Jonathan Daniels Tells of the Black Belt

The following excerpts come from an article written by Jonathan Daniels, a white civil rights worker killed in Hayneville, Ala., In August. He wrote the article for the Episcopal Theological Seminary Journal in April, while he was living in Selma. He had come to Selma briefly during the march, returned to school and several weeks later, came back to work in Selma with a fellow student, Judith Upham.

The article was reproduced by the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity, for which Daniels worked. These excerpts and the accompanying photographs appeared in the "Southern Courier" last month and are published here with permission.

SELMA, Ala.--Reality is kaleidoscopic in the black belt. Now you see it; now you don't. The view is never the same. Climate is an affair of the soul as well as the body: today the sun sears the earth, and a man goes limp in its scorching. Tomorrow and yesterday sullen rain chills bones and floods unpaved streets. Fire and ice... the advantages of both may be obtained with ease in the black belt. Light, dark, white, black: a way of life blurs, and the focus shifts.

Black, white, black...a rhythm ripples in the sun, pounds in steaming, stinking shacks, dances in the blood. Reality is kaleidoscopic in the black belt. Sometimes one's vision changes with it. A crooked man climbed a crooked tree on a crooked hill. Somewhere, in the midst of the past, a tenor sang of valleys lifted up and hills made low. Death at the heart of life, and life in the midst of death. The tree of life is indeed a Cross.

Back in the south

Darkly, incredibly the interstate highway that was knifed through Virginia and the Carolinas Incongruously, we came upon an all night truck stop, mid-way to nowhere. There appeared to be no sign over the door, and I went to get coffee to go. Too late, I discovered that hatred hadn't advertised--perhaps the sign had blown off in a storm. When I ordered the coffee, all the other voices stopped. I turned from cold stares and fixed my gaze on a sign over the counter. "ALL (While in Selma, Daniels worshipped at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, a white church. He often brought Negroes with him on Sunday, and was not popular with the white members of the congregation.)

... We had parked the car at the Church. The rector had not been there, so we had strolled a block or two to the office of an attorney whom he had met at St. Paul's and encountered several times since. This time our visit was more cordial. We had given him and his wife a copy of "My people is the Earth" for Easter, and I think they were deeply touched. This time he was less suspicious, less defensive, less insistent that we get the hell out of town." We had talked this time of the Gospel, of what a white moderate could do when he discovered that the White Citizen's Council wasn't all powerful, of certain changes in the school system that the grapevine said might be forthcoming.

We left his office in a spirit of something very much like friendship. Something having to do with human hearts, something like the faith of the Church had been explored and shared with a white man in the black belt. We gave thanks to the One Whom we had besought as we stepped across the threshold of his office, and quietly savored the Glory of God as we strolled back to the car.

We stopped for a light, and a man got out of his car and approached us. He was dressed in a business suit and looked respectable--this was not a redneck, so we could relax. He stopped in front of us, inspecting us from head to toe. His eyes paused for a moment at our ESCRU buttons and the collar. Then he spoke, very quietly.

"Are you the scum that's been going to the Episcopal Church?" With a single voice we answered, "The scum, sir?" "Scum," he returned, "S-C-U-M. That's what you are--you and the nigger trash you bring with you."

We replied as gently as we could, "We can spell sir. We're sorry you feel that way." He turned contemptuously on his heel, and we crossed our street sadly.

Yet it was funny--riotously, hilariously, hideously funny! We laughed all the way back home--at the man, at his cruelty, at his stupidity, at our cleverness, at the success with which we had suavely maintained the "Christian posture." And then, though we have not talked about it, we both felt a little dirty. Maybe the Incarnate God was truly present in that man's need and asking us for something better than a smirk. (I started to say "More truly human than a smirk..." but I don't know about that. We are beginning to believe deeply in original sin: theirs and ours.)

