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Free Speech Movement

The Free Speech Movement was a student protest which began on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley in 1964 under the informal leadership of Mario Savio, a philosophy, later physics, student. Unprecedented protests by students of the campus demanded that the university administration recognize the students' right to free speech, academic freedom, and political activity on campus.

Student activists, some of whom had traveled with the Freedom Riders and who worked to register Black voters in the South over the summer had set up information tables on campus and were soliciting donations for the Civil Rights movement. Such political activity, or any political activity, on campus was against existing rules.There was also a mandatory "loyalty oath" required of faculty which had lead to dismissals and ongoing controversy over academic freedom. On September 14, 1964, when Dean Katherine Towle announced that existing University regulations prohibiting advocacy of political causes or candidates, no outside political speakers, signing of members, and collection of funds by student organizations at the entrance to campus intersection of Bancroft and Telegraph Avenues would be "strictly enforced". This strip was until then thought to be city property, not campus property. On October 1, 1964, former grad student Jack Weinberg set up a table in defiance of this ban and was arrested. However, a group of about three thousand students spontaneously surrounded the police car in which the student was to be transported. Weinberg did not leave the police car nor did the car move for 36 hours. During this period the car was used as a speaker's podium, a continuous public discussion was held which continued until the charges against that student were dropped. About a month later, the university brought charges against the students who organized the sit-in, resulting in an even larger student protest that all but shut down the university. The center of the protest was Sproul Hall , the campus administration building which protesters took over in a massive sit-in. The sit-in ended on December 3 that year when police arrested over 800 students at Berkeley.

After much disturbance, the University officials slowly backed down. By January 3, 1965, the new acting chancellor, Martin Meyerson , established provisional rules for political activity on the Berkeley campus designating the Sproul Hall steps an open discussion area during certain hours of the day and permitting tables. Today, Sproul Hall and the surrounding Sproul Plaza are active locations for protests, marches, and other controversies, as well as the ordinary daily tables with free "literature" from anyone who wishes to appear, of any political orientation. The Sproul steps, now called "Mario Savio Steps" may be reserved by anyone for noon speech or rally.

One misconception about the FSM was that it was only left-wing oriented. The fact was that all political activity was banned, including such groups as students for Goldwater and other Republican groups. These groups also participated in the movement and benefited from it. Today, speaking in 2004, many groups that set up tables are socially or religiously oriented and not political.

Under pressure from Governor Ronald Reagan, UC President Clark Kerr was dismissed by the UC Board of Regents for being too soft on the protestors. The FBI had kept a secret file on Kerr. Reagan gained political traction by campaigning on a platform to "clean up the mess in Berkeley". This included the earlier protests of the House Committee on Un-American Activities meeting in San Francisco in 1960 that Berkeley students were reputed to be ringleaders of. There, protesters were washed down the steps inside the Rotunda of city hall with fire hoses, as shown in the conservative propaganda film "Operation Abolition", which became an organising tool for the protestors. The FSM was followed in later years first by what some call the "dirty speech movement", freedom in usage of well known profanity, and then in Spring 1965 the Vietnam Day Committee, starting the anti-Vietnam war movement.

See also

External links

  • "People's History of Berkeley" http://barringtoncollective.org/wiki/index.php/PeoplesHistoryOfBerkeley much better on the events leading up to FSM than this wiki aritcle.
  • Free Speech Movement Archives http://www.fsm-a.org/
  • Free Speech Movement Digital Archives from UC Berkeley http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/FSM/


Last updated: 02-10-2005 23:04:34
Last updated: 05-03-2005 17:50:55