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Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960s Anti-War Movement
Features a first-person account of the organization Students for a Democratic Society, and describes the author's travels to Vietnam, his work on student volunteer initiatives, and his participation in the Chicago Seven trial.
352 pages, cloth
First published January 1, 2008
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October 20, 2022
In his book, former SDS president Carl Oglesby chronicles his experiences as a protester in the 1960s. For me, he is one of the better activists of the time because even then he had a clear understanding of what is right and what is wrong.
In the early sixties, when the protest movement built momentum as the Vietnam conflict grew, Oglesby was working as a tech editor for defense contractors. Nothing in his ordinary job hinted at his becoming an anti-war leader. However, he lived in Ann Arbor, where liberal thought thrived, and aspired to become a playwright. It was his friends from the art sphere who introduced him to Students for a Democratic Society. Although more concerned with theathre than with politics, the author still had established views on the American involvement in Vietnam. He believed that it would end badly, and he wrote an article about his predictions, which landed him a spot in the SDS. A few months later, he had immersed himself so deeply in activism that he had quit his job, distanced himself from his family in South Carolina, and succeeded Paul Potter as the president of SDS.
The author's beliefs about the Vietnam conflict can be summarized with his statement that the fighting was done not by evil men, but by decent, honorable ones who were serving an evil corporate system. What made SDS a good organization at the time was that it was a broad, inclusive movement, whose mission was to combat “corporate liberalism," the alliance between business and government elites. From student and antiwar activists to black militants, to politically engaged hippies, it welcomed everyone into a large community with a common enemy. Through the black struggle, its white members learned about the worst abuses of American society and the connection between racism domestically and abroad. Some blacks described black America as an “internal colony" and considered the black movement one of "national liberation," similar to the struggles in the Third World.
According to the author, this was SDS at its best and most effective, and he is right. The student organization should have remained what it was under him – an energetic but non-radical and peaceful group of activists drawing attention to social issues such as racism, militarism, economic injustice, and student power. It was in those years, prior to the Days of Rage, that the organization led its most successful demonstrations. What gave the protest movement impetus was the Vietnam conflict, discrimination, and feminism. As long as it focused on these, it received support from the people and cooperated with the women liberalists, the SNCC, and others. Student power became a serious threat to the militarized thinking of the government. The movement grew in size.
It was then that things started going south quickly. The author insightfully notes that one of the reasons why the SDS eventually collapsed was that it acquired more members than its leaders could handle, which led to its becoming decentralized and more susceptible to influences from outside. Its popularity attracted the attention of Communists, Trotskyists, and others, and this caused the vital change in the organization's ideology that led it down the path toward Marxism-Leninism and violence.
Oglesby disapproved of this transformation. “They produced a theater of the absurd and called it the revolution.” He understood that to connect with and win the support of the people, and expand the protest movement, SDS had to avoid the path that the Weather Underground and other militant factions wanted to walk. Interestingly, the author mentions that both the Weathermen's formation and Cointelpro, the infiltration of the Movement by the FBI, happened in 1968 and wonders if there was not a link between the two.
His views were unpopular among the student activists at the time, so he became a suspect. In an event reminiscent of a Soviet trial, he was confronted at the national SDS meeting in Austin in 1969 and expelled for his disagreement with the Communist ideology that the organization had embraced.
RAVENS IN THE STORM is an account that stands out from its counterparts with its insightful analysis. Oglesby had a good understanding of what was happening around him and chose not to become an urban guerrilla. This book might sometimes venture into an attempt by the author to distance himself from the organization that he was a president of, but it also shows that there were people in the SDS leadership who genuinely wanted to help their country and not just rebel.
In the early sixties, when the protest movement built momentum as the Vietnam conflict grew, Oglesby was working as a tech editor for defense contractors. Nothing in his ordinary job hinted at his becoming an anti-war leader. However, he lived in Ann Arbor, where liberal thought thrived, and aspired to become a playwright. It was his friends from the art sphere who introduced him to Students for a Democratic Society. Although more concerned with theathre than with politics, the author still had established views on the American involvement in Vietnam. He believed that it would end badly, and he wrote an article about his predictions, which landed him a spot in the SDS. A few months later, he had immersed himself so deeply in activism that he had quit his job, distanced himself from his family in South Carolina, and succeeded Paul Potter as the president of SDS.
