Carl Preston Oglesby (July 30, 1935 – September 13, 2011) was an
American writer,
academic, and
political activist. He was the President of the leftist student organization
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) from 1965 to 1966.
[ Kauffman, Bill (2008-05-19]
When the Left Was Right
'' The American Conservative''.
Early life
His father was from
South Carolina, and his mother was from
Alabama. They met in
Akron, Ohio, where the elder Oglesby worked in the rubber mills.
[
Carl Oglesby graduated from Revere High School in suburban Akron, winning a prize in his final year for a speech in favor of America's ]Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
stance.[Segall, Grant]
“Carl Oglesby Rose from Akron to Lead the SDS”
(Obituary). ''Cleveland Plain Dealer'', September 14, 2011. ''Cleveland.com'' He then enrolled at Kent State University for three years before dropping out to attempt to make his way as an actor and playwright in Greenwich Village, a traditionally Bohemian neighborhood in New York City. While at Kent State, he married Beth Rimanoczy, a graduate student in the English department; they ultimately had three children (Aron, Caleb and Shay). After a year in New York, he returned to Akron, where he became a copywriter for Goodyear and continued working on his creative endeavors, including three plays influenced by Britain's " angry young men" literary movement (exemplified by "a well-received work on the Hatfield-McCoy feud")[ and an unfinished novel.
In 1958, Oglesby and his family moved to ]Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County, Michigan, Washtenaw County. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851. It is the principal city of the Ann Arbor ...
, where he took a technical writing position with the Bendix Corporation
Bendix Corporation is an American manufacturing and engineering company which, during various times in its existence, made automotive brake shoes and systems, vacuum tubes, aircraft brakes, aeronautical hydraulics and electric power systems, av ...
, a defense contractor. He ascended to the directorship of the company's technical writing division before completing his undergraduate degree as a part-time student at the University of Michigan (where he cultivated a circle of friends that included Donald Hall and Frithjof Bergmann) in 1962.
Contact with SDS
Oglesby first came into contact with members of SDS in Ann Arbor in 1964. He wrote a critical article on American foreign policy in the Far East in the University of Michigan's campus magazine. SDSers read it, and went to meet Carl at his family home to see if he might become a supporter of the SDS. As Oglebsy put it, "We talked. I got to thinking about things. As a writer, I needed a mode of action ..I saw that people were already moving, so I joined up." He left Bendix in 1965 and became a full-time Research, Information, Publications (RIP) worker for SDS.
He co-authored with Richard Shaull the book, ''Containment and Change'' which argued for an alliance between the New Left
The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, g ...
and the libertarian
Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's e ...
, non-interventionist Old Right in opposing an imperialist U.S. foreign policy.
He became so impressed by the spirit and intellectual strength of the SDS that he became deeply involved in the organization. Despite the notable age gap between Oglesby and the traditionally-aged undergraduates who comprised most of the organization's membership, he became its president within a year. His first project was to be a " grass-roots theatre", but that project was soon superseded by the opposition to escalating American activity in Vietnam; he helped organize a teach-in in Michigan, and to build for the large SDS peace march in Washington on April 17, 1965. The National Council meeting after was Oglesby's first national SDS meeting. On November 27, 1965, Oglesby gave a speech, "Let Us Shape the Future," before tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators in Washington. He compared the Vietnam revolution to the American revolution. He condemned corporate liberalism and accused corporate anti-Communists of self-righteously denouncing Communist tyranny, while ignoring the "right-wing tyrannies that our businessmen traffic with and our nation profits from every day." The speech became one of the most important documents to come out of the anti-war movement. According to Kirkpatrick Sale: "It was a devastating performance: skilled, moderate, learned, and compassionate, but uncompromising, angry, radical, and above all persuasive. It drew the only standing ovation of the afternoon... for years afterward it would continue to be one of the most popular items of SDS literature."
Oglesby's political outlook was more eclectic than that of many in SDS. He was heavily influenced by libertarian
Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's e ...
economist Murray Rothbard, and dismissed socialism as "a way to bury social problems under a federal bureaucracy
The term bureaucracy () refers to a body of non-elected governing officials as well as to an administrative policy-making group. Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected offi ...
."[ He once unsuccessfully proposed cooperation between SDS and the conservative group Young Americans for Freedom on some projects, and argued that "in a strong sense, the Old Right and the ]New Left
The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, g ...
are morally and politically coordinate":
Steve Mariotti
Steve Mariotti is the founder and former president (1988-2005) of the nonprofit Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), and the author of books and textbooks related to entrepreneurship education. Mariotti was inspired to found NFTE by his ...
, a teenage SDS colleague of Oglesby's in 1965, credits Oglesby with describing an early form of what became known as the two-axis Nolan Chart during a delivery of his "Let Us Shape the Future" speech in order to distinguish between authoritarian conservatives and liberty-loving right-wingers.
