Larry Benaquist presents his documentary: HERE AM I, SEND ME: THE JOURNEY OF JONATHAN DANIELS
This Thursday Emeritus Professor Larry Benaquist will be screening "Here Am I, Send Me: The Journey of Jonathan Daniels." Completed in 2003, and produced with William Sullivan, also a retired faculty member at Keene State College, this film was shown on PBS nationally. Narrated by Academy Award-nominated Sam Waterston, it is the biography of Jonathan Daniels, a resident of Keene who is considered a hero and martyr of the civil rights movement in the 1960's. This New Hampshire resident, son of a physician in Keene, graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, awarded a scholarship to Harvard University, he decided to become an Episcopal minister, but interrupted his studies to go south in March of 1965 to work with Martin Luther King and Stokely Carmichael, two leaders of the civil rights movement, to assist with voter registration efforts in central Alabama. Extremely dangerous work, Jonathan stayed when others left, and on August 20, 1965, died while pulling a young African American woman, a civil rights worker, out of the line of fire from a shotgun in the hands of a deputy sheriff.
Made over a period of years, with the assistance of students from the Film Studies program, this film raised public awareness of the role of northerners in the civil rights movement. Professor Benaquist will discuss the background to the work on the film, and the process of producing a project with grant funding. This film is required viewing for all Virginia Military Institute freshmen, and is used in their classes on ethics.
To request accommodations for a disability, please contact the coordinator at least two weeks prior to the event.
