Integrity Alabama Members
Pilgrimage to grave of
Jonathan Myrick Daniels

According to “The Jon Daniels Story”, ed. William J Schneider (Morehouse, 1992, originally published in 1967):

 “August Jon and others went to the town of Fort Deposit to join in picketing three local businesses. On Saturday they were arrested and held in the county jail in Hayneville for six days until they were bailed out.  They had agreed that none would accept bail until there was bail money for all. (According to Carolyn Oppenborn, a Birmingham-based scholar of Daniels researching "Outside Agitator" by Charles W. Eagles, bail was not posted for Daniels and others protesting Fort Deposit stores that would not sell to African Americans.  Authorities released Daniels and company unexpectedly because attorneys in Fort Deposit recommended the six be "quietly released" without bail.)

“After their release on Friday 20 August, four of them undertook to enter a local shop, and were met at the door by a man with a shotgun who told them to leave or be shot.

“After a brief confrontation, the man aimed the gun at a young girl in the party, and Jon pushed her out of the way and took the blast of the shotgun himself. (Whether he stepped between her and the shotgun is not clear.)

“He was killed instantly.”

Daniels was buried amid extensive media coverage in the town of his birth, Keene, New Hampshire.

One day after church history was made in the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire with the consecration of V. Gene Robinson as bishop, three members of Integrity Alabama paid homage to Jonathan Myrick Daniels.

Daniels, an Episcopal seminarian, felt a call of God to join like-minded people of faith who felt a need to minister directly to those embroiled within the social justice struggle of Selma, Alabama.  He was killed in 1965.

Integrity Alabama members David Gary, Brad LaMonte and the Rev. Dr. Ruth LaMonte traveled by winding highway through colonial villages of southern New Hampshire to visit Daniels’ gravesite in Keene, New Hampshire.

Daniels was buried amid extensive media coverage in the town of his birth, a university community where Dr. Phillip B. Daniels settled his family.

Several stones, marking pilgrimage, were placed on top of the granite monument marking the Daniels’ family plot in the Monadnock View Cemetery.  Daniels is considered by many to be a “martyr of the faith” from the American civil rights struggle in Alabama.

Dr. and Mrs. Phillip B. Daniels are buried with their son Jonathan Myrick who is considered by many to be a "martyr of the faith" from the American civil rights struggle in Alabama.

For the past four years, the Diocese of Alabama and Central Gulf Coast have jointly sponsored August pilgrimages to Hayneville, the month of Daniels’ death.

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O God of justice and compassion, you put down the proud and mighty from their place, and lift up the poor and the afflicted: we give you thanks for your faithful witness Jonathan Myrick Daniels, who, in the midst of injustice and violence, risked and gave his life for another; and we pray that we, following his example, may make no peace with oppression; through Jesus Christ the just one, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.