In 1968, he signed the " Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. Also in 1968, he was asked by Black Panther
A black panther is the melanistic colour variant of the leopard (''Panthera pardus'') and the jaguar (''Panthera onca''). Black panthers of both species have excess black pigments, but their typical rosettes are also present. They have been d ...
leader Eldridge Cleaver to serve as his running mate on the Peace and Freedom Party
The Peace and Freedom Party (PFP) is a left-wing political party with affiliates and former members in more than a dozen American states, including California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana and Utah, but none now have ballot status besides C ...
ticket in that year's presidential election (he declined the offer).[
]
Later life
Oglesby was forced out of SDS in 1969, after more left-wing members accused him of "being 'trapped in our early, bourgeois
The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. They ...
stage' and for not progressing into 'a Marxist–Leninist perspective.'"[ After the collapse of SDS in the summer of 1969, Oglesby became a writer, a musician and an academic. His self-titled album was released by Vanguard Records and later reviewed by '' Village Voice'' critic ]Robert Christgau
Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...
, who wrote in '' Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies'' (1981): "In which the first president of SDS takes after Leonard Cohen, offering a clue as to why the framers of the Port Huron Statement didn't change the world in quite the way they envisioned. Overwritten, undermusicked, not much fun, not much enlightenment—in short, the work of someone who needs a weatherman (small 'w' please) to know which way the wind blows."
In 1970 he was a featured speaker at the "Left/Right Festival of Liberation" organized by the California Libertarian Alliance. This type of bridge building was not unlike Oglesby; three years earlier, he had written that, "...in a strong sense, the Old Right and the New Left are morally and politically coordinate."
Oglesby moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he founded the Assassination Information Bureau, an organization that has been credited with bringing about the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations. He wrote several books on the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the various competing theories that attempt to explain it. According to Oglesby, Kennedy was killed by "a rightist conspiracy formed out of anti-Castro Cuban exiles, the Syndicate, and a Cowboy oligarchy, supported by renegade CIA and FBI agents." He recorded two albums, roughly in the folk-rock genre, one titled "Going To Damascus."
He taught politics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Dartmouth College. He attended the April 2006 North-Eastern Regional Conference of the " new SDS" and where he gave a speech in which he said that activism is about "teaching yourself how to do what you don't know how to do."
Oglesby died of lung cancer at his home in Montclair, New Jersey on September 13, 2011, aged 76.
In popular culture
Oglesby was portrayed by Michael A. Dean in The Trial of the Chicago 7.
He appeared on The Ron Reagan Show on November 19, 1991, with David Lifton
David Samuel Lifton (September 20, 1939 – December 6, 2022) was an American author who wrote the 1981 bestseller ''Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy'', a work that puts forth evidence that there was a ...
, Robert J. Groden, and Robert Sam Anson.
Works
Books
* ''Containment and Change: Two Dissenting Views of American Foreign Policy'', with Richard Shaull. Introduction by Leon Howell. New York: Macmillan
MacMillan, Macmillan, McMillen or McMillan may refer to:
People
* McMillan (surname)
* Clan MacMillan, a Highland Scottish clan
* Harold Macmillan, British statesman and politician
* James MacMillan, Scottish composer
* William Duncan MacMillan ...
(1967). . Contains Oglesby's award-winning essay, "Vietnam Crucible: An Essay in the Meanings of the Cold War," pp. 3–176.
* ''The New Left Reader''. New York: Grove Press
Grove Press is an United States of America, American Imprint (trade name), publishing imprint that was founded in 1947. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, and Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it in ...
(1969). . .
* '' The Yankee and Cowboy War: Conspiracies from Dallas to Watergate.'' Kansas City: Sheed Andrews and McMeel
Sheed and Ward was a publishing house founded in London in 1926 by Catholic activists Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward. The head office was moved to New York in 1933.
The United States assets of Sheed and Ward have been owned by Rowman & Littlefield ...
(1976).
** Full text (hardcover). .
** Full text (softcover). .
* ''Bob Vila's Guide to Buying Your Dream House'', with Bob Vila
Robert Joseph Vila (born June 20, 1946) is an American home improvement television show host known for ''This Old House'' (1979–1989), ''Bob Vila's Home Again'' (1990–2005), and ''Bob Vila'' (2005–2007).
Early life and education
Vila, a C ...
. Research by Nena Groskind. Boston: Little, Brown (1990). . .
* '' Who Killed JFK?'' Berkeley, Calif: Odonian Press (1991). . .
* ''The JFK Assassination: The Facts and Theories''. Signet
Signet may refer to:
*Signet, Kenya, A subsidiary of the Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation (KBC), specifically set up to broadcast and distribute the DTT signals
* Signet ring, a ring with a seal set into it, typically by leaving an impression in sea ...
