before the pilgrimage, on Aug. 8, a group of youth pilgrims gathered at Episcopal Church of the Ascension in Montgomery for fellowship and to learn more about the Civil Rights Movement.

Episcopal Divinity School also hosted the livestreamed “Walk With Me” vigil at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Montgomery. The Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, canon theologian of Washington National Cathedral, and Ashley M. Jones, Alabama’s poet laureate, spoke during the vigil, which honored Daniels and other martyrs who were killed in Alabama during the Civil Rights Movement.
“Jonathan Daniels wasn’t afraid of failure. He failed forward, towards the cross,” Douglas said during the vigil.

Daniels was actively involved in civil rights work while in seminary. In the days before his death, while attending the ninth annual Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Birmingham, he met Richard Morrisroe, a white Catholic priest who had marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Chicago, Illinois, and Selma, Alabama. After the conference, on Aug. 14, Daniels and Morrisroe joined a group of protesters in Fort Deposit, Alabama, to picket whites-only stores. All of the protesters were arrested and jailed in Hayneville.

When they were released from jail on Aug. 20, Daniels and Morrisroe accompanied two Black teenage protesters, Sales and Joyce Bailey, to nearby Varner’s Cash Store to purchase beverages. As they neared the store, Coleman blocked the doorway and attempted to shoot the teenagers. Daniels shielded Sales from Coleman’s shotgun blast, taking the fatal blow himself. Morrisroe grabbed Bailey and they ran off together. Morrisroe was shot in the back but survived.

Like previous years, this year’s pilgrimage began with prayer at the Lowndes County Courthouse square before the pilgrims marched to the old county jail where Daniels was detained. The procession continued to the site of the old Varner’s Cash Store site—now an insurance agency office—and ended back at the courthouse, where an all-white jury had tried and acquitted Coleman of manslaughter charges. The pilgrims sang, prayed and reflected throughout the march. Some people read passages from scripture and Charles W. Eagles’ book, “Outside Agitator: Jon Daniels and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama.”

While in front of the site of the old Varner’s Cash Store—where a memorial marker detailing Daniels’ martyrdom now stands—the pilgrims were invited to kneel while praying and reflecting.

Many of the pilgrims entered the courthouse for worship, while others watched a livestream of the service from outside. Curry preached and celebrated. Alabama Bishop Glenda S. Curry and Central Gulf Coast Bishop Russell Kendrick assisted. During the service, several of the youth pilgrims sat in front of the pews holding large posters with photos and names of the 14 martyrs; they stood during a reading of the martyrs’ names.

The offering received during the service was designated to support the Lowndes County Board of Education Scholarship Fund, which provides scholarship opportunities to graduating students at Lowndes County High School.

Also during the service, Lowndes County District Judge Adrian Johnson welcomed the pilgrims, acknowledging that “this is the site of many injustices.” He noted that most Hayneville residents today are Black, and juries today reflect the demographics.

“But it was only because of the struggles—the efforts of those who had to persevere,” Johnson said. “I hope the experience that you have taken away from here, you take back to your community and understand that … we love one another.”

Michael Curry and Glenda Curry both said Episcopalians need to continue to advocate for civil rights and systemic change in their communities, continuing Daniels’ legacy.

“If all of us could follow [Daniels’] example, maybe we would follow Jesus and then follow something life-giving and then find on the other side of it work we never thought about doing,” Glenda Curry said.