"Sidelights"

Carl Oglesby was an activist, freelance writer, playwright, educator, and musician. He was best known for having served as the president of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) from 1965 to 1966. The SDS was a broad-based, left-wing student movement dedicated to direct action and teach-ins to effect social change, with a focus on racial equality, participatory democracy, and ending war. The SDS remains an icon of 1960s student radicalism.

In the mid-1960s, Oglesby worked as a technical writer for the Bendix Corporation, producing a manual for the application of the highly toxic defoliant Agent Orange, used extensively by U.S. forces in Vietnam. While attending classes at the University of Michigan, Oglesby became increasingly interested in social justice and the antiwar movement, ultimately leaving his job with Bendix to pursue social change. During his time with the SDS, Oglesby edited The New Left Reader, a highly influential anthology of political essays by C. Wright Mills, Malcolm X, Fidel Castro, and others.

Following the collapse of the SDS in 1969, Oglesby recorded two albums of folk-rock music, Carl Oglesby and Going to Damascus. In an interview with Bill Kauffman of Reason magazine, Oglesby explained, "I started writing songs because I was no longer able to write plays. I had been a playwright before the movement came along. I'd written four plays that had been produced." After he became involved in social action, Oglesby...