But My Heart Is Black
Daniels, Jonathan Myrick
Jonathan Myrick Daniels "But My Heart Is Black" Episcopal Seminarian Jonathan Myrick Daniels was shot dead at Hayneville, Alabama, near Selma, on Friday, August 20, 1965. The man accused and...
...In the line next to me a redneck turned and stared: at my seminarian's collar, at my ESCRU* button, at my face...
...I discovered hatred hadn't advertised— perhaps the sign had blown off in a storm...
...I read it again and again, nausea rising swiftly and savagely, as the suspicious counter boy spilled coffee over the cups...
...Why, he's a white niggah...
...At least Judas went for thirty...
...The Episcopal Society for Cultural and Rcial Unity...
...The friend shouted "No...
...It is one that I do not deserve—and cannot ever earn...
...It was lousy coffee...
...ALL CASH RECEIVED FROM SALES TO NIGERS WILL BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE UNITED KLANS OF AMERICA...
...The full text appears in the June issue of the diocesan magazine of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire...
...But my heart is black...
...If pride were appropriate in the ambiguities of my presence in Selma, I should be unspeakably proud of my title...
...For it is the highest honor, the most precious distinction I have ever received...
...He turned to a friend...
...It was high noon as we walked into the Selma Post Office to sign for a registered letter and the lines at the windows were long...
...And yet deep within me rose an affirmation and a tenderness and a joy that wanted to shout...
...Incongruously, we came upon an allnight truck-stop, midway to nowhere...
...Resuming, the speaker whined...
...I was not happy thus to become the object of every gaze...
...This article, of which we reprint only an excerpt, was written in April for publication in the Journal of the Episcopal Theological Seminary of Cambridge, Mass...
...But worse than chicory was the taste of black men's blood...
...I turned from cold stares and fixed my gaze on a sign over the counter...
...Know what he is...
...The man accused and tried for the murder was freed by a Hayneville jury—all white, of course...
...As I type now, my hands are hopelessly white...
...We drove on into the night...
...It was cheap: only twenty-five cents...
Vol. 13 • January 1966 • No. 1
