Power to the People
How college students in the 1960s redefined free speech
By Rae Harris, Morgan Kornfeind, and Sophia Adamucci
Student protestors at U.C. Berkeley in 1964. Photographer Chris Kjobech. Courtesy of The Oakland Tribune Collection at the Collection of Oakland Museum of California.
The early 1960s saw an explosion of activism and protests, as the Civil Rights Movement spread across the country, and the United States increased its involvement in the Vietnam War. Many students participated in these national movements, so it was only a matter of time before this national wave of activism disseminated onto college campuses.
The style of dissent seen on college campuses today was born out of the Free Speech Movement that began in 1964 on University of California Berkeley's campus.
Berkeley’s campus was gripped by protests during the fall semester, as students and the administration went head to head. The conflict began on Sept. 14, 1964 when the administration sent a letter to students prohibiting tabling and collecting money for off-campus political causes on campus, according to UC Berkeley’s website.
Two weeks of negotiating between the students and administration followed, and on Sept. 30, eight students were suspended for setting up a table without the dean of students’ permission. The suspension of the students led to the first sit-in on campus, and approximately 500 students participated.
For the first time, college students utilized the civil disobedience methods that Civil Rights activists used, said Robert Cohen, professor at New York University and author of multiple books about the Free Speech Movement.
Sproul Hall on U.C. Berkley's campus: where the FSM began
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“It was the first time that mass use of the tactics that were used by the black student movement, the Sit-In Movement in 1960, were brought onto campus to try to change campus politics,” Cohen said. “That was new, and it was very effective. Using those civil disobedience tactics gave students a kind of influence or leverage or power that they hadn’t had before.”
The momentum around the Free Speech Movement grew on Oct. 1 when student Jack Weinberg was arrested after setting up a table on campus in defiance of the ban. Students swarmed Sproul Plaza on campus, and surrounded the police car holding Weinberg. The masses of students prevented the car from leaving the plaza for 36 hours.
During this presentation, student Mario Savio climbed atop the police car and gave a speech. Savio would later become one of the student leaders of the Free Speech Movement.
Cohen said that the national climate in the early 1960s was still reeling from post-McCarthyism, and Berkeley had prohibited communists from coming to campus to give talks during that era. Students felt it was not fair that the university’s administration decided who was allowed to speak on campus, and they felt the administration was restricting students’ freedom of speech by prohibiting tabling, Cohen said. The combination of these frustrations were reflected in the large-scale protests.
“People felt like, even though these tables don’t look really beautiful and it's a bunch of fellow students sitting at a card table, that those were a part of their education,” Cohen said. “It was informing them about current events that they might not have been seen in all their classes.”
Conflicts and negotiations between students leading the Free Speech Movement and the administration continued into December. On Dec. 3, police arrested 800 students participating in a sit-in in an academic building. In late December, the University Board of Regents declared that constitutional protections of speech will apply to students at Berkeley.
Police intervening in student protests became common throughout the 1960s as students on college campuses across the country fought for their own causes. On April 23, 1968, students at Columbia University began sit-ins in various academic buildings to protest research Columbia was doing for the Vietnam War and university plans to build a gym in Harlem, according to Columbia University Libraries. Sit-ins continued until April 30, when police raided academic buildings and arrested 712 students. Police were aggressive when arresting students and 148 were reported injured.
Ruth Meyerowitz was a graduate student at Columbia in 1968, and she participated in the protests. She watched police forcefully remove students, and she was ultimately arrested as well.
“The police started kicking people and kicking them down the stairs, yanked them by the hair or threw them down the stairs,” Meyerowitz said. “When I saw that, I just walked out, and we were all put in these vans.”
UC Berkeley and Columbia University were just two of the many campuses that experienced student activism during the 1960s and into the 1970s.
"Bloody Thursday"
In cities all over the United States, student protests, sit-ins and demonstrations were occurring on campuses everywhere. And yet, the epicenter of these protests continually returned to the Free Speech Movement's birthplace: UC Berkeley.
A boiling point for the Free Speech Movement occurred on the UC Berkeley campus on May 15, 1969. “Bloody Thursday,” it was later called. It all began about a month earlier, when the underground student newspaper, The Berkeley Barb, announced plans to develop a so-called “People's Park.”
According to UC Berkeley archives, on April 18, 1969, The Berkeley Barb announced that a park was to be built. Two days later, People's Park began. People came to plant bushes and small trees, working with hand tools and borrowed backhoes. They erected tents and tarps and began living day and night on the property.
The park was designed to be a free speech haven for members of a variety of alternative groups. The goal was to furnish another space on campus for members of the community to organize and rally against the injustices occurring in Vietnam and beyond.
Michael Delacour, called the “face of People’s Park,” spoke about his experience in the 1990 documentary, “Berkeley in the Sixties.”
“We wanted a free speech area that wasn't really controlled like Sproul Plaza was. It was another place to organize, another place to have a rally. The park was secondary," said Delacour. "The university's free speech microphone was available to all students, with few (if any) restrictions on speech. The construction of the park involved many of the same people and politics as the 1964 Free Speech Movement.”
But dreams for the hallowed park soon turned into a bleak reality.