The author's beliefs about the Vietnam conflict can be summarized with his statement that the fighting was done not by evil men, but by decent, honorable ones who were serving an evil corporate system. What made SDS a good organization at the time was that it was a broad, inclusive movement, whose mission was to combat “corporate liberalism," the alliance between business and government elites. From student and antiwar activists to black militants, to politically engaged hippies, it welcomed everyone into a large community with a common enemy. Through the black struggle, its white members learned about the worst abuses of American society and the connection between racism domestically and abroad. Some blacks described black America as an “internal colony" and considered the black movement one of "national liberation," similar to the struggles in the Third World.
According to the author, this was SDS at its best and most effective, and he is right. The student organization should have remained what it was under him – an energetic but non-radical and peaceful group of activists drawing attention to social issues such as racism, militarism, economic injustice, and student power. It was in those years, prior to the Days of Rage, that the organization led its most successful demonstrations. What gave the protest movement impetus was the Vietnam conflict, discrimination, and feminism. As long as it focused on these, it received support from the people and cooperated with the women liberalists, the SNCC, and others. Student power became a serious threat to the militarized thinking of the government. The movement grew in size.
It was then that things started going south quickly. The author insightfully notes that one of the reasons why the SDS eventually collapsed was that it acquired more members than its leaders could handle, which led to its becoming decentralized and more susceptible to influences from outside. Its popularity attracted the attention of Communists, Trotskyists, and others, and this caused the vital change in the organization's ideology that led it down the path toward Marxism-Leninism and violence.
Oglesby disapproved of this transformation. “They produced a theater of the absurd and called it the revolution.” He understood that to connect with and win the support of the people, and expand the protest movement, SDS had to avoid the path that the Weather Underground and other militant factions wanted to walk. Interestingly, the author mentions that both the Weathermen's formation and Cointelpro, the infiltration of the Movement by the FBI, happened in 1968 and wonders if there was not a link between the two.
His views were unpopular among the student activists at the time, so he became a suspect. In an event reminiscent of a Soviet trial, he was confronted at the national SDS meeting in Austin in 1969 and expelled for his disagreement with the Communist ideology that the organization had embraced.
RAVENS IN THE STORM is an account that stands out from its counterparts with its insightful analysis. Oglesby had a good understanding of what was happening around him and chose not to become an urban guerrilla. This book might sometimes venture into an attempt by the author to distance himself from the organization that he was a president of, but it also shows that there were people in the SDS leadership who genuinely wanted to help their country and not just rebel.
June 10, 2008
Carl Oglesby, former high-level security worker for a defense contractor-turned SDS President, writes a personal view of SDS and the movement against the Vietnam War that is insightful, amusing, and cutting. However, Oglesby has a clear bias and it's hard to know how much of his account (which is largely based on his memory of various heated conversations) is completely fair or accurate. Also, Oglesby's account ends up being more depressing than inspiring, as he falls into some pessimism about the prospects for movement building, largely based on his experience of SDS cannibalizing itself.
Worth reading though, mostly because it's a quick and interesting read that cuts through a lot of bullshit about the romantic 60s, and hits the reality of war and social change with simple and rough words.
Oglesby reviews his rise to power in SDS straight out of working for Bendix Corporation, and how years later this fact was used by the RYM/Weatherman faction to create suspicion and have him expelled from SDS' National Council (not Marxist-Leninist enough). The Weathermen are definitely the villians in this retelling, probably to a highly exaggerated degree, but not for bad reasons.
He also explores how his relations with his family, including his wife and children, and separately, his Southern family, were strained by his movement activism and non-stop work against the war, and how this related to his strong conviction that the movement needs to appeal to ordinary people who don't already agree with us, and not alienate them with more-radical-than-thou posturing.
