Civil liberties advocates gather in Charleston to honor Carter, Magan

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – Civil liberties advocates gathered in Charleston Sunday for ACLU-WV’s annual Bill of Rights celebration honoring two longtime community leaders and activists.

This year’s fundraiser – a brunch followed by a benefit concert at Beni Kedem Shriner’s in downtown Charleston – drew a crowd of more than 200 to honor the life and legacies of professors Philip W. Carter Jr. and John R. “Jack” Magan.

Referring to the Trump administration, ACLU-WV Executive Director Eli Baumwell told the crowd: “We are facing a political movement that has embraced power politics over democracy, control over freedom, profit over people, cruelty over humanity.”

He added that events like Sunday’s are more important than ever so that those who support democracy may come together, “For joy, for community, for strategy, and for solidarity.”

“Across the nation, the ACLU and our sister affiliates have been holding the line against the rising tide of authoritarianism,” Baumwell said. “And we’ve been pushing back. We’ve been succeeding in the courts. We’ve been building deeper partnerships, and empowering the very people this government would most like to shut out.”

Carter, who accepted the Roger Baldwin Award for Service to the State via video from Pittsburgh, has been a social work professor for more than 40 years at Marshall University. He has been directly involved in the civil rights movement in West Virginia since the 1950s, founding the student-led Civic Interest Progressives, waging sit-ins, bringing court challenges, and leading marches.

Carter, a Clarksburg native, also was one of the first Black athletes in a southern Division I school, served on the U.S. Capitol Police Force, was recognized by the Herald-Dispatch newspaper as one of the “Top 50 Influential Leaders in the Tri-State for the 20th Century,” and has served four terms as president of the Huntington-Cabell chapter of the NAACP. He praised the ACLU’s work on issues like DEI, fair pay, and holding police accountable.

“For 100 years, the ACLU has been doing the necessary work here in West Virginia, and you are needed now more than ever before,” he said.

Magan, who passed away in October at the age of 89, was a longtime ACLU-WV board member and was present when the West Virginia affiliate was founded in 1971. For most of his career, he was a physics professor but left higher education in the 1970s over his views on the Vietnam War. He then worked as an underground coal miner for more than a decade to support his family. In a 1974 Charleston Gazette profile about the “ex professor now miner” he joked that his fellow miners at the Bethlehem Steel Shamrock Mine in Kayford, Kanawha County, thought he was “a spy for (environmentalist) Ralph Nader.” Even after returning to work as a professor in the 80s, Magan would often tell people how much he liked working in the mines, particularly the camaraderie he felt with his fellow workers.

Magan, a native of Jersey City, N.J., was known for always carrying a pocket U.S. Constitution with him and adhering strictly to the ACLU’s nonpartisan principles. He was also a volunteer food delivery driver, built playgrounds while registering voters in Mississippi, and even grew out his beard to play Santa Claus for local children at Elk Valley Library.

Longtime partner Benita Whitman thanked ACLU-WV on behalf of Magan’s family for the Sid Bell Award for Service to the Affiliate. Whitman told the crowd that the torch Magan carried for his many years was now in their hands, calling on those in attendance to defend democracy.

After the brunch concluded, an after-party show was held featuring Charleston bands Jerks! Static Fur, and Dinosaur Burps. Heather Hannah, a singer-songwriter and Appalachian storyteller from Davis, served as emcee of the brunch and also performed several songs with her band.

ACLU-WV also thanks our sponsors: Naomi and Harvey Cohen; Dwight Foley; Rachel Dash; Bob Bastress and Barbara Evans Fleischauer; the Islamic Association of West Virginia; Jennifer Meinig and Anthony Majestro; West Virginia Citizen Action Group; Frank Crabtree and Judith Azulay; West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy; David Raese; Fairness West Virginia; Julie Archer and Terry Messinger; National Association of Social Workers; WV FREE; People’s Unity Project; Joseph and Anita Cohen; Monty and Lisa Fowler; Rainbow Pride of West Virginia; Phillip Terrano; Gairold “Skip” Flynn; Barbara Steinke; Jerry C. Edwards; and Dawn Warfield and Thomas Knight.