The 15th annual pilgrimage honoring slain civil rights advocate and Episcopal seminarian Jonathan Myrick Daniels and others who lost their lives during the 1960s movement will take place in Hayneville, Ala., Saturday, Aug. 10, 2013 at 11:00 a.m. A special chartered bus, limited to 54 passengers, will be provided for anyone throughout the Diocese who would like to attend. The cost is $20 per person. The bus will leave at 8:30 a.m. on Aug. 10th from St. Simon’s on the Sound Church in Fort Walton Beach, Florida (28 Miracle Strip Parkway SW), and return around 5:30 p.m. that evening. Reservations can be made by contacting the St. Simon’s church office at 850-244-8621, or email Fr. Mark Fitzhugh at [email protected]. The Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast Commission on Peace and Justice/Racial Reconciliation and St. Simon’s Church is pleased to help sponsor this year’s special bus trip. The pilgrimage begins at the Courthouse Square in Hayneville at 11:00 a.m. The procession will go to the old county jail where Daniels and others were detained for a week and then will move to the old Cash Grocery Store where Daniels was killed. The procession will return to the Courthouse Square for a prayer at a memorial erected in his honor by his alma mater, the Virginia Military Institute. The pilgrimage will end at the Courthouse where a service of Holy Communion will take place in the courtroom where the man who killed Daniels was tried and acquitted. Human rights advocate Dr. Gloria Larry House will be the featured speaker. She worked with Daniels in Selma and Lowndes County in 1965 as a field secretary in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She spent a week in the Hayneville Jail with Daniels and others following their arrest for participating in a voter registration demonstration in Ft. Deposit. She was nearby when Daniels was killed while shielding 16-year old Ruby Sales from a shotgun blast as she tried to enter a store to buy a soft drink. “Just as we turned toward the store we heard gunfire,” she recalled in an interview posted recently on YouTube. “We realized that Jonathan had been shot. And the rest of us simply fell to the ground because we didn’t know what else to do. And we thought we were all going to be killed.” Today, House is a professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. She is an author and poet. She is the recipient of many awards for her work as a civil and human rights advocate, including the Edward Said Scholar/Activist Award of the Michigan Peace Team, the Harriet Tubman Award of the Michigan Chapter of National Organization of Women and the Civil Rights Award of the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights. The old Hayneville Jail where House, Daniels and others were held will be open to visitors throughout the morning. Locally prepared lunch will be available for purchase at the courthouse following the service. After lunch there will be an opportunity to visit the National Park Service Lowndes County Interpretive Center, on U.S. Highway 80, between Selma and Montgomery. The museum is situated near the mid-point along the route of the historic March 1965 civil rights march to the Alabama State Capitol.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 22:22:09 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015