Political Quotes

“Madam President, this past weekend we saw a huge commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery voting rights march. I rise to honor the work and sacrifice of Jonathan Myrick Daniels. He was a young Episcopalian seminary student from Keene. The Presiding Officer certainly knows his name and Keene, as well. He was from Keene, NH, and he answered the call of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., for clergy to travel to Alabama to join him on that march. Jonathan lost his life 5 months later, in an act that Reverend King called ``one of the most heroic Christian deeds of which I have heard in my entire ministry.'' Although Jonathan had originally intended to spend a short time in the South and then return to his studies at the Episcopal theological school in Boston, he felt compelled by events to remain in Alabama through the spring and summer to register voters with the Episcopalian Society for Cultural and Racial Unity. On August 14, 1965, Jonathan was arrested along with a number of other civil rights activists at a demonstration in Fort Deposit, AL, a small town outside of Montgomery. They had gone there to protest segregation in the town's stores. But their demonstration was over within minutes. Armed white men from the town descended on them and took them to jail. Jonathan and his fellow activists spent 6 days in the Hayneville jail. Many in the group were still teenagers.…”