Anyway, it's worth reading for the SDS history, but don't expect to be blown away. I'm following this up with reading Cathy Wilkerson's memoir, David Gilbert's book No Surrender, and Dan Berger's Outlaws of America to get a more well-rounded retelling of SDS' history. I also recommend SDS by Kirkpatrick Sale, which is the most detailed overview.
Worth reading though, mostly because it's a quick and interesting read that cuts through a lot of bullshit about the romantic 60s, and hits the reality of war and social change with simple and rough words.
Oglesby reviews his rise to power in SDS straight out of working for Bendix Corporation, and how years later this fact was used by the RYM/Weatherman faction to create suspicion and have him expelled from SDS' National Council (not Marxist-Leninist enough). The Weathermen are definitely the villians in this retelling, probably to a highly exaggerated degree, but not for bad reasons.
He also explores how his relations with his family, including his wife and children, and separately, his Southern family, were strained by his movement activism and non-stop work against the war, and how this related to his strong conviction that the movement needs to appeal to ordinary people who don't already agree with us, and not alienate them with more-radical-than-thou posturing.
Anyway, it's worth reading for the SDS history, but don't expect to be blown away. I'm following this up with reading Cathy Wilkerson's memoir, David Gilbert's book No Surrender, and Dan Berger's Outlaws of America to get a more well-rounded retelling of SDS' history. I also recommend SDS by Kirkpatrick Sale, which is the most detailed overview.
September 19, 2008
I had heard about Carl Oglesby, I had read a lot about The Weathermen Underground and the SDS. But, I had never delved deeply into Oglesby's politics. This man is right on point. Reading this is like taking a walk straight into his head and what a great place to be.
March 24, 2010
excellent thought-provoking memoir by the man who was possibly the best leader of SDS.
June 3, 2020
A personal narrative of the rise and fall of the SDS (an easier read than Kirkpatrick Sales academic tome on it). Touchs on stuff like Bertrand Russells war crimes trial, the Chicago Seven case, COINTELPRO, etc. Oglesby wants to present himself as a "radical centrist" since he had no problem just getting ideas across to elite decision makers instead of trying to ferment violent revolution. A central claim is the militant Marxist-Leninists that seized control intellectually weren't much different from the Christian fundamentalists in his family.
Once the war was over, the Weathermen were out of work, their shared fantasy in ruins. If I could have been a fly on the wall at any single private rap session from this period, it would be the one in which the Weathermen gathered to confess to one another that the revolution was not going to take place.
SDS, too, of course, had long since been done for, or as Ford said of the Vietnam War itself, "finished."
In a 1960s world without the Vietnam War, the intellectual task of SDS would have been to reimagine the democratic left.
Its political task would have been to redefine the interests of what traditional radical thought dismissed as the "middle class" even as an increasingly high-tech economy was turning this class into a new proletariat and making its brainpower central to production. The original SDS had seen its natural constituency as this "new working class" and had been far from thinking of itself as revolutionary. Following the lead of the black civil-rights movement, it had advocated direct action but had remained explicitly democratic, reformist, and nonviolent. As the House Committee on Internal Security put it in its surprisingly objective, almost admiring report on SDS in 1970, "As long as it was self-disciplined and dedicated to the peaceful pursuit of sincere social concerns, as long as it encouraged orderly dissent, it held the potential for making a useful contribution to American life."
But Vietnam imposed its own imperative, and SDS became in effect a single-issue antiwar organization, finally to be driven by the Weathermen to a self-destructive espousal of violence, an adventurism born of an almost willful ignorance of history.
I cannot say we had much freedom of choice. There was no way that SDS could have avoided the war. Like everyone else, we came upon the war as a terrible accident burning in the road, an event without logic but inescapably right there in front of us. We just had to jump in and do what we could.
January 25, 2021
Readable, personal memoir of the anti-war movement from someone who went from working (with a top secret clearance) in the defense industry to becoming, much to his surprise, the president of Students for a Democratic Society during a period of explosive, chaotic growth. Oglesby does a very good job explaining the logic behind the more or less centrist position that lost out to more radical voices in SDS.
