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From Consortium NewsFor those who engage in the common struggle for Justice, an invaluable grace comes from getting to know new friends similarly engaged -- and equally willing to speak with more than words.
Thus, it has been a great grace to get to know folks like Alice Walker personally as well as through her writings -- including some new ones. In one recent article, Alice addressed her reasons for joining the other 49 of us by putting her body on the line in sailing with "The Audacity of Hope," the U.S. boat to Gaza. She wrote:
"There is for me an awareness of paying off a debt to the Jewish civil rights activists who faced death to come to the side of black people in the South in our time of need. I am especially indebted to Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman who heard our calls for help -- our government then as now glacially slow in providing protection to non-violent protestors -- and came to stand with us.
"They got as far as the truncheons and bullets of a few "good ol' boys' of Neshoba County, Mississippi, and were beaten and shot to death along with James Cheney, a young black man with formidable courage who died with them. So even though our boat will be called "The Audacity of Hope,' it will fly the Goodman, Cheney, Schwerner flag in my own heart."
As for me, I will be flying in my own heart the flag of Jonathan Daniels, a Danforth Graduate Fellow of 1961, with whom my Fordham '61 college classmate Brian Daley, S.J., author Palmer Parker, and I spent a week of Danforth Fellow orientation on the shore of Lake Michigan in September 1961. Four years later, Jonathan was dead. Here's some of the rest of the story:
On Aug. 13, 1965, Jonathan Daniels, in a group of 29, went to picket whites-only stores in the small town of Fort Deposit, Alabama. All were arrested and taken to jail in the nearby town of Hayneville. Five juvenile protesters were released the next day. The rest of the group was held for six days; they refused to accept bail unless everyone was bailed.
Finally, on Aug. 20, the prisoners were released without transport back to Fort Deposit. After release, the group waited by a road near the jail. Jonathan with three others -- a white Catholic priest and two black protesters -- went down the street to get a cold soft drink at Varner's Grocery Store, one of the few local stores that would serve nonwhites.
They were met at the front by Tom L. Coleman, an engineer for the state highway department and unpaid special deputy, who wielded a shotgun. The man threatened the group, and finally leveled his gun at 16-year-old Ruby Sales. Daniels pushed Sales to the ground and caught the full blast of the gun. He was killed instantly.
The priest, Richard F. Morrisroe, grabbed the other protester and ran. Coleman shot Morrisroe, wounding him in the lower back. Coleman was subsequently acquitted of manslaughter charges by an all-white jury.
Richmond Flowers, Sr., the then-Attorney General of Alabama, described the verdict as representing the "democratic process going down the drain of irrationality, bigotry and improper law enforcement."
Coleman died at age 86 on June 13, 1997, without having faced any further prosecution.
Jonathan Daniels, my friend who died way too young, was no stranger to the South. He had lived in Kentucky and Arkansas as a child. More important, he was educated at Virginia Military Institute, a military college whose history and tradition were inextricably bound with those of the South. He ultimately won the highest tribute from his classmates by being elected valedictorian of his class.
As a Danforth Graduate Fellow, Jon first chose to attend Harvard University to study English literature, but had long felt a desire to enter parish ministry. After a year at Harvard, he was admitted to the Episcopal Theological School. His subsequent involvement with the civil rights movement followed as a logical extension of his beliefs and faith tradition.
His considerable knowledge of the South was an invaluable help to him and to those with whom he worked to bring some Justice down that way.
In a remarkable paper, which Jonathan wrote during his first stay in Selma, he addressed how our motives, as he put it, can be "healthy and free within the ambiguities and tilted structures of a truly fallen Creation." He added:
"I found very real, if ambiguous confirmation in that beloved community who ate and slept and cursed and prayed in the rain-soaked streets of the Negro "compound' in that first week in Selma."
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