Free Speech Movement:

When Berkeley was Ablaze

 

[This was a research paper for a college course on California history. I post it here in hopes of inspiring students today who find themselves oppressed, and to salute those students and teachers who cared enough to fight to the good fight. While this paper may get bogged down in dates and details, it lays out the strategies and tactics that were used then and could be used today to further the cause of freedom. It examines the dynamics of power and how they contributed to the success of these protesters. Enjoy.]

 

Intro

Since the 1930s, UC Berkeley had restricted political speech.[1] Increased political activity during the Great Depression prompted University President Robert Gordon Sproul in 1934 to ban all political and religious meetings on campus.[2] During the 1956 presidential campaign, candidate Adlai Stevenson was actually forced to speak at the distant edge of campus to avoid violating this ban.[3]

Then in the Fall of 1964, all hell broke lose. Out of nowhere, it seemed, thousands of students clashed with administrators and police, demanding political freedom. This quiet institution became a symbol of political combat. America watched as students seized a police car and used it as their soapbox, standing on its roof to address the crowd of their peers. America saw hundreds of police charge into a building to drag out students. America saw the school’s administration crumble under the weight of student anger.

I hope to examine how this political firestorm ignited, how it continued burning for three months, and what it accomplished.

 

A Gasoline Puddle

            The Berkeley college students of 1964 were not the passive students of earlier years. They had been radicalized.

The seeds of the Free Speech Movement were planted in May 1960 when Berkeley students tried to attend the San Francisco hearings of the controversial House Un‑American Activities Committee (HUAC).[4] The hearings were advertised as being open to the public. The only members of the public who actually got in, however, turned out to be those chosen by organizations that supported the red-baiting work of HUAC.[5]

When denied admission, students held a sit-in. Police used fire hoses to blast them off the steps of city hall. Several students were arrested.[6]

HUAC made a film about the event entitled Operation Abolition, which provoked hostility from college students and inspired greater political activism.[7] Protester Abbie Hoffman later described Operation Abolition:

The film proposed that the students, workers, and teachers who protested HUAC had been duped by a handful of Communist agitators. I doubted more than a handful of protesters had ever heard of the “ring leaders” being labeled as “ruthless, cunning enemies of our system” by the southern congressman narrating the film. I got so angry I jammed a pencil point into my hand.[8]

 

Hoffman wasn’t the only one angered by the film’s attempt to demonize protesters. Yet despite this attempt, many viewers saw the demonstrators in the film as heroes. Steven Weissman, who would emerge among the students in the Free Speech Movement, wrote, “If only HUAC knew how many of us first thought of coming to Berkeley after seeing that film.”[9]

Furthermore, the Civil Rights Movement was in full bloom, inspiring grassroots political action on the part of students. Only one year before Berkeley ignited, hundreds of Bay Area students had been arrested for sit-ins at the Sheraton Palace Hotel among other businesses accused of racist hiring practices.[10]

As Free Speech Movement leader Mario Savio later said, “The seemingly inexhaustible energy which the Berkeley students had so long devoted to the struggle for Negro rights was now aimed squarely on the vast, faceless University administration. This is what gave the Free Speech Movement its initial impetus.”[11]

 

Administrators Drop the Match

            While most political speech had long been banned at UC Berkeley, this ban had not been strongly enforced. As political activism increased, however, UC Berkeley’s administration and the UC Board of Regents tightened restrictions on political activity on campus. In 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled these restrictions violated free speech, but administrators ignored the law and continued their restrictions.[12]

The Oakland Tribune’s right-wing publisher, William Knowland, pressured the university to end all political activity on campus.[13] One reason may be that on September 4th of that year, students had picketed the Tribune in a protest organized by the Ad Hoc Committee to End Discrimination.[14]

The administration now banned tabling, fund-raising, and recruiting for off‑campus political groups.[15] (Nearly all student clubs were “off-campus” groups. School bureaucracy made it too difficult to be an on-campus group.[16] ) Supporting off-campus political groups had been officially prohibited before then, but that rule was not enforced until now. There had always been a little free speech zone on the south edge of campus on the sidewalk at the corner of Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue — free if only because it was unclear whether this spot belonged to the school or to the city. Administrators now banned all tabling at Bancroft and Telegraph on the pretext that it obstructed the flow of foot-traffic entering the school.[17] On September 14th, Dean of Students Kathryn Towle sent letters to all student organizations informing them of this ban.[18]

