Gordon Carey

Gordon Ray Carey (89) died peacefully surrounded by family in Arlington, Virginia on November 27, 2021. He is survived by his wife Karen, five children, ten grandchildren, one great-granddaughter, a younger brother, and one Golden Retriever.

Born in 1932 in Grand Rapids, Michigan to Methodist minister Howard Ray Carey and Marguerite Helena Jellema, Gordon was a civil rights activist who believed in pacifist and Quaker principles. As a young man, Gordon bucked tradition to contribute to causes he believed in, taking a hiatus from high school to transport goats by sea to Okinawa, Japan with Heifer International and participating in an American Friends Service Committee development project in Mexico.

In the 1950s, Gordon became involved with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). After spending a year in prison as a conscientious objector during the Korean War, Gordon became the National Vice Chairman of CORE and later a Field Secretary, organizing CORE chapters across the United States to fight for racial equality. In the 1960s, Gordon participated as a trainer in the sit-in movement in the South, including the sit-in at the Woolworth in Greensboro, North Carolina. One of his most gratifying achievements in nonviolent direct action was as a visionary and organizer of the Freedom Rides.

In 1969, Gordon, Floyd McKissick, and T.T. Clayton founded Soul City, North Carolina, a new town under the Housing and Urban Development New Communities Act that civil rights leaders envisioned as a racially integrated utopian community. Gordon and his family lived in Soul City until 1981. Reflecting on his life’s work, Gordon later wrote, “These were fun years.”

Gordon retired in 2012 from a small business he founded in Burlington, North Carolina, which became a leading supplier of software for Community Action Agencies and criminal justice programs. He spent his twilight years in a house full of family and dogs in Winston-Salem, North Carolina reading nonfiction, following politics, exercising, and enjoying family television. His children fondly remember his playful spirit and life-long habit of writing a daily “Frog and Toad list.” We send him off lovingly with a final list: 1. Transition. 2. Be at peace. 3. Carry on in memory and love.

Donations in Gordon’s honor are welcome to the American Friends Service Committee or the Southern Poverty Law Center.