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Carl Oglesby was the President of Students for a Democratic Society during the term 1965-1966. After the collapse of that organisation, he has been a writer, a musician and an academic. He 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 and three children). He was a technical writer for the Systems Division of Bendix (an military company); at the same time trying to get a part time debree from the University of Michigan. He became so impressed by the spirit and intellectual strength of the SDS that he rapidly became deeply involved in the organisation, becoming its President within a year. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a radical student activist movement in the United states founded in 1959. ...
1965 (MCMLXV) was a common year starting on Friday (link goes to calendar). ...
1966 was a common year starting on Saturday (link goes to calendar) // Events January January 1 - In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa ousts president David Dacko and takes over the Central African Republic. ...
State nickname: The Wolverine State, The Great Lakes State Other U.S. States Capital Lansing Largest city Detroit Governor Jennifer Granholm (D) Senators Carl Levin (D) Debbie Stabenow (D) Official language(s) English de-facto Area 96,889 mi² / 250,941 km² (11th) - Land 56,855 mi² / 147,255 km²...
Before SDS
Oglesby's father was from South Carolina, 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, even winning a prize in his final year for a speech in favour 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 and a unfinished novel. He worked at odd jobs until, around 1960, he came to Michigan. Greenwich Village (also known as the West Village or simply the Village) is a largely residential area on the west side of downtown (southern) Manhattan in New York City. ...
Though a Bohemian is a native of the Czech province of Bohemia, a secondary meaning for bohemian emerged in 19th century France. ...
Contact with SDS Four years later, in 1964, Oglesby happened to read a book named The Cold War and its Origins by D. F. Fleming; which detailed America's responsibilities for post-World War II antagonisms. He wrote a crtical 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 was that people were already moving, so I joined up.'
Carl's first project was to be a 'grass-roots theatre', but that project was soon superceded by the opposition to escalating American activity in Vietnam; he helped organise a teach in in Michigan, and to build for the massive SDS peace march in Washington on April 17th 1965. The National Council meeting after was Oglesby's first national SDS meeting. He records: 'A fantastic experience. For three days there was debate on various subjects, and I was absolutely convinced by every speaker. One would get up and defend a point and I would be convinced. Then another guy would get up and refute the point so well I thought he was right. One after the other they got better and smarter. It was the first time I'd seen a debate when it wasn't an ego game. They were really beautiful people. Students! I had no idea until then that young people - anyone - could think so well.'
So he became a full time Research, Information, Publications {"RIP"} worker for SDS. He wrote in a private note to Paul Booth in May 1965: 'What gives you hope gives me bitterness - this balmy night, soft spring, sweet air. Life looks so little and death looks so big. You don't misunderstand me. What's worth working for is simply worth working for - on its own present terms, on the face value of what it is. I mean, I'm not in the movement like a businessman's in business, waiting for the payoff on the investment. The value of my commitment is not pending anything, the commitment isn't waiting to be ratified by success or refuted by failure. Life is better than death, one sides with life always... To the barricades!
After SDS Oglesby has researched, and published three books on, the JFK assassination, and the various competing theories which attempt to explain it. He is sceptical of the 'lone gunman' theory. He has also recorded two albums, roughly in the 'folk-rock' genre. He has taught Politics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Dartmouth College. He has, oddly for a figure of the New Left, become feted by right-libertarians, who are sympathetic to his anti-interventionist stance on foreign policy. JFK redirects here. ...
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a research and educational institution located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. MIT is a widely renowned leader in science and technology, as well as in many other fields, including engineering systems, management, economics, linguistics, political science, and philosophy. ...
Dartmouth College is a small private university in Hanover, New Hampshire, and a member of the Ivy League. ...
The New Left is a term used in political discourse to refer to radical left-wing movements from the 1960s onwards. ...
A planned economy is an economic system in which economic decisions are made by centralized planners, who determine what sorts of goods and services to produce, and how they are to be priced and allocated. ...
References
Other Links The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a radical student activist movement in the United states founded in 1959. ...
Quotes - "It isn't the rebels who cause the troubles of the world, it's the troubles that cause the rebels."
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