All posts by Chuck Fager

David McReynolds: Peace Movement Titan Is Gone

I only sort of knew David McReynolds, but he hovered significantly in the background of peace work during my apprenticeship in the Vietnam years.

David McReynolds, pacifist organizer stalwart, October 25, 1929- August 17, 2018.
My most vivid memory of David was not a personal encounter, but in the pages of WIN Magazine, a “radical pacifist” journal published by the War Resisters League. In 1969 he joined several other elder eminences in coming out there. These were the first confrontations I had had with homosexuals as sympathetic figures and colleagues.

 His article was more personal than political, often embarrassed about how much his struggles in and out of the closet had cut into his driving impulse to organize nonviolent action against war and imperialism. Its candor and humility cut right through my unthinking, reflexive homophobia, pointing a way forward from it which I have worked ever since to follow.

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Aretha, Her Father & Her Music: Not Far From The Tree

Where did Aretha Franklin’s unforgettable vocal power come from?
I glimpsed a big part of the answer one summer night in 1968.

It was Friday, June 21, in Washington DC: Leaders of the Poor Peoples Campaign, trying to fulfill Dr. King’s last dream, had built a shantytown, called Resurrection City, on the national mall. But the camp, and the campaign, were mired in various difficulties. Yet on that Friday evening, some participants got a welcome, memorable spell of relief. I was there with a tape recorder, and this is the heart of what I saw and heard:

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Spike Lee vs the Klan; and When (Many) Quakers also Loved the Klan

Watching Spike Lee’s new film BlackkKlansman yesterday, it was evident that the director/provocateur has skillfully exploited a current of widespread cultural anxiety, which the Klan once embodied on a mass scale. The cinematic result is a timely, skillful and often gripping entertainment. As a call to social action, however, I think it largely misfires. In organizational terms, … Continue reading Spike Lee vs the Klan; and When (Many) Quakers also Loved the Klan →

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Update: Shooting Holes In Justice — Emmett Till & Jimmie Lee Jackson Memorials

Jackson was buried in a small cemetery near Alabama Highway 14 on the outskirts of Marion. His headstone is impressively carved with a figure of Jesus keeping vigil.
It too has been hit  by numerous bullets, from the one that knocked a chunk off the top, to seven or eight that close examination here reveals.
Emmett Till’s killers walked completely free. The Alabama trooper who shot Jimmie Lee Jackson, James Fowler, shot and killed a second unarmed young black man in 1966. But forty-five years later, Fowler was convicted of manslaughter, and served several months in jail, before being released due to ill health.

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