April 29, 2025
A good, informative read of a memoir by Carl Oglesby - the most successful president of the SDS, who stepped down just before the group took its violent turn. He condemned this wholeheartedly but was unable to prevent it. Well-written and engaging. But, it must be admitted, it will have little to offer those not interested in the era of this period piece.
December 1, 2022
Got bored and put aside. I just don't feel that SDS is that important in American History.
** not finish
** not finish
April 24, 2025
i thought this book to be quite funny and illuminating. interesting to see his experience with SDS and how he openly acknowledges mistakes and problems within the movement. pretty rad.
March 30, 2017
Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960's Antiwar Movement by Carl Oglesby (Scribner 2008) (DS559.62). Carl Oglesby was working for a defense contractor in the early 1960's. He wrote a political position paper at the request of a local candidate for office which led him to the position of president of the Students For Democratic Society, or the SDS, as it was known on campuses across the country. At the time of its creation, it was one of the largest and most influential political protest organizations in the country. Carl Ogelsby was there for most of the main protests of the 1960's. He once shared a platform with the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. He eventually was forced out of the SDS by a rival faction, but then the SDS suddenly lost most of its power and influence when its leadership resigned en masse to create a more proactive and reactive political arm of the young which was known as the Weather Underground or “The Weathermen.” The name Weathermen was lifted from a Bob Dylan lyric (“...You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”) This is Carl Ogelsby's back story. My rating: 6/10, finished 9/22/16.
January 24, 2012
Carl Oglesby is probably open of the few antiwar "leaders" of the 1960's I feel any true empathy with (besides David Harris). This book is an eye opener. What is particularly galling (besides the fact that Nixon and Kissinger never paid for their carnage) was that Bernadine Dohrn never took any real heat, either. As Oglesby said, she existed in a state of "a willful ignorance of history."
The Weathermen wanted to bring the full force of Nixon's minions down upon themselves (and by extension, the entire decent population of 60's & 70's "counterculture." With her jiveass Marxism ["speaking Marxese"] and bloody-minded obsession with making terror an instrument of the antiwar left she did more to screw things up than she could ever have put right. And since Oglesby was a contemporary intimate of hers, the conversations he records with her are the best indictment of her fascist personality I've yet encountered. And she WAS a fascist. Look. The problem for any of us sincere war resisters was ANYONE with a gun. Anyone with a gun in their hand and hate in their heart & it didn't matter to us if they were "pig" blue, "grunt" green, or Panther black, it didn't matter whatsoever other than where were they coming from, what was their intention.
Bernadine Dohrn was perhaps the most pigheaded idiot to walk the American scene since Lizzie Borden& Carrie Nation. So nothing at all will ever get me to apologize for this absolute revulsion I feel in contemplating that she and her terrorist husband Bill Ayers never paid for their terrorist intentions. The hypocritical, spoiled, well-off children of the middle class who called themselves "revolutionary" yet ate their dogma straight from the totalitarian troughs of Mao and Lenin were legends in their on minds. Bernadine cheered the Manson murders. (How much more disgusting & cretinous can you get?)
So read this book and find out why draft resisters like myself would never in a hundred years cop to getting any "political education" off the Weathermen. Oglesby had real ideals he never let go of, and for this, the kangaroo court of political correctness took him off the SDS leadership, consequently, sinking the organization on a Ship of Fools built of Weatherman bombs, allowing J. Eager Beaver and his G-string patriotic warriors the benefit of the doubt to a nation which sorely needed the kind of political education Oglesby attempted to bring them, regarding Vietnam.
The Weathermen wanted to bring the full force of Nixon's minions down upon themselves (and by extension, the entire decent population of 60's & 70's "counterculture." With her jiveass Marxism ["speaking Marxese"] and bloody-minded obsession with making terror an instrument of the antiwar left she did more to screw things up than she could ever have put right. And since Oglesby was a contemporary intimate of hers, the conversations he records with her are the best indictment of her fascist personality I've yet encountered. And she WAS a fascist. Look. The problem for any of us sincere war resisters was ANYONE with a gun. Anyone with a gun in their hand and hate in their heart & it didn't matter to us if they were "pig" blue, "grunt" green, or Panther black, it didn't matter whatsoever other than where were they coming from, what was their intention.