 

The First Flames – “United Front”

Students, angry over these new restrictions, formed a “United Front.” This front included political student groups ranging from right-wing Students for Goldwater to the left-wing Young Socialist Alliance. As student Jackie Goldberg later put it, “Groups that would shout at each other from card tables at Bancroft and Telegraph were suddenly ... allies. Only the University administration could have accomplished that.”[19]

On September 21, the first day of classes, Dean Towle met with the “United Front.” Towle tried to calm them by clarifying the rules and announcing some new modifications. Tabling would be permitted so long as students received University permits and so long as they did not raise funds, recruit new members, or advocate a position on any controversial issue. Students would be allowed to inform others of their position on a controversial issue, but could not advocate. If that sounds confusing, it should. This left administrators free to decide which students were informing and which were advocating.[20]

Students were not satisfied. They obtained permits, but used their tables to advocate, raise funds, and recruit members.[21]

On September 28th, as Chancellor Strong presented awards for athletes, 1,000 students picketed, requesting a change in the speech policies. Chancellor Strong responded by modifying these rules. The University would now allow advocating positions on ballot propositions and campaigning for or against candidates who were up for election. No other changes would be made.[22]

For the next two days, administrators warned various student groups to stop prohibited tabling.[23] On September 30th, the school began disciplinary proceedings against five students for manning tables at Bancroft and Telegraph.[24] The Students were cited and told to attend a 3:00 meeting with the deans. Several other students who were manning tables asked to go to the meeting as well. Between 400 and 600 students even signed statements declaring they were equally responsible for tabling, figuring the school could not easily punish them all and would therefore have to punish no one.[25] [26]

At 3:00, more than 300 students showed up for the disciplinary meeting. Only the five cited students were allowed inside. Dean Williams then allowed three “leaders” of the protesting students to join. Remaining students waited outside the Dean's Office until the next morning, only to be told by Chancellor Strong the eight students had been suspended indefinitely.[27]

The sit-in continued for another three hours. Students also began flaunting their rebellion by tabling right on the steps of Sproul Hall (the administrative building).[28]

 

Explosion

On October 1st, angry students set up ten tables in front of the administration building. They scheduled a protest rally for noon that day. They demanded a change in the rules, and also demanded equal treatment for all students under the rules. They further asked administrators to lift the eight suspensions.[29]

At 11:45, Dean Van Houten brought one other dean and the campus police chief to one of the tables in Sproul Plaza.[30] [31] The authorities, ignoring a dozen other people tabling, approached Jack Weinberg.[32] Weinberg’s table offered literature about the Congress of Racial Equality and also held a collection jar for that civil rights organization. The authorities told Weinberg he was violating the school’s policy. Weinberg refused to fold up his table. The campus police chief arrested him.[33]

A crowd of students gathered around, chanting, “Take all of us.” When the cop shoved Weinberg into the back of a police car, students surrounded the car and sat down, refusing to let the squad car leave with Weinberg.[34]

Mario Savio jumped on the car’s roof. This philosophy major, a civil rights activist who had just returned from Mississippi Freedom Summer, made a speech denouncing the administration’s repression of free speech.[35] Though Savio had suffered a stuttering problem in high school,[36] he now became “the student rebellion’s most eloquent orator.” [37] Other students followed Savio’s example, lining up one-by-one to climb on the roof the of the police car and speak.[38] (All these students politely took off their shoes to minimize their damage to the car.[39])

Administrators announced they would not negotiate the school rules. Some frat boys threw lit cigarettes and eggs at the protesters, but nothing seemed to break the protesters’ determination. The hecklers finally left, following an appeal from the school’s Catholic chaplain.[40]

Students also occupied Sproul Hall, demanding an end to the suspension of the eight students. Police ordered them out, and administrators closed Sproul Hall early. [41]

A group of faculty members convinced President Kerr to meet with students. On October 2nd, Kerr met with Savio. Kerr also called in over 450 police officers to disperse the protest if agreement was not reached.[42]

Savio soon announced an agreement. Police left. Protesters disbursed. Weinberg was booked, but the university dropped the charges, as agreed.[43]  The agreement also included provisions that would have the eight suspensions decided by a committee of the Academic Senate, and have rule-changes examined by another committee.[44]

The squad car had been held in place for 32 hours. The students now had an agreement with the administration. Students even paid to repair the squad car roof that had dented under the weight of various speakers.[45] After the students’ victory, the school seemed ready to resume its quiet operations.

