Carl Oglesby | SDS activist, 76

Carl Oglesby, 76, a leading activist in the 1960s who headed the campus organization Students for a Democratic Society and gave an influential and frequently quoted speech denouncing the Vietnam War and those who broke his "American heart," died Tuesday of lung cancer at his home in Montclair, N.J.

Born in 1935 and an undergraduate at Kent State University, Mr. Oglesby was years older than other '60s student radicals he befriended. He was married, with three children, and was working for a defense contractor. But while studying part time at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, he was so disgusted by the Vietnam War and so taken with the then-emerging Students for a Democratic Society, and the society with him, that he soon became its president and most memorable orator.

His power and idealism peaked in November 1965 with his speech at a massive antiwar rally in Washington. In an address titled "Let Us Shape the Future," he spoke as a disillusioned patriot and radicalized liberal who opposed not just the war, but also much of American foreign policy since the end of World War II and the free-enterprise system he believed demanded endless conflict. In his most memorable phrase, he challenged those who called him anti-American: "I say, don't blame me for that! Blame those who mouthed my liberal values and broke my American heart."

In recent years, he became obsessed with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He wrote the books Who Killed JFK? and The JFK Assassination and contributed an afterword to Jim Garrison's On the Trail of the Assassins. In 2008, his memoir, Ravens in the Storm, was published. He also recorded music and taught at Dartmouth College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

- AP