Jonathan Myrick Daniels, seminarian and martyr

I've been reminded a couple of times this month of Jonathan Myrick Daniels, seminarian and martyr, whose day of commemoration on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church is Aug. 14, the day of his arrest. For those with short memories, here's his entry in the Episcopal Dictionary of the Church:

(Mar. 20, 1939-Aug. 20, 1965). An Episcopal seminarian killed while working in the civil rights movement in Hayneville, near Selma, Alabama. Daniels was born in Keene, New Hampshire. He had a profound conversion experience on Easter Day, 1962, at the Church of the Advent, Boston. He entered the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In March 1965 Martin Luther King, Jr. made a televised appeal for people to come to Selma to seek voting rights for all citizens. King's appeal persuaded Daniels to work in Selma under the sponsorship of the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity (ESCRU). Daniels and three companions were arrested and imprisoned on Aug. 14, 1965, for joining a picket line. They were unexpectedly released six days later. They walked to a small store. As Ruby Sales, a sixteen-year-old African American woman, approached the entrance of the store, a deputy sheriff appeared with a shotgun and cursed her. Daniels pulled her to one side and was killed by a single blast from the shotgun. His life and witness are commemorated in the Episcopal calendar of the church year on Aug. 14.

Daniels' killer, Tom L. Coleman, was indicted on a charge of manslaughter, claimed self-defense (no one else was armed) and was acquitted by an all-white jury --- par for the course in Alabama at the time. Coleman kept his job with the state and lived without further prosecution until death during 1997 at the age of 86.

The collect for Aug. 14 reads as follows: 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.

It's a prayer --- and call to action --- as relevant now as it was then.