Diana Oughton - SDS and The Jesse James Gang

SDS and The Jesse James Gang

Ayers and Oughton were involved with Students for a Democratic Society while working at CCS, but it was not until after the closure of the school that they became involved as full-time organizers. Their lives became consumed by meetings, organizing, and planning "actions". It was during this time that Ayers and Oughton met Terry Robbins. In March 1968, Oughton helped create a women’s liberation group at a time when the issues were just beginning to emerge among radicals. The group met every week or so, wherever the women could find room. Most of the talk seemed to center on the subordinate role of women in the radical movement and on the sexual oppression of women by the “macho” tendency of males to regard sex as conquest. During these meetings Oughton often discussed the role that women played in the SDS, which was a combination of being a sexual object, an office clerk, and a housekeeper. Later in 1968 Oughton told a friend that while she was away for five days, Ayers had slept with other women. She told the friend she tried to convince herself that it didn't matter, but it did.

Also in 1968, Oughton and Ayers became part of the Jesse James Gang, which banded together with about 40 others against the moderates. The Jesse James Gang replaced the University of Michigan SDS chapter. Robbins, Oughton, and Ayers worked in partnership with Jim Mellen from the Revolutionary Youth Movement Group. The Vietnam War entered its third year in the middle of 1968. The early student movement had taken their moral stance from the teachings of Albert Camus, who taught that thinking men have the responsibility to find a way in the world to be neither a victim or the executioner. Four events in 1968 turned the American student movement into self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries: the Viet Cong's Tet Offensive; the student sit-in at Columbia University; the near-revolution in France; and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Each event helped change the way American radicals viewed their own situations.

By the end of 1968, the revolutionaries were tired of waiting for change, and no longer had allegiance to or trust in America's democracy. One of the few actions by the Jesse James Gang occurred on the University of Michigan campus while Robben Fleming, the university president, was speaking to a group of students inside a school building. Oughton spoke outside with a portable address system, while the Jesse James Gang handed out sliced pieces of bread, shouting, "Here's the bread. Get the baloney inside."

The 1968 annual national SDS convention was held at Michigan State University. Oughton and Ayers were participants sponsored by Eric Chester, who was a Voice-SDS leader in Ann Arbor. The Gang insisted that action was the only thing likely to create a situation in which radical solutions to American problems would be considered. The Gang offered a tight, validating community within which members could express their rage and frustration about the status quo, and their empathy for suffering.