Carl Oglesby

Carl 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.

Carl Oglesby's father was from South Carolina, and his mother from Alabama. They met in Akron, Ohio, where Carl's father worked in the rubber mills. Carl progressed through the Akron Public School System, winning a prize in his final year for a speech in favor of America's Cold War stance. He went to Kent State University, but dropped out in his third year to try to make his way as an actor and playwright in Greenwich Village, a bohemian area of New York. After a year, he returned to Kent State and graduated, writing three plays (including "a well-received work on the Hatfield-McCoy feud") and an unfinished novel. He worked at odd jobs until, around 1960, he came to Michigan.

Oglesby first came into contact with members of SDS in Michigan in 1964. At the time he was thirty years old and had a young family (a wife, Beth, and three children: Aron, Caleb, and Shay). He was a technical writer for the Systems Division of Bendix (a defense contractor); at the same time he was trying to get a part-time degree from the University of Michigan.

He wrote a critical article on American foreign policy in the Far East in the 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 became a full-time Research, Information, Publications (RIP) worker for SDS.

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