Carl Oglesby, former president of Students for a Democratic Society and folk-singing prophet of Middle American anti-imperialism, died Tuesday. Herewith an interview I conducted with Carl for Reason magazine and a tune from one of his albums. No, Carl never became “the next Dylan,” as the record-sellers hoped, and the Lions Club has yet to lie with Code Pink, but he found an old and worthy path, long neglected, and walked down it a spell. Rest in peace, Carl.
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Bill,
I am very sad to hear about Carl Oglesby’s death. I met him at the 1976 Libertarian Scholars Conference in New York, when we found ourselves seated at what someone must have meant to be the radical table, along with Chuck Hamilton and Steve Halbrook. After that, Carl and I wrote each other for a while in the late 1970s. But then we both got busy on other things.
He was a real stalwart. There is great poetry in most of his political writing.
Joseph Stromberg
Steve Halbrook
So even at the Libertarian Scholars Conference, Oglesby was dogged by Maoists!