 

The Fire Rekindled: FSM

Following the initial victory, the broad coalition of student groups that had formed the “United Front” now created the more formal organization to enforce the agreement: the Free Speech Movement (FSM). This organization was structured as follows: Each student group sent representatives to a large committee. That committee elected delegates to a steering committee that made day-to-day tactical decisions by arriving at consensus after thorough debate. These leaders kept the student body informed by printing leaflets describing the day’s events, distributing 20,000 copies each day.[46]

FSM’s organization was effective. As FSM steering committee member Jackie Goldberg later wrote:

We were able to write, publish, and distribute ten to twenty thousand leaflets within hours. We communicated regularly with the press, with other campuses, with elected officials, and with an enormous Berkeley campus. We fed people at mass rallies and at long meetings. We were able to speak to living groups, apartment dwellers, and commuters at a variety of venues. All this with no real money coming in and while under attack from virtually all corners of mainstream society.[47]

 

The division of labor, though, was tainted by sexism. Bettina Aptheker, a prominent member of FSM, later wrote, “it was men who dominated our meetings and discussions. Women did most of the clerical work and fundraising and provided food. None of this was particularly recognized as work, and I never questioned this division of labor or even saw it as an issue!”[48]

On October 5th, the Chancellor put together a committee to explore the problems raised by the students, as agreed.[49] He did not, however, wait to receive recommendations from students or faculty before appointing 10 members of the Campus Committee on Political Activity (CCPA). He also announced the Faculty Committee on Student Conduct, appointed by the Chancellor, would decide the cases of the eight suspended students, not the Academic Senate as earlier agreed.[50]

The CCPA held its first public meeting on October 13th. About 50 students spoke at the meeting; all but one called for the Committee to be disbanded and reformed in a way that kept better faith with the October 2nd agreement. The next day, the FSM announced they would start protesting again if the administration would not sit down with them and discuss their differences in interpreting the October 2nd agreement. [51]

On October 15th, President Kerr finally sat down with student leaders. Arthur Ross, a Professor of Industrial Relations, mediated. President Kerr agreed to send the cases of the eight suspended students to an Academic Senate committee. He also agreed to restructure the CCPA with eighteen members, including four from the FSM, to discuss changing rules on speech.[52] (Originally, the CCPA was to have only 2 members selected by FSM.)[53] The CCPA later agreed that all its decisions would be by consensus, with each group (students, faculty, administration) getting one vote.[54]

That same day Kerr made this agreement, the Academic Senate, at President Kerr’s request, put together an ad hoc committee to decide on disciplining the eight suspended students. Law professor Ira Heyman led this committee.[55] [56] After another six days, the Heyman committee requested the eight students be invited back to school temporarily until the matter was resolved. Kerr refused.[57]

On November 7th, the CCPA’s administration faction announced it would never support the students’ position on political advocacy.[58] The FSM began protests.

Two days later, 1,200 students rallied on the steps of Sproul Hall. Students also ended their moratorium on tabling by setting up tables in front of Sproul Hall. University officials took the names of students who tabled. Then 800 students signed statements insisting they, too, had manned tables. The next day, Chancellor Strong responded by dissolving the CCPA, ending all discussion of rule-changes.[59]

On November 12th, the Heyman committee made its decision about the suspensions. They recommended that six of the eight suspended students be immediately reinstated and the discipline expunged from their records. It recommended the remaining two students (Savio and Art Goldberg[60]) be officially suspended for six-weeks, less than the time they had already served in suspension. Chancellor Strong announced he would not act on these recommendations until after December 8^th, when the Academic Senate held its next official meeting.[61]

