25th Annual Jonathan Daniels Pilgrimage

By Amy Hastings

August 13 – Hayneville, Alabama

Jonathan Daniels

Varner’s Cash Store

Alabama has a number of sacred spaces, many of them connected with the civil rights movement. For Episcopalians, perhaps the most significant is at Hayneville in Lowndes County, where seminarian Jonathan Myrick Daniels was martyred in August of 1965.

Jonathan Daniels grew up in Keene, NH, and is one of only two American martyrs commemorated by a monument at Canterbury Cathedral in England. The other is Martin Luther King, Jr. Begun 25 years ago, the Jonathan Daniels pilgrimage also honors the Martyrs of Alabama and continues to serve as a reminder that the equality for which he and they gave their lives is an ongoing sacrifice.

The 2022 pilgrimage will take place on Saturday, August 13th,, the first in-person pilgrimage since the pandemic began.  The commemoration begins with a walk from the Lowndes County courthouse to the jail and then to the site of the cash store, where Jonathan was shot point blank, and then back to the courthouse, where his murderer was later found not guilty by an all-white jury. A Eucharist follows in the courthouse with the judge’s bench transformed into an altar. More information, including a video of the 2015 pilgrimage, 50 years after Daniels was murdered, may be found at jonathandaniels | Episcopal Diocese of Alabama (dioala.org).

A working group of our Diocese is planning a special pilgrimage to Alabama this summer that will include participation in the Jonathan Daniels pilgrimage. Tentative dates are Thursday, August 11-Monday, August 15. Amy Hastings and Larry Yarbrough are assisting this working group and will help to coordinate the program, which is expected to include visits to The Legacy Museum, The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, among other sights, as well as worship at Church of the Good Shepherd, an African American Episcopal congregation. More information about this Diocesan pilgrimage will be coming soon in THE MOUNTAIN.