← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · confederate_commando
Thread ID: 12877 | Posts: 7 | Started: 2004-03-25
2004-03-25 22:11 | User Profile
VMI arch named to 'honor' slain civil wrong outside agitator...( WONDER IF HE WAS GAY LIKE ANOTHER NH EPISCOPAL PRIEST OR JUST LIKED BROWN SUGAR??? )
[url]http://www.roanoke.com/roatimes/news/story164689.html[/url]
As an Episcopal priest, 1961 graduate Jonathan Daniels died while saving the life of a young black girl.
By Matt Chittum
There are four arched entries into Virginia Military Institute's historic, battle-scarred barracks. But only three of them bear names and serve as memorials to some of VMI's most revered: George Washington, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, and Gen. George Marshall.
Today, the fourth arch gets a name at last, that of an alumnus whose heroism was barely heard of at VMI until a dozen years ago.
Taking his place among those who played on the largest American stage is Jonathan Daniels, class of 1961, who gave his life to save a black girl in the sights of an Alabama deputy's shotgun during the civil rights movement.
The arch will be dedicated at 11 a.m. today and puts Daniels among VMI's greatest heroes, almost all of whom carried a military title and distinguished themselves in battle.
"It puts him in pretty elite company when you think about the other three arches," said Mike Strickler, the executive assistant to VMI's superintendent. "I think he would be every bit considered the citizen soldier, except what he did was in the area of human rights and not on the battlefield."
Daniels' uniform was that of an Episcopal priest.
After graduating as the elected valedictorian, the Keene, N.H., native entered the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. But he soon felt the pull of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s call to head south in the cause for equal voting rights for blacks.
He joined in the famous march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., and then decided to stay in Alabama working for the cause. One day, after being released from jail following a protest in Hayneville, Ala., Daniels and another clergyman, Richard Morrissoe, went with two teenagers to nearby Cash's Store for a soda. As they tried to enter the store, they were confronted by Tom Coleman, a 55-year-old part-time sheriff's deputy with a shotgun. Coleman leveled his shotgun and told the group to leave.
As Daniels, 26, shoved 13-year-old Ruby Sales out of the line of fire, Coleman pulled the trigger. The blast hit Daniels in the stomach, killing him instantly. Morrissoe also was hit, but survived and spent six months in the hospital.
On hearing of Daniels' death, King called it "one of the most heroic Christian deeds of which I have heard in my entire ministry."
Coleman was charged with manslaughter but was acquitted by an all-white jury.
Daniels' deed is recognized in England's Canterbury Cathedral, where he's one of only two American modern martyrs. The other is King.
But until 1992, Daniels' act was almost unknown around VMI. Then VMI's black student organization, the Promaji Club, created a Jonathan Daniels award for civil rights work and gave it to Salem's Cabell Brand, a 1944 VMI alumnus. Since then, VMI has turned the Daniels award into a major humanitarian award, first received by former President Jimmy Carter.
The idea for naming the arch for Daniels began two years ago at the suggestion of VMI Commandant Eric Hutchings.
The Washington Arch got its name mainly for being opposite a statue of George Washington. The Jackson Arch was dedicated to the fallen Confederate general and ex-VMI professor in 1896. The Marshall Arch was dedicated in 1951, named for VMI's most prestigious alumnus, the author of the Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe after World War II.
One of the reasons the recognition for Daniels is striking is that VMI refused to admit blacks until three years after his death, and it continues to revere not only Jackson, but also 10 cadets who died in the service of the Confederacy at the battle of New Market.
But VMI historian Keith Gibson said VMI remembers those Civil War figures "for what they represent in terms of character and duty and service," independent of the cause they served. "These examples of duty and sacrifice, we remember them and we draw strength from them." For Jackson, the Civil War was not about slavery anyway, Gibson said. Although Jackson owned slaves, he struggled with the moral and religious questions surrounding the oppression of blacks.
Brand, a longtime proponent of the Daniels legacy, said on race issues "VMI has really done a real about-face ... I really am proud of VMI for doing what they've done."
Brand will attend today's ceremony along with Sales, the girl Daniels saved, Morrissoe, the other injured clergyman, and others.
A large brass plaque over the arch and courtyard will proclaim the words of Daniels' valedictory address: "I wish you the decency and the nobility of which you are capable."
:angry:
2004-03-25 22:44 | User Profile
This is treason, Commando. What about the other VMI graduates who took enemy bullets in various battles in CSA and USA wars? Where are their arches? I' m sure many had more heroic deaths than this guy. I wonder what this black girl did with her life afterward? She is mentioned as being there but are strangely silent about what she has done with her life since then. The Alabama deputy probaly had a good reason for shotting her. Where is his side of the story?
2004-03-25 23:26 | User Profile
How come when children are employed as combatants against Israeli/"American" imperialism--in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, etc, etc--the Roanoke Times of the world rant about "cowards" and that the children killed by the mercenaries are regrettable "collateral damage."
Yet, when White Civilization fights for self-determination against anarchists who shamelessly employ juveniles, the White man is an "evil hater"???
You would need an IQ on the level of a VMI "student" to believe a Yankee Episcopalian priest and a niglet just happened to be hop-scotching along an Alabama sidewalk when an Evil White Manî with a shotgun came murderously roaring from the bushes with murder in his eyes. (Wait, I thought White Men were limp-wristed "metrosexuals," ala our god TV?)
For all I know, this Daniels guy was kidnapping the little black girl for some sort of beastiality/pedophilia action. Think that's crazy? Which sounds more plausible: that or the story as told by the Roanoke Times?
In all cases, the government/media side brings with it chaos and death in the guise of "freedom and democracy" -- and then blames its blunders on its victims.
2004-03-26 00:52 | User Profile
[url]http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0211&article=021121[/url]
Here is Ruby Sales today.
[IMG]http://forums.originaldissent.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=69&stc=1[/IMG]
Long Train Runnin'
It was one of those hot and sticky August days in Lowndes County, Alabama. Ruby Sales, a 17-year-old student from the Tuskegee Institute, had just been released from six days in the county jail for joining a picket line against three businesses that would not serve African Americans. It was 1965.
"We were hot. We were thirsty. Someone decided that Jonathan Daniels, Father Richard Morrisroe, Joyce Bailey, and myself should go and get the sodas for the group," said Sales in an interview with civil rights historian Vincent Harding. As they approached the door of the little corner store, Deputy Sheriff Tom Coleman met them with a shotgun. Ruby was nearest Coleman. Jonathan Daniels, a white seminary student from New Hampshire, was behind her. Coleman threatened Sales, "I'll blow your brains out." Daniels grabbed Sales, shoving her aside. "The next thing I know there was a shotgun blast and then another shotgun blast." Twenty-six-year-old Jonathan Daniels lay in the dust, dead.
Six weeks after the shooting, an all-white jury found Coleman not guilty of murder. Daniels' death prompted Martin Luther King Jr. to comment, "One of the most heroic Christian deeds of which I have heard in my entire ministry and career for civil rights was performed by Jonathan Daniels."
"Make no bones about it, Jonathan made a choice to push me aside," says Sales in the civil rights documentary series Veterans of Hope. "It was a hard moment in my life, but I knew that somehow I was going to speak up for Jonathan because he couldn't speak up for himself." [B]Ruby Sales continued her work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and, in 1998, she completed her master's degree from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusettsââ¬âJonathan Daniels' alma mater.
TODAY SHE IS director of a national organization that uses arts, education, research, spiritual reflection, and action as tools for supporting diverse communities in their nonviolent struggle for justice. It's called SpiritHouse, and it's operated out of a storefront near the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C.
"A great part of our work at SpiritHouse is based in a progression towards justice called ââ¬Ëcommunity formation.' Principally, we work with new visions that come out of the model of leadership that grew out of SNCC and in the black community of the South," says Sales. "It says that communities form their leaders, that leaders are grown and nurtured out of the body of the community, and that there has to be a connection between the leader's individual ambition and the community's need. Community agendas are not decided at board meetings and retreats. They come directly out of a marriage between leaders and their communities, because basically their destinies are intertwined." The official name of Ruby Sales' SpiritHouse project is the Jonathan Daniels and Samuel Younge Forum for Social Justice. [/B] "Jonathan Daniels saved my life and Samuel Younge was a classmate of mine, a Tuskegee student, and a leader in SNCC," recalls Sales. Following an argument over segregated restrooms, a white gas station owner murdered Samuel Leamon Younge Jr. on January 3, 1966. He was the fifth civil rights worker to be killed in Alabama in 12 months. "The loss of Younge was so tremendous," says Sales, "that [SNCC chairman] Jim Forman notes that something happened to the spirit of the movement when Samuel was killed."
"I have been disturbed over the years that Samuel's name is rarely called," says Sales. "It's important for young people to call his name, to remember names like Samuel's, because it gives them a particular kind of hope. And Jonathan's story, of course, gives young white people hope. On a larger level his story can give us all hope, no matter who you are."
SpiritHouse is currently engaged in a massive education campaign in churches and college campuses on the USA Patriot Actââ¬âa bill passed by Congress six weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Supporters view this bill as a way of providing the president and law enforcement the necessary tools for stopping future acts of terrorism. Critics see it as a backlash to tragedy that gravely endangers the Bill of Rights. "We are looking into issues like the effect of the Patriot Act on academic freedom, because we feel the act is being used to silence dissent in academia for those groups with a pro-peace stance," says Sales. SpiritHouse is also researching the connections between the "warehousing" of African-American and Latino men in prisons and the "detaining" of other men of colorââ¬âprimarily of Middle Eastern descentââ¬âin the wake of Sept. 11.
Ruby Sales carries herself like an African sunrise coming up over the land full of power and light. "I ask myself now how one does work in the world with any moral authority when you're past 50 years old," she says. "It's hard when we think of youth as having the vitality to mount the demonstrations. Well, we need to rethink that whole vision. There is something advantageous and important about people over 50, with gray hair, confronting the system. It's harder to beat people with gray hair. I mean visually it creates greater dissonance in the body of the community to see grandmothers get beat up."
She smiles and lifts an unconscious finger to the stormy gray threaded through her own cornrows. "I have this vision of a vanguard of people marchingââ¬âall over 50ââ¬âproving that we're not dead yet. I say we take our blood pressure pills and get out there. We still are a part of the great callingââ¬âthe work isn't over until we close our eyes and die."
Rose Marie Berger is an associate editor of Sojourners.
2004-03-30 04:51 | User Profile
This is perfect. VMI died when it was forced to admit negro cadets. I observed this first hand. I was there as a Keydet. Woymns followed 26 years later as night follows the day. I think that Dabney guy wrote about this. The Arch Really is being named for Goddess Egalate, the god of our age. Down with the Trinity and up with monism. I think Hillary Clinton wrote about this. Egalatarianism is the new Baal worship.
For Kith and Kin, Brother Rat
Rev.3:2 Wake up! Save what is left. That which is about to die Daniel 3:17-18 ...BUT IF NOT...
2004-03-30 05:49 | User Profile
Brother --
Ya knows dat some place be messed-up when dey let in da wimmin-folk and de Black-folk. 'Course, who invented and pushed all of dem ideas? Da JudenRodent.
2004-03-30 06:14 | User Profile
Thanks for posting the photo of that dull-witted Negress. Now even Viagra won't be able to help me. Hell, a weaker man than I might have been turned gay....