(1992). .
* ''Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960s Antiwar Movement''. New York: Scribner Scribner may refer to:
Media
* Charles Scribner's Sons, also known as Scribner or Scribner's, New York City publisher
* ''Scribner's Magazine'', pictorial published from 1887–1939 by Charles Scribner's Sons, then merged with the ''Commentator ...
(2008). .
Selected articles
"The Secret Treaty of Fort Hunt."
''CovertAction Information Bulletin
''CovertAction Quarterly'' (formerly ''CovertAction Information Bulletin'') was an American journal in publication from 1978 to 2005, focused primarily on watching and reporting global covert operations. It is generally critical of US Foreign Polic ...
'' (Fall 1990).
Filmography
Television documentaries
''Beyond JFK: The Question of Conspiracy''
(1992). Directed by Barbara Kopple & Danny Schechter.
Articulate '60s Activist Looks Back To See How He Failed
' Making Sense of the Sixties''] (January 21–23, 1991). PBS. Read excerpts.
* ''Rebels With a Cause'' (2000). Written and directed by Helen Garvey.
Interviews
Radio
Interviewed
by Bob Fass (January 31, 1975). WBAI Radio (New York). .
Audio
* Interviewed by Bret Eynon (1981). New York Times oral history program. Contemporary History Project oral history collection, no. 35.
"Student Movements of the 1960s: The Reminiscences of Carl Oglesby."
(December 12, 1984). Interviewed by Bret Eynon. Columbia University Oral History Collection (Cambridge, Massachusetts).
Full transcript
audio.
ref>Also
''Resistance and Revolution: The Anti-Vietnam War Movement at the University of Michigan, 1965–1972''
at University of Michigan.
"Former SDS Leader Insists That LaRouche 'Has Never Been a Marxist.'"
Interviewed by Herbert Quinde. '' Executive Intelligence Review'', vol. 13, no. 20 (May 16, 1986)
pp. 32–33.Full issue.
Print
* Rosenblatt, Rand K
"Carl Oglesby (Silhouette)."
'' Harvard Crimson'' (Feb. 15, 1966).
* Kauffman, Bill
"Writers on the Storm."
''Reason'' (Apr. 2008)
Full issue.
:: "Former New Left leader Carl Oglesby on the '60s, his old friend Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the dream of a left-libertarian alliance."
Discography
''Carl Oglesby'' (1969)
P
''Going to Damascus'' (1971)
P
Collected works
* ''Clandestine America: Selected Writings on Conspiracies from the Nazi Surrender to Dallas, Watergate, and Beyond''. Cambridge, Mass.: Protean Press (2020). .
References
Further reading
* Sale, Kirkpatrick
Kirkpatrick Sale (born June 27, 1937) is an American author who has written prolifically about political decentralism, environmentalism, luddism and technology. He has been described as having a "philosophy unified by decentralism" and as being "a ...
(1974). ''SDS: Ten Years Towards a Revolution''. New York: Vintage Books
Vintage Books is a trade paperback publishing imprint of Penguin Random House originally established by Alfred A. Knopf in 1954. The company was purchased by Random House in April 1960, and a British division was set up in 1990. After Random Hous ...
. . See esp. 194–199.
* Rosenblatt, Rand K. (Feb. 15, 1966)
"Carl Oglesby (Silhouette)."
'' Harvard Crimson''.
* Russell, Dick (Nov. 1993)
"From Dallas to Eternity."
'' Boston Magazine''. pp. 62–65, 82, 85–88.
* Gardner, Fred (2016)
"The Working Class Stranger – Carl Oglesby."
''O'Shaughnessy's.
External links
Carl Oglesby
at Discogs
Carl Oglesby
at IMDb
Carl Oglesby
at Spartacus Educational
* Carl Oglesby collection at the Harold Weisberg Archive via Internet Archive
Archive of SDS documents
including two speeches by Carl Oglesby.
''Carl Oglesby Papers, 1942–2005''
at University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Oglesby Songs
– Website devoted to the music of Carl Oglesby, including arrangements of several of his songs.
* Johanna Vogelsang
"I told you things were crumbling."
(c.1975) at Center for the Study of Political Graphics
The Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG) is a United States non-profit, educational and research archive that collects, preserves, documents, and circulates domestic and international political posters relating to historical and conte ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Oglesby, Carl
1935 births
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20th-century American male writers
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American anti–Vietnam War activists
American conspiracy theorists
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American political writers
American tax resisters
COINTELPRO targets
Dartmouth College faculty
Deaths from cancer in New Jersey
Deaths from lung cancer
Kent State University alumni
Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty
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Non-interventionism
Researchers of the assassination of John F. Kennedy
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Place of birth missing
Bendix Corporation people