Free Speech Movement
What was the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley?
Why did the University of California, Berkeley, initially ban political activism on campus?
What was the outcome of the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley?
What impact did the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley, have on future student protests?
Free Speech Movement, series of peaceful protests by students and several faculty members at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), in late 1964, organized to force the university’s administration to rescind a policy that prohibited political and social activism as well as fundraising on university property. The movement began in mid-September 1964 and concluded in early January 1965 with the end of the university’s restrictions on political discussions or content of speeches.
Background
In the early 1960s most student activism at UC Berkeley took place along a specific stretch of sidewalk at Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue, located near the school’s south entrance and considered city property. Political and civil rights organizations across the spectrum commonly set up card tables to distribute literature and solicit donations for their causes.
On September 14, 1964, dean of students Katherine Towle notified all student organizations that the sidewalk was, in fact, campus property and that student activism and advocacy there would now be prohibited. The decision was made in part to mollify California’s conservative political and business leaders, many of whom were financial donors to the university.
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This was not the first time that the university had attempted to control activism and advocacy on campus. Political demonstrations and other forms of activism had been banned in 1934 by university president Robert Gordon Sproul, ostensibly to combat communist indoctrination. In the 1950s, under pressure from the House Un-American Activities Committee, Sproul established an anti-communism loyalty pledge for university faculty that led to the dismissal of many professors who refused to sign it. University of California president Clark Kerr, who obtained the position in 1958, declared just before his 1967 dismissal by Gov. Ronald Reagan that “the University of California had the most restrictive policies [on political speech] of any university I have known about outside of a dictatorship.”
Representatives of student organizations across the social and political spectrum met with Towle in an effort to have the ban overturned. Classes began on September 21, 1964, and Towle agreed to allow tables and the distribution of literature, but students still could not engage in advocacy or debate. Realizing that the administration had no intent to fully rescind the ban, student organizations decided to defy the ban by setting up tables directly on Sproul Plaza, a major route across campus, in a direct challenge to the university’s administration.
On September 30 five students were cited for violating university regulations and ordered to the dean’s office for punishment. In a show of solidarity, more than 400 students signed a decree stating that they also had violated the ban on activism and demanded to receive the same punishment. Later that day hundreds of protesters joined the five cited students and asked to be received by Towle and the other deans as the five students arrived at her office for disciplinary action. When the deans refused to meet with the crowd, the students staged a peaceful sit-in that lasted until after midnight, even as the five students along with three protest group leaders were indefinitely suspended by the administration.
Student protests
The Free Speech Movement took a dramatic step forward the next day, October 1, when two university deans attempted to cite Jack Weinberg—an activist with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a prominent civil rights group on campus—for violating the ban. When Weinberg refused to give his name or leave university property, the police were called to arrest him. Thousands of students witnessed the attempted arrest and swarmed the police car, chanting, “Take all of us!” An impromptu sit-in that lasted 32 hours prevented Weinberg’s arrest. At the start of the protest, 21-year-old student and activist Mario Savio removed his shoes and climbed atop the police car to give his fellow students a rousing speech about their civil rights. Savio would go on to become a major player in the Free Speech Movement.
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“I saw nonviolence as the ultimate expression of heroism. That squad car became my Greensboro lunch counter and the [Free Speech Movement] became my civil rights campaign.”
—former student Gar Smith, reminiscing on the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement
On October 2 Kerr met with protest leaders to negotiate an agreement. The resulting Pact of October 2 did not resolve the free speech issue but did calm things down for a few weeks. The students agreed to end the police car blockade, and the administration agreed not to prosecute Weinberg, who was booked by police and immediately released. The pact also established a faculty committee to review charges against students who had violated the ban, and a tripartite committee comprising students, faculty, and administration members was formed to review university regulations regarding free speech. But the collaboration collapsed when it became clear that university officials had no intention of reversing the free speech ban on campus grounds. Kerr, politically a liberal, argued that the university was clamping down only on advocacy, not free speech.
Students expressed their anger by again setting up tables for political advocacy, and on November 20 they held a large protest outside a UC board of regents meeting, where governing officials again refused to capitulate to their free speech demands. Over the Thanksgiving holiday disciplinary action was announced against Savio and other movement leaders, which further enraged students.
Their response was quick. On December 2, at a Free Speech Movement rally, Savio gave an impassioned speech in which he encouraged all students to join in support of their free speech rights. An estimated 1,500 students listened to folk singer Joan Baez sing the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” before converging on Sproul Hall and holding a nonviolent sit-in.
California Gov. Pat Brown sent a large contingent of police officers to arrest the protesters. Students did not resist their arrests but did go limp, forcing police to physically carry them from the building. Students and faculty arriving for morning classes witnessed the arrests, nearly 800 in all, resulting in a student boycott of classes and anger among many faculty members, who felt the police response was an overreaction. Multiple concerned faculty members expressed their support for the movement by posting bonds for their students, even as protests continued over the weekend.
In an effort to keep the situation from worsening, Kerr canceled classes on December 7, a Monday, and scheduled a convocation at the Hearst Greek Theatre, a large outdoor amphitheater, to discuss the issue and hopefully bring about a peaceful resolution. More than 15,000 students and faculty attended the meeting, but the students were not allowed to speak. At the meeting’s conclusion, Savio walked onstage to announce a rally, only to be dragged off by police and confined to a small room. The optics were not good for Kerr: a prominent student free speech advocate dragged away by police during a meeting about free speech on campus.
By then, the Academic Senate, the governing body of the university’s faculty, had had enough and was convinced that the situation was beyond the administration’s control. Senate members had long felt that the fight over freedom of speech on campus should have been resolved much sooner and attempted to bring the dispute to a quick and decisive end on December 8 by voting 824–115 to accept a five-point proposal in support of freedom of speech on campus. Leaders of the Free Speech Movement quickly offered their endorsement.
However, on December 18 the university’s board of regents refused to accept the Academic Senate’s proposal and appointed a committee to further study the issue. On January 2, 1965, during an emergency meeting of the board of regents, chancellor Edward W. Strong, a vocal advocate of the ban, was replaced by Martin Meyerson, dean of the College of Environmental Design. The following day Meyerson announced that the campus ban on political advocacy had been dissolved and that the steps of Sproul Hall had been designated a free-discussion zone during certain hours, with tables permitted. The students had won.
Legacy
The Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley was, to a degree, a harbinger of the student protests that would consume America’s university campuses throughout the 1960s and into the ’70s. It helped advocate for free speech on all university campuses and opened the door for movements on issues ranging from civil rights to women’s rights to American involvement in Vietnam.
In 1989 the Berkeley Art Project—a group made up of faculty members, students, and community leaders—launched a national art competition to create a monument commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement. The winning design was a conceptual column of freedom centered on a 6-inch- (15-cm-) wide circle of soil within a 6-foot- (1.8-meter-) wide circle of granite that read, “This soil and the air space extending above it shall not be a part of any nation and shall not be subject to any entity’s jurisdiction.” Designed by Mark Brest van Kempen, then a graduate student at the San Francisco Art Institute, it stands on Sproul Plaza. The university originally hesitated to accept the gift but did so on the condition that it did not refer to the movement but to the principle of free speech.
After Savio’s death in 1996, his family, former colleagues, and admirers established the Mario Savio Memorial Lecture series and the Mario Savio Young Activist Award; both were presented annually until the late 2010s, and the latter included a cash prize. The steps to Sproul Hall were renamed the Mario Savio Steps after Savio’s death.
The Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley proved to students that they could advance the causes they chose to champion through nonviolent means. As a result, student protest as a means of enacting campus and social change became more popular throughout the country.