Dennis Oglesby
*Dennis Oglesby was born on January 21, 1960. He was a Black minister and community activist.
Born in Chicago to insurance executive Dennis Michael Oglesby Sr. and community organizer Sylvia Oglesby, Dennis Jr. grew up in California with his father after his parents divorced. In 1983, he graduated from Rust College, an HBCU in Holly Springs, Mississippi, with a B.A. in Mass Communications. In 1984, he earned his theological degree from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.
He and his wife, Greta Oglesby, were married in 1984 and had two children. Oglesby was ordained as a deacon in 1992 and an elder in 1996. He established the Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church (UMC) Dignity Center. This outreach ministry serves the needs of people experiencing poverty and disenfranchised, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Lecture Series on Racial Reconciliation is an annual event in the life of Hennepin Avenue UMC in Minneapolis, Minn. He was President of Chicago Black Methodists for Church Renewal, Inc., the official Caucus of African Americans of the Northern Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church.
He was a friend and ally of the work of the African American Registry. He served churches in the Northern Illinois and Minnesota Conferences, including Minnesota churches in Minneapolis (Hennepin Avenue and Park Avenue UMCs) and St. Paul (Camphor Memorial UMC). Rev. Dennis Oglesby, who led Camphor Memorial United Methodist Church in St. Paul, died on June 16, 2024.