An Episcopalian and a racist

The judge, an Episcopalian and a racist, waited for us to finish a nervous introduction. We had encountered him only too often in his capacity as head usher, and we knew our man. Now that we sat in his elegantly appointed office in the Dalias County Courthouse, we were terrified. We knew what this man could do, and what we had not seen ourselves we had heard from our friends among the high school kids. We concluded with something more or less coherent about the situation in St. Paul's.

He began, "You, Jonathan and Judy, will always be welcome in St. Paul's." We smiled appreciatively. "But," he continued, "the nigger trash you bring with you will never be accepted in St. Paul's."

We thought for an instant about the beautiful kids we take with us every Sunday. Especially about Helen, the eldest daughter in the first family who had opened their home and hearts to us, a lovely, gentle, gracious girl who planned to enter nurse's training when she is graduated from high school this June. She must be one of the sweetest, prettiest girls in creation. Then anger rose in us--a feeling akin, I suppose, to the feeling of a white man for the sanctity of southern womanhood. Helen, trash? We should have left his office then, for we were no longer free men....

(For most of his time in Selma, Daniels lived with a Negro family.)

... When we moved in with our present family, we knew where Bunnie's mother stood. A few nights before she had told us politely, but emphatically that she didn't like white people--any white people. She knew from countless experiences that they couldn't be trusted. Until very recently, she would not have allowed white people to stay in her home. Though saddened, we were grateful for her honesty and told her so. We also told her that though we would understand if she didn't believe us, we had begun to love her and her family deeply. By the night we moved in, her reserve had almost disappeared. She was wonderfully hospitable to us, notwithstanding the suspicion she must still have felt.

We spent an evening with...(them) at the Elks Club. Late in the evening a black nationalist approached her. "What are you doing here with them?" he asked; "They're white people."

Much to our surprise and perhaps a little to her own, she answered; "Jon and Judy are my friends. They're staying in my home. I'll pick my own friends, and nobody'll tell me otherwise." The name for that...is miracle....

Moments of joy, moments of sorrow

This is the stuff of which our life's made. There are moments of joy and moments of sorrow. Almost imperceptibly, some men grow in grace. Some men don't...

... There are good men here, just as there are bad men. There are competent leaders and a bungler here and there. We have activists who risk their lives to confront a people with the challenge of freedom and a nation with its conscience. We have neutralists who cautiously seek to calm troubled waters. We have the men about the work of reconciliation who are willing to reflect upon the cost and pay it.

Perhaps at one time or another, the two of us are all of those. Sometimes we take to the streets, sometimes we yawn through interminable meetings, sometimes we talk with white men in their homes and offices...Sometimes we confront the posse, and sometimes we hold a child. Sometimes we stand with men who have learned to hate and sometimes we must stand a little apart from them.

Our lives in Selma are filled with ambiguity, and in that we share with men everywhere. We are beginning to see the world as we never saw it before. We are truly in the world, and yet ultimately not of it. For through the bramble bush of doubt and fear and supposed success we are grouping our way to the realization that above all else, we are called to be saints. That is the mission the Church everywhere. And in this, Selma, Alabama is like all the world: it needs the life and witness of militant Saints!

... We had parked the car at the Church. The rector had not been there, so we had strolled a block or two to the office of an attorney whom he had met at St. Paul's and encountered several times since. This time our visit was more cordial. We had given him and his wife a copy of "My people is the Earth" for Easter, and I think they were deeply touched. This time he was less suspicious, less defensive, less insistent that we get the hell out of town." We had talked this time of the Gospel, of what a white moderate could do when he discovered that the White Citizen's Council wasn't all powerful, of certain changes in the school system that the grapevine said might be forthcoming.

We left his office in a spirit of something very much like friendship. Something having to do with human hearts, something like the faith of the Church had been explored and shared with a white man in the black belt. We gave thanks to the One Whom we had besought as we stepped across the threshold of his office, and quietly savored the Glory of God as we strolled back to the car.

We stopped for a light, and a man got out of his car and approached us. He was dressed in a business suit and looked respectable--this was not a redneck, so we could relax. He stopped in front of us, inspecting us from head to toe. His eyes paused for a moment at our ESCRU buttons and the collar. Then he spoke, very quietly.