According to the UC Berkeley archives, “In the pre-dawn hours of May 15, 1969, the University took back the park. One hundred California Highway Patrol officers surrounded the Park and the University ordered those sleeping in the park to leave. All but three left. They were arrested and all property was removed. A cyclone fence was erected by early morning.”
Within hours, protests turned violent. Michael Bonazzola was an eighteen-year-old sophomore living on Dwight Way, just up from the People’s Park, when the riot began.
Michael Bonazzola in 1975
“Demonstrators wouldn’t leave, the university wouldn’t budge. I’m not sure how long the standoff lasted, but as I recall it was at least several days before a decision was made by the government and law enforcement to break it up,” said Bonazzola. “While National Guard was there, I also remember seeing the Alameda County sheriff's, also known as the 'blue meanies' after the Beatles, because they wore blue jumpsuits in addition to riot gear and helmets.”
Bonazzola recalled not being able to leave his building that morning due to fears of being hurt or even arrested. He said that the “blue meanies” and the police force used the roof of his apartment building to stage the raid.
“They came pounding down our stairs on their way outside and down to the park. The park was cleared in a short period of time with the violence and casualties described in many articles.”
Following the raid, an afternoon of havoc ensued. The Daily Californian wrote on May 16, 1969 that fifty-eight people were hospitalized. By the end of the day, tear gas had penetrated the entire south campus area and the police fired "bird shots" into crowds of demonstrators. There was blood streaming down the faces of participants caused by shots from the police’s guns.
“Free speech is an inalienable right in this country, a right abused in this era with lies and fabrications, much of which stemmed from the whole Vietnam fiasco,” said Bonazzola. “It was important for everyone to be able to express their feelings and beliefs and not just to toe the party line. Without cell phones and cameras everywhere and the 24-hour news cycle we have today, I think the powers that be thought they could suppress the dissent.”
Looking Ahead
The legacy of the Free Speech Movement and other student movements lived on past the protests, according to Dr. William Rorabaugh, a history professor at the University of Washington.
“FSM inspired student movements on other campuses and inspired all sorts of activism in Berkeley, much of which came from non-student activists,” said Rorabaugh.
In the aftermath of the FSM, Sproul Hall, where the mass sit-in occurred, was designated as an open discussion area for students of all political beliefs. In the following months, the Free Speech Movement stepped out of the spotlight and the anti-war movement followed.
As for “Bloody Thursday” and the People’s Park, “Months after the ‘riot’ and break-up of the demonstration, the block was indeed paved over and made into a parking lot,” said Bonazzola.
Many people refused to park there in honor of what had happened.
The former People’s Park continued to be a place of social unrest. In 1979, protesters began tearing up the asphalt and setting up tents to lived in the west end of the Park until heavy rains drove them out.
The Free Speech Movement, Bloody Thursday and the other movements of the time paved the way for the student activism, and with political and social unrest happening today, protests continue to be a popular way to stand up the “man”.
“In the 60s and in the 70s, we were coming out of a period of cultural repression,” said Bob Sullivan, a culture and communications professor at Ithaca College. “The ability to articulate unpopular, seditious ideas was in one sense, a response to that oppression.”
Bob Sullivan in the 1960s
Today’s protesters even use similar tactics to the ones used in the 1960s, according to The Atlantic. Students both then and now have used confrontational tactics in their activism. Parallels can be drawn between student protests against Robert McNamara at Harvard University in 1966 and student protests against Milo Yiannopoulos at UC Berkeley.
Julian E. Zelizer, a historian at Princeton University, wrote on The Atlantic that for Trump’s opponents, his presidency is the new Vietnam.
“That’s why some are starting to take to the streets and doing what they believe is necessary—within the boundaries of the law—to change the course of history,” he wrote.
Parallels between unrest and protest during the 1960s and today can be drawn, but there are stark differences between yesterday and today. Social divides were deeper and racism was more openly practiced in society, according to The Washington Post.
While the social movements of yesterday and today have been beneficial in furthering the First Amendment, Sullivan thinks it is more nuanced. He said that as we’ve opened up a discourse to everything, we have reduced truthfulness and made all language equally unimportant.
“You can have a Neo-Nazi get up and say whatever they want and because that's just as easily justified as a scientist talking about global warming,” said Sullivan. “Then they are both reduced to a kind of mereness, just talk. And that’s been the tragedy of free speech.”
Sullivan believes that word is action, and that the two cannot be separated, as they are intrinsically equal. And others agree.
“Speech is a hybrid in that it partakes of both thought and action,” said Michael P. Zukert, a political science philosopher at the University of Notre Dame.
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"Speech is thought made flesh — made actual in the world, either visibly or audibly," Zuckert told National Affairs. "Speech becomes a presence in the social world, and can directly affect those in it.”
With this in mind, we look at decades of protests on college campuses as not merely an exercise in free speech, but rather an ever-evolving movement. The words Mario Savio spoke were not simply words- but a call to action, a true revolution in the making. The Free Speech Movement on college campuses in the 1960s laid the groundwork for students and countless others to find their voice and seek to rectify the many injustices of their time.
Zuckert feels that school authorities should encourage free speech discussions between groups who disagree.
“The role of authorities on campus should not be to ‘fix’ the particular problem of free speech in the university — and there is no decisive resolution,” he said. “Instead, by encouraging tact, consideration, and tolerance, schools can help to regulate behavior and facilitate discussions among people who strongly disagree.”