On November 20th, over 3,000 students rallied, with Joan Baez singing, while waiting for the Regents to weigh in with their decision.[62] Following a recommendation from Kerr and Strong,[63] the Regents finally ended the suspensions of the eight students but refused to clear their records. Savio and Goldberg were placed on probation. The Regents also agreed to allow fund‑raising and recruitment, and allow some political advocacy. They would not, however, allow advocacy of illegal action such as sit-ins and other civil disobedience.[64] “In principle,” Bettina Aptheker wrote later, “this was unacceptable because the advocacy in such cases was still protected by the First Amendment. In practice it was unacceptable because at the height of the Civil Rights Movement it was precisely the advocacy of nonviolent civil disobedience that assured the promise of success.”[65]

Two days later, students held a sit-in at Sproul Hall that lasted only three hours. [66] After weeks of rallies and finally a partial victory, the Free Speech Movement was losing energy. The student body was losing its anger. The fire, it seemed, had finally smoldered out.

Then the Chancellor fanned the flames by bringing new charges against FSM leaders. Mario Savio, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and Brian Turner all faced new disciplinary action. The FSM, burning with renewed passion, immediately demanded the school drop charges against these leaders within 24 hours or face demonstrations.[67]

 

Another Explosion: the Sit-In

  Administrators refused to drop the charges. The next day, as threatened, 6,000 students attended a rally denouncing the administration’s action. Students took over the administration headquarters in Sproul Hall with a sit-in, and singer Joan Baez showed up to lead the protesters in singing “We Shall Overcome.”[68] How many students were involved in this sit-in? Reports vary, ranging from 800[69] to 1,500[70].

Students spent the night eating peanut butter sandwiches, watching Charlie Chaplin films, and enjoying “Free University” classes.[71] The next day (December 3), Governor Pat Brown ordered in over 600 cops.[72] The police dragged out protesters one floor at a time.[73]  They arrested over 700 students. More than 600 students would be convicted of trespassing, resisting arrest, or both.[74] While cops were dragging out protesters, more students arrived to picket outside Sproul Hall, protesting the police action.[75]

Faculty members raised bail money for students.[76] About 900 faculty members met and called for free speech and amnesty for the protesters. All day on December 3^rd, teachers who tried to contact administration could not get through. All administrators were apparently under orders not to talk to faculty.[77]

The next day, many students refused to attend classes. Two departments cancelled all their classes, and many professors refused to cross picket lines to teach.[78]

 

Administrators Learn not to Play with Matches

Protesters were now demanding more than before. No longer did they merely want the right to free speech in one small zone. They wanted free speech campus‑wide.[79] In Savio’s words, “only the courts have the power to determine and punish abuses of freedom of speech.”[80]

If the FSM was in any danger of flagging again, the administration reenergized the group on December 7th. At the Berkeley Greek Theatre, the administration held a meeting with students. When Mario Savio attempted to speak, he was grabbed off the stage by campus police in front of 16,000 fellow students.[81] As Savio later recalled:

There was this meeting at the Greek Theatre. [University President] Clark Kerr had decided on the solution. He had his plan. His plan had nothing in it about free speech. No correspondence at all between his plan for solving the “campus chaos,” which was all he was concerned about. Nothing at all in his plan that was responsive to any of the things that we had said. ... The speech was over. They turned off the microphone. I walked to the center of the stage to tell people, to announce simply that we’re going to have a meeting down in [Sproul] Plaza. That was my intention. To discuss these issues. We were afraid of losing [the battle] at that very moment. And we could have. And fortunately, they had ready their cops, and they came and they pulled me down.”[82]

 

The administration’s public behavior contrasted sharply with that of the FSM. As Steven Weissman wrote, “Meetings of the FSM’s Executive Committee and Graduate Coordinating Committee, both of which I came to chair, encouraged vigorous, often rollicking debate. We even opened the floor to those in our midst who were conniving with administration envoys to scuttle the movement.”[83]

Angered by the administration’s suppression of dissent, graduate students responded with a strike that shut down the university. On December 8th, the Academic Senate voted in support of the FSM demands.[84]  By a vote of 824 to 115, they supported repealing all university restrictions on the content of speech.[85] Students cheered; many cried.[86]

In January, a new campus chancellor was appointed.[87] The chancellor followed the faculty recommendations. The Regents declared the university would no longer violate free speech.[88] The FSM had victory at last.

