Jonathan Daniels, Civil Rights Hero

Jonathan M. Daniels, a native of Keene, New Hampshire, was valedictorian of the VMI Class of 1961. While a seminarian at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts he responded to the pleas of Dr. Martin Luther King for clergy to become more actively involved in the Civil Rights movement and traveled to Alabama to assist with voter registration efforts in the South. He and others were attacked and Daniels was murdered while shielding a young black girl from a shotgun blast.  When he heard of the tragedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "One of the most heroic Christian deeds of which I have heard in my entire ministry was performed by Jonathan Daniels." Many of these photos were taken just weeks before his death.

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