Free+Speech+Movement


 * Benchmark Name:** Free Speech Movement (1964-1965) on campus of University of California, Berkeley


 * Basic Summary of Benchmark:** Students protested campus bans on political activities and acknowledge of students’ right to free speech and academic freedom


 * Key Manifestations:** Groups of student activists and solicitors for donations for civil rights causes sprang up over the campus. Fundraising for political parties was limited to Democratic and Republican school clubs, and on September 1, 1964, Dean Katherine Towle announced that more regulations on political causes would be strictly enforced. Also, mandatory “loyalty oaths” among faculty members had led to dismissals of staff and controversies over academic freedom. Graduate student Jack Weinberg was arrested on October 1, 1964 after refusing to show id to campus police while sitting at CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) table. Students surrounded the police car he was place in, blocking the car for more then 32 hours with a total of almost 3000 students. The center of the protest for the chargers against Weinberg to be dropped was Sproul Hall, the campus administration building, which housed a massive sit-in. On December 3 police arrested almost 800 students, and a month later, the university brought chargers against the students, causing an even larger student protest. The invention of television news and documentary filmmaking had made it possible to photograph and broadcast moving images of protest activity. This aided in the widespread popularity and support for the anti-war protests among younger generations, which sprung from the wave of civil rights and free speech movements.The Greensboro sit-in by four college students (who asked for a cup of coffee at the local Woolworth’s and were refused because they were black) started a whole wave of sit-ins by young people all over the country. Most of the efforts of the Civil Rights Movement focused on the South and the problem of legally enforced or protected patterns of segregation. One of the first organized activities in the early 60s was the Freedom Rides in May, 1961. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sent two busloads of young blacks and older white pacifists from Washington, D.C. to Jackson, Mississippi. Along the route one bus was burned to the ground,and at the end twenty-seven Freedom Riders were arrested and sentenced to sixty days on the state prison farm. The one successful result of the rides was that bus and train stations were ordered desegregated by the Interstate Commerce Commission. Columbia University experienced a whole series of demonstrations, sit-ins and disruptions that, in some ways, resembled the Berkeley scenario four years earlier: occupation of buildings, confusion of faculty, students and administration, police intervention, student injuries, indignation of the moderate students and faculty, a major strike and endless consideration of reforms, disciplinary actions, etc.


 * Key Personnel:** Dean Katherine Towle, Jack Weinberg


 * Why/How a benchmark?** 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. The Free Speech Movement had long-lasting effects at the Berkeley campus and was a pivotal moment for the civil liberties movement in The Sixties. It was seen as the beginning of the famous student activism that existed on the campus in the 1960's, and continues to a lesser degree today. In the spring of 1965, the Free Speech Movement was followed by the Vietnam Day Committee, a major starting point for the anti-Vietnam war movement. The anti-Vietnam movement was heavily powered by a younger generation, taking over many college campuses. Almost every college student of the 1960s was affected by the youth culture in some way. Although the majority of students did not share every aspect of the culture completely, most students participated in it to some degree. A university campus is an especially favorable place for a youth movement or culture to develop, given the relative freedom of the students in terms of time they have to give to a cause. The fact that, due to the physical situation of the university, large numbers of students can be mobilized to protest, meant that with organization and issues, a whole army-in-waiting committed itself, at first, to correcting the ills of American society, and, later, to overtaking American society.

[|The Free Speech Movement http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1979/2/79.02.03.x.html]
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