 

A Fireplace in History

The first white student movement since the 1930’s was a success.[89] But it did not end there. This success inspired more students to stand up.

For another five years, the UC Berkeley students, now broken-in to civil disobedience, continued disrupting school activity while fighting for various causes.[90]

By 1966, conservative Ronald Reagan moaned:

There has been a ... morality and decency gap at the University of California at Berkeley where a small minority of beatniks, radicals, and filthy speech advocates have brought such shame to and such a loss of confidence in a great University that applications for enrollment were down 21% in 1967 and are expected to decline even further.[91]

 

The university had changed greatly since its days of quiet compliance.

Apatheker later reported that her visibility as a woman in the FSM inspired other women. “I had no idea of the extent to which my participation was significant to other women simply because I was female. Years later I learned that there were women who left abusive marriages because they saw me on television, women who decided to speak up in their classes or to say what they really thought to a male companion or lover, because they heard me speak at a rally on Sproul Hall steps.”[92]

In their patriotic fight for American freedom, these protesters became the symbol of an era. It is hard to say how much credit these protesters really deserve. Much of their success derived from an administration that tried to beat them into submission and saw its efforts backfire. Administrators should have learned here the lesson Princess Leia tried to teach the evil governor in Star Wars: the more that a leader tightens his grip, the more subjects slip through his fingers.

Yet the students deserve credit. When the time came for action, they were ready. They had the courage, the dedication, and the organization to take on the administration. And they won.

 

Bibliography

 

 

Primary Sources

 

Aptheker, Bettina. “Gender Politics and the FSM: A Meditation on Women and Freedom of Speech.” The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s. Ed. Robert Cohen and Reginald E. Zelnik. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2002. An essay by an FSM leader.

 

“The Berkeley Free Speech Controversy (Preliminary Report).” December 13, 1964. A report by a fact-finding committee of graduate political scientists.

 

Goldberg, Jackie. “War is Declared!” The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s. Ed. Robert Cohen and Reginald E. Zelnik. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2002. An essay by a woman who served on the FSM’s steering committee.

 

Hoffman, Abbie. Soon to be a Major Motion Picture. New York: Berkley Books, 1980. Hoffman’s autobiography.

 

Kerr, Clark.  Letter to Phillip Burton. May 29, 1964. Online at http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt3199n61q. A letter from Clark Kerr to Phillip Burton.

 

Reagan, Ronald. “Ronald Reagan Denounces the Morality Gap at Berkeley, 1966.” Major Problems in California History. Ed. Sucheng Chan and Spencer Olin. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1997. A speech by the actor turned politician.

 

Savio, Mario. “Mario Savio Defends the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, 1965.” Major Problems in California History. Ed. Sucheng Chan and Spencer Olin. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1997. An essay by the FSM’s most prominent leader.

 

Savio, Mario. “Thirty Years Later.” The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s. Ed. Robert Cohen and Reginald E. Zelnik. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2002. A transcription of a speech Savio gave three decades later.

 

Weissman, Steven. “Endgame.” The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s. Ed. Robert Cohen and Reginald E. Zelnik. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2002. An article by a member of the FSM steering committee.

 

 

 

Secondary Sources

 

Burns, Stewart.  Social Movements of the 1960’s: Searching for Democracy. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990. A history of several grass-roots movements including FSM.

 

Cohen, Robert. “The Many Meanings of the FSM.” The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s. Ed. Robert Cohen and Reginald E. Zelnik. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2002. An essay by a historian.

 

Lustig, R. Jeffrey. “The Free Speech Movement: Protest and Community.”  The Whole World’s Watching: Peace and Social Justice Movements of the 1960’s & 1970’s. Berkeley: Berkeley Art Center Association, 2001. An essay by a political science professor.

 

Rice, Richard B. and William A Bullough and Richard J. Orsi.  The Elusive Eden: A New History of California. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002. A textbook.

 

Those Who Make the Waves: Vol. 3, No. 1. Online at: http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt4489n6q1. A thorough article including a timeline.