Chuck Fager

Charles Eugene Fager (born 1942), known as Chuck Fager, is an American activist, author, editor, publisher and an outspoken and prominent member of the Religious Society of Friends or Quakers.

He is known for his work in both the Civil Rights Movement and in the Peace movement.

In high school during the late 1950s, Fager got in trouble for writing and circulating a clandestine collection of satiric articles poking fun at teachers and school administrators.

Fager enrolled at Colorado State University in 1960.

There he was in the Air Force Reserve Officers' Training Corps at Colorado State University, where he won a medal as the Outstanding Freshman Cadet, and later commanded a prize-winning AFROTC drill team.

However, by his senior year his interest in the air force had waned, and he voluntarily left the ROTC.

After leaving Colorado in late 1964, he completed a B. A. in Humanities from Colorado State University in 1967.

Fager moved to Atlanta, Georgia in late summer 1964, and soon became active in the Civil Rights Movement.

In December 1964 he joined the staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Atlanta, and was later sent by the SCLC to Selma, Alabama where he took part in the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement organized and directed by James Bevel.

During that time Fager was arrested three times and spent one night in a jail cell with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as told in his book, Eating Dr. King's Dinner, his personal story of his early life and activism.

His experience with Dr. King's nonviolence led him to jettison the pro-war outlook he had inherited from a youth spent on military bases, and in late 1965 he had successfully applied for status as a conscientious objector (or CO) to the military draft.

As a result, he was required to perform two years of alternative service.

This service was performed first at Friends World Institute, later Friends World College based in Long Island, New York.

He then completed his service at the New York City Department of Social Services.

Fager later participated in several peaceful protests against the Vietnam War.

During that time he was arrested twice.

Fager first met Quakers in Selma, Alabama in late 1965 when students from the newly launched Friends World Institute came to help with voter registration.

He joined the Institute to serve his CO obligation and became acquainted with some Quakers who were involved in it.

Fager left Selma in early 1966.

He worked as a junior instructor at that college in 1966–1967.

He attended Harvard Divinity School, mostly part-time, for four years, starting in 1968.

In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.

Fager served as Director of Quaker House in Fayetteville, North Carolina, a peace project founded in 1969 near Fort Bragg, a major US Army base from 2002 to 2012.

Charles E. Fager was born in Kansas to a Roman Catholic family.

He is the oldest of eleven children.

He grew up on various United States Air Force bases.

In high school, Fager left Catholicism, and for some years regarded himself as an atheist.

However, he was interested in religion, and at that time was much influenced by the work of C.G. Jung, who took religion seriously, if in an unorthodox way.

In 1969 he joined the Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Massachusetts, while he was studying at Harvard Divinity School.

Since then he has been a member of a number of Friends Meetings.

In the late 1970s, Fager was briefly active in the anti-abortion movement, making connections with some anti-war-minded activists in it.

However, he never supported the idea of legal prohibition of all abortions.

His written works include religious and political essays, humor, adult fiction, and juvenile fiction, and he is best known for his 1974 book Selma 1965: The March That Changed the South, his in-depth history of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement, which led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

However, as the political and religious right essentially absorbed the anti-abortion movement in the early 1980s, Fager moved away from it, repudiated its increasingly rightwing and repressive character, and also reconsidered his understanding of the embryology and metaphysics involved.

This evolution is described in his essay, "Abortion and Civil War".

A portion of this essay was published in The New Republic, in its May 30, 1988 issue under the title, "Fetal Distraction."

In 1994 he completed a Doctor of Ministry at the Graduate Theological Foundation now in Mishawaka, Indiana.

He taught workshops on nonviolent protest at anti-abortion conferences, as described in the book, "Wrath of Angels," by James Risen and Judy Thomas (Basic Books, 1998, P. 60f).

He is currently (2014) a member of State College Meeting which is dually-affiliated with Baltimore Yearly Meeting and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.

As he now lives in Durham, NC, he looked around the Meetings in the area and now attends Spring Meeting near Eli Witney in Alamance County.