By Fred Guarino
The Lowndes Signal

Steve Cole, owner of Central Alabama Insurance Agency in Hayneville, formerly the old Cash store where Civil Rights martyr Jonathan Myrick Daniels was killed, is looking for an option to preserve the building while he builds a new office.

Cole appeared before the Lowndes County Commission Monday night, where he said in the first quarter of next year he is planning on “taking down that building (the Cash store) and building a new office building there.”

However, he said he understood a church wanted to preserve the building.

Cole said if the property next to the courthouse annex, the old library building, is for sale, there may be another option.

“Maybe I could build my building there and preserve that building that was where Jonathan Daniels was shot and killed,” he said.

Cole said he would invest about $75,000 in a new building and would be ready to use it the first quarter of the year.

Commission Chairman Robert Harris said the county-owned property is currently not for sale.

“We have not, I guess, really considered selling yet,” he said.

However, Harris asked for time for commissioners to “ponder it” and said, “We’ll give you an answer back.”

Daniels, an Episcopal seminarian, answered the 1965 televised appeal by Martin Luther King Jr. to come to Selma to secure the right to vote for all citizens.

After being arrested in Fort Deposit for joining a picket line, he was transferred to the old jail in Hayneville.

After being released, he and his companions walked to the Cash store where he was killed by a 12-gauge-shotgun blast while shielding 16-year-old Ruby Sales from a man with a gun who was cursing her.