Free Exercise and free speech movement

Two forces collided in the Summer of 1964 which led to the Free Speech Movement on UC Berkeley campus. On the one hand there was a growing political awareness among university students as a result of the visibility of the Civil Rights struggle. Many students increasingly wanted the separation between "the world" and their studies to end. Life throbbed with possiblities, injustice, sadness. Why not use one's experience at college as an occasion to bolster a nascent political commitment? On the other hand one had an Administration at UC Berkeley which made a very bad decision. The decision was provoked, probably, by an inquiry from an Oakland Tribune reporter regarding ownership of a 26' wide strip of concrete at the intersection of Bancroft and Telegraph Avenues in Berkeley which had for several years been the location where (mostly liberal) student groups had set up tables to leaflet, raise funds and try to promote their causes.

A campus policy originating in the 1930s stated that no campus location would be proper place for political advocacy or fund-raising for outside (of campus) groups. This was part of the Sproul plan to keep the university a "neutral" place. This 26' wide strip abutting the UC campus was thought to belong to the City of Berkeley (thus students had to get permits from the City to set up tables there) because the Regents had voted to deed it to the City in the late 1950s. However, in fact, that never really happened. Thus, in Summer 1964, when the Tribune reporter (Carl Irving) began inquiring about why advocacy and fund-raising was allowed on the strip, which was probably University property, the University panicked. They knew that Sen. William Knowland, a rock-ribbed Republican, was editor and publisher of the Tribune and that he had contemptuously dismissed UC Berkeley as the "Little Red Schoolhouse," for its supposed welcoming of Communists. The last thing the Administration wanted to do was to alienate Knowland. He was already seething because of anti-Goldwater protests at the 1964 Republican Convention (in San Francisco), which he suspected were led by UC radicals.

The September 14 Letter

A bumbling UC Berkeley Administration, when Kerr was away for the summer, decided at a series of meetings beginning in July 1964 that the Regents' policy concerning "Use of University Facilities" (i.e., setting up recruitment and fund-raising efforts on campus property) would apply to the 26' strip along Bancroft. This had often been seen as a place where activists could "let off steam," and so the decision to eliminate the space for student tables would be certain to evoke massive opposition. What made things interesting is that the Adminsitrators who had to enforce the action, especially Dean of Students Katherine Towle, disagreed with it but yet had to represent it to the ever-growing groups of protestors. At first it was explained as a sort of "house-cleaning" measure--that the unkempt tables and litter at the entrance to a "great university" was unseemly and unattractive. When the students offered to clean up the area, the justification for the policy changed. Finally, the distinction between the "informing" of people about divergent opinions (which was "OK") and the "advocacy" or "fund-raising and recruitment" of students for off-campus (and mostly left-leaning) activities (which was not "OK") was the one adopted by the University.

But by the time this had happened, the students felt that the Administration was really either caving into pressure from outside itself or had really not thought through the implications of limiting speech in this way. From the perspective of the early leaders in the FSM the irony couldn't have been clearer--at a time when America was coming apart at the seams, when people of conscience had to begin to speak, the Administration of UC Berkeley was splitting hairs of what constituted acceptable speech and telling students that they really had no reason to want to connect their free speech rights with off-campus concerns.

This irony, or hypocrisy, then generated ever-growing student protests in September 1964, as larger and larger numbers of students seemed chagrined by the inexplicability of the UC policy.

October 1-2, 1964

The "signal" event which had an unparalled catalytic event for the FSM was the October 1 arrest of Jack Weinberg for violating the new campus policy. He was hustled off to a police car in Sproul Plaza and then the most remarkable thing happened. The car was surrounded by ever-growing masses of people, making it unable to leave. The crowd grew. For 32 hours, until early evening of October 2, the police car became the "pulpit" of the leaders of the FSM to declare their commitment to free speech on campus. Weinberg was confined to the car during this time. During these hours the 21 year-old philosophy major Mario Savio, already a leader among the students, rose and spoke with such eloquence and apparently non-ideological fervor (i.e., he wasn't just a Communist "hack" or a spokesperson for a particular group) that he became dubbed as the "spokesman" for the movement. All who have written tributes to Savio, who died at 53 in 1996, testify to his remarkable intelligence, calm demeanor, eloquence, and incredible ability to unite his feelings of anomie with those of the crowd. It was also during this 32-hour standoff (resolved by both sides by agreeing to submit the grievances to a representative committee) that some later writers on the FSM talk about a sense of solidarity and common purpose which they never previously had felt.

Conclusion

These then, in bare bones, were the two events which precipitated the FSM. Thousands of pages could be written trying to chronicle the events of those months, to capture the approach to the events of various groups of people, to try to assess the "meaning" or "effect" of the FSM. My last essay tries to put together a few of my thoughts, and fears, relating to this.

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