4-17 Movie Night: Here I Am, Send Me
The Story of Jonathan Daniels
Friday, April 17—6:30 for dessert and coffee/tea, and 7:00-9:00 to watch the DVD and have a discussion.
We welcome once again the Rev. Dr. H. Roy Partridge, Jr., Special Assistant to the President (of Bowdoin College) for 
Multicultural Affairs and a Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology, who will be with us to watch this hour-long, award-winning documentary about the Episcopal Divinity School seminarian, Jonathan Daniels, followed by discussion. Daniels is recognized as a martyr in the Episcopal Church and honored for his sacrifice every August 14 for his commitment to civil rights. Sam Waterston narrates the DVD.
In March 1965, Daniels responded to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call for white clergy and students from the north to join a civil rights march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capitol. Daniels continued his work in Alabama after that initial weekend, 
returning that summer to help the poor and disadvantaged by, among other things, tutoring children, helping locals apply for aid, and registering voters. While awaiting a ride with others who had been jailed for picketing an all-white store, he bravely took shotgun fire intended for one of the black teens, Ruby Sales. Daniels was killed instantly.
His life was one lived in deep commitment to social justice, and his death had a profound impact on the rights for African-Americans in the south. In 2005 Ruby Sales said of Jonathan Daniels, the white man who had sacrificed his life for hers, “That day when we went to jail, in the face of baseball bats and guns, we had an opportunity to understand. That jail became a transformed space, from a space of great oppression, to a space of liberation.”
This special evening is offered in April because it coincides with the month in which Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated and in which Jonathan Daniels is remembered in the church calendar. The work for social justice continues to this day.
Please be part of this interesting and very relevant program, which will take place on Friday, April 17—6:30 for dessert and coffee/tea, and 7:00-9:00 to watch the DVD and have a discussion.