Bernadine Dohrn was perhaps the most pigheaded idiot to walk the American scene since Lizzie Borden& Carrie Nation. So nothing at all will ever get me to apologize for this absolute revulsion I feel in contemplating that she and her terrorist husband Bill Ayers never paid for their terrorist intentions. The hypocritical, spoiled, well-off children of the middle class who called themselves "revolutionary" yet ate their dogma straight from the totalitarian troughs of Mao and Lenin were legends in their on minds. Bernadine cheered the Manson murders. (How much more disgusting & cretinous can you get?)
So read this book and find out why draft resisters like myself would never in a hundred years cop to getting any "political education" off the Weathermen. Oglesby had real ideals he never let go of, and for this, the kangaroo court of political correctness took him off the SDS leadership, consequently, sinking the organization on a Ship of Fools built of Weatherman bombs, allowing J. Eager Beaver and his G-string patriotic warriors the benefit of the doubt to a nation which sorely needed the kind of political education Oglesby attempted to bring them, regarding Vietnam.
April 4, 2008
The 1960s Anti-War movement is something that's always been vaguely of interest to me but I've never seriously studied it, so I picked up this book as an introduction to the history.
That was a mistake on my part, because it's not a history; as the title indicates, it's a personal history, or a memoir, of Carl Oglesby's involvement in the SDS. Oglesby started out as a technical writer/editor for a defense subcontractor, got vaguely involved in politics by a circuitous route, and subsequently discovered through research that the Vietnam war was a really, really dumb idea. (The 'ravens' in the title refer to Oglesby's characterization of himself, and others, as neither a hawk nor a dove - not a pacifist for the sake of pacifism, but opposed to stupid and unwinnable wars). Oglesby eventually found himself elected president of the Students for a Democratic Society, writing and delivering anti-war speeches, staging nonviolent protests, traveling to Vietnam and Cuba, and trying to bring moderates and even conservatives into the movement. This, as the movement was radicalizing itself, beginning to make overt appeals to Marxism and revolution and violence.
I feel like this book would be better appreciated by someone with a solid grounding in the relevant background and history, because there were many points where I wished for more context, more information, instead of some level of assumed knowledge. The book is clearly one person's individual point of view, and while it's always calm, measured, and politically moderate, it doesn't quite strive for objectivity. In some ways it feels more like long-after-the-fact persuasion and editorializing and self-justification than mere recollection of the era.
That said, it's a fascinating story. I loved reading about the divisions within the movement, the conflict between moderation and radicalism, especially since I am sometimes equally tempted by both sides. And it's scarily timely to read a book that deals with paranoid administrations fighting unpopular and unwinnable wars...
That was a mistake on my part, because it's not a history; as the title indicates, it's a personal history, or a memoir, of Carl Oglesby's involvement in the SDS. Oglesby started out as a technical writer/editor for a defense subcontractor, got vaguely involved in politics by a circuitous route, and subsequently discovered through research that the Vietnam war was a really, really dumb idea. (The 'ravens' in the title refer to Oglesby's characterization of himself, and others, as neither a hawk nor a dove - not a pacifist for the sake of pacifism, but opposed to stupid and unwinnable wars). Oglesby eventually found himself elected president of the Students for a Democratic Society, writing and delivering anti-war speeches, staging nonviolent protests, traveling to Vietnam and Cuba, and trying to bring moderates and even conservatives into the movement. This, as the movement was radicalizing itself, beginning to make overt appeals to Marxism and revolution and violence.
I feel like this book would be better appreciated by someone with a solid grounding in the relevant background and history, because there were many points where I wished for more context, more information, instead of some level of assumed knowledge. The book is clearly one person's individual point of view, and while it's always calm, measured, and politically moderate, it doesn't quite strive for objectivity. In some ways it feels more like long-after-the-fact persuasion and editorializing and self-justification than mere recollection of the era.