"Are you the scum that's been going to the Episcopal Church?" With a single voice we answered, "The scum, sir?" "Scum," he returned, "S-C-U-M. That's what you are--you and the nigger trash you bring with you."

We replied as gently as we could, "We can spell sir. We're sorry you feel that way." He turned contemptuously on his heel, and we crossed our street sadly.

Yet it was funny--riotously, hilariously, hideously funny! We laughed all the way back home--at the man, at his cruelty, at his stupidity, at our cleverness, at the success with which we had suavely maintained the "Christian posture." And then, though we have not talked about it, we both felt a little dirty. Maybe the Incarnate God was truly present in that man's need and asking us for something better than a smirk. (I started to say "More truly human than a smirk..." but I don't know about that. We are beginning to believe deeply in original sin: theirs and ours.)

An Episcopalian and a racist

The judge, an Episcopalian and a racist, waited for us to finish a nervous introduction. We had encountered him only too often in his capacity as head usher, and we knew our man. Now that we sat in his elegantly appointed office in the Dalias County Courthouse, we were terrified. We knew what this man could do, and what we had not seen ourselves we had heard from our friends among the high school kids. We concluded with something more or less coherent about the situation in St. Paul's.

He began, "You, Jonathan and Judy, will always be welcome in St. Paul's." We smiled appreciatively. "But," he continued, "the nigger trash you bring with you will never be accepted in St. Paul's."

We thought for an instant about the beautiful kids we take with us every Sunday. Especially about Helen, the eldest daughter in the first family who had opened their home and hearts to us, a lovely, gentle, gracious girl who planned to enter nurse's training when she is graduated from high school this June. She must be one of the sweetest, prettiest girls in creation. Then anger rose in us--a feeling akin, I suppose, to the feeling of a white man for the sanctity of southern womanhood. Helen, trash? We should have left his office then, for we were no longer free men....

(For most of his time in Selma, Daniels lived with a Negro family.)

... When we moved in with our present family, we knew where Bunnie's mother stood. A few nights before she had told us politely, but emphatically that she didn't like white people--any white people. She knew from countless experiences that they couldn't be trusted. Until very recently, she would not have allowed white people to stay in her home. Though saddened, we were grateful for her honesty and told her so. We also told her that though we would understand if she didn't believe us, we had begun to love her and her family deeply. By the night we moved in, her reserve had almost disappeared. She was wonderfully hospitable to us, notwithstanding the suspicion she must still have felt.

We spent an evening with...(them) at the Elks Club. Late in the evening a black nationalist approached her. "What are you doing here with them?" he asked; "They're white people."

Much to our surprise and perhaps a little to her own, she answered; "Jon and Judy are my friends. They're staying in my home. I'll pick my own friends, and nobody'll tell me otherwise." The name for that...is miracle....

Moments of joy, moments of sorrow

This is the stuff of which our life's made. There are moments of joy and moments of sorrow. Almost imperceptibly, some men grow in grace. Some men don't...

... There are good men here, just as there are bad men. There are competent leaders and a bungler here and there. We have activists who risk their lives to confront a people with the challenge of freedom and a nation with its conscience. We have neutralists who cautiously seek to calm troubled waters. We have the men about the work of reconciliation who are willing to reflect upon the cost and pay it.

Perhaps at one time or another, the two of us are all of those. Sometimes we take to the streets, sometimes we yawn through interminable meetings, sometimes we talk with white men in their homes and offices...Sometimes we confront the posse, and sometimes we hold a child. Sometimes we stand with men who have learned to hate and sometimes we must stand a little apart from them.

Our lives in Selma are filled with ambiguity, and in that we share with men everywhere. We are beginning to see the world as we never saw it before. We are truly in the world, and yet ultimately not of it. For through the bramble bush of doubt and fear and supposed success we are grouping our way to the realization that above all else, we are called to be saints. That is the mission the Church everywhere. And in this, Selma, Alabama is like all the world: it needs the life and witness of militant Saints!