American Episcopal seminarian and civil rights activist
Jonathan Myrick Daniels was an Episcopal seminarian and civil rights activist. In 1965, he was killed by Tom Coleman, a highway worker and part-time deputy sheriff, in Hayneville, Alabama, while in the act of shielding 17-year-old Ruby Sales from a racist attack. He saved the life of the young Black civil rights activist. They were both working in the nonviolent civil rights movement in Lowndes County to integrate public places and register Black voters after passage of the Voting Rights Act that summer. Daniels' death generated further support for the civil rights movement.