That said, it's a fascinating story. I loved reading about the divisions within the movement, the conflict between moderation and radicalism, especially since I am sometimes equally tempted by both sides. And it's scarily timely to read a book that deals with paranoid administrations fighting unpopular and unwinnable wars...
March 25, 2016
I picked up Ravens at the library on the strength of its cover and didn't managed to put down. An enthralling memoir of the late 1960s and early 1970s. I learned so much history reading this book: of people and events that I had heard of but didn't know in detail, or didn't know were contemporary. I now intend to pick up some of the other books Oglesby suggests.
The book is not perfect-- for one, as with all autobiographical works, I'd be interested to hear whether the people who appear in the book feel it's faithful to events. For another, it's occasionally repetitive, to the point that entire sentences were somehow transplanted wholesale to the third part of the book. Each chapter is organized chronologically, but the book as a whole jumps back and forth a bit, which can get confusing. This would be more justifiable if the theme of each chapter was tighter.
But don't let my nitpicks get in the way. If you've ever had any interest in the anti-war movement, this is a fascinating introduction and analysis, spiced with personal anecdoted that run the gamut from hilarious to tragic. I am much too young to remember the '60s, but I always wished I could have been there; thus, I'd be interested to hear what people who were there have to say about Ravens.
The book is not perfect-- for one, as with all autobiographical works, I'd be interested to hear whether the people who appear in the book feel it's faithful to events. For another, it's occasionally repetitive, to the point that entire sentences were somehow transplanted wholesale to the third part of the book. Each chapter is organized chronologically, but the book as a whole jumps back and forth a bit, which can get confusing. This would be more justifiable if the theme of each chapter was tighter.
But don't let my nitpicks get in the way. If you've ever had any interest in the anti-war movement, this is a fascinating introduction and analysis, spiced with personal anecdoted that run the gamut from hilarious to tragic. I am much too young to remember the '60s, but I always wished I could have been there; thus, I'd be interested to hear what people who were there have to say about Ravens.
May 3, 2010
Insofar as this is a firsthand account of grassroots activism on behalf of peace and social justice, it's invaluable. Unfortunately, Oglesby comes off as an insufferable tool, even in his own book. Too much of this account is boring and irritating self-justification, so that the truly engaging bits, relating the turmoil of the age and the struggle for change it entailed, are mere sideshows to a political prima donna desperately trying to make us care about his incoherent me-against-everything political philosophy.
July 3, 2013
A couple of minor editorial slips reminded me that Oglesby can be an unreliable narrator. For example, he called Eugene McCarthy the "Wisconsin Senator." Well, Joe McCarthy was from Wisconsin. Gene was from some place further west, Minnesota maybe. It's a good book, but Oglesby definitely was definitely a creature of his time... bourgeois, sexist, white-privileged, middle-class male that he was, his heart was in the right place regarding ending the war in Vietnam.
May 21, 2009
Interesting story. The book starts out very well, but by the middle Oglesby begins to sound redundant. The final chapters border on preaching. However, a good description of the 1960's and the anti-war movement.
Read
June 24, 2014Very well written. It's a good book for someone who was but a young child during the war (or wasn't even born yet, or who had been an oblivious adult) to get a real sense of what "60's protest" was about, as opposed to relying on pop culture commercialization and stereotyping of it.
March 5, 2009
biography
July 25, 2008
Interesting "inside" view of the anti-Vietnam War movement... he glosses over the sex & drugs and probably makes himself sound smarter than he was but it was still an intriguing read.
August 2, 2008
The memoir of a man who was heavily involved -- at a high level -- with SDS during the Vietnam War. Eye-opening, well-written and moving.
March 8, 2011
A must read memoir for the anti-war movement of the 1960s.
October 10, 2013
A very eloquent and honest account of the antiwar movement and SDS. It's a great read regardless of your politics.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews