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Carl Oglesby, RIP

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…
Bill Kauffman
September 14, 2011

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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A stack of three Local Culture journals and the book 'Localism in the Mass Age'

Bill Kauffman

Bill Kauffman is the author of eleven books, among them Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette (Henry Holt), Ain’t My America (Metropolitan), Look Homeward, America (ISI), and Poetry Night at the Ballpark (FPR Books). His next book, Upstaters, is due from SUNY Press in 2026. He is a columnist for The American Conservative and The Spectator World. Bill wrote the screenplay for the 2013 feature film Copperhead. He is a founding editor of Front Porch Republic and has served as a legislative assistant to Senator Pat Moynihan, editor for various magazines and publishers, and vice president of the Batavia Muckdogs, a professional baseball team that was euthanized by Major League Baseball. He lives with his wife Lucine in his native Genesee County, New York.

2 comments

  • Jesse Walker
    14 years ago

    Steve Halbrook

    So even at the Libertarian Scholars Conference, Oglesby was dogged by Maoists!

  • Joseph Stromberg
    14 years ago

    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

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