These radical photos show the original Berkeley free speech movement in its raucous early days
Before the campus was a conservative target
Free speech—the right for anyone to express their views publicly—is central to our nation’s identity. The First Amendment makes sure of that, no matter how offensive the message or reviled the messenger. In this country even Nazis get their say.
When, in October 1964, a group of Freedom Riders returning from a voter drive in Mississippi began soliciting donations to the civil rights movement on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, they were met with resistance. At the time, students were forbidden from campaigning or raising money for political causes on school grounds. The ensuing months-long standoff between student activists, law enforcement, and UC authorities has come to embody the spirit of the First Amendment, standing as an enduring example of committed political activism and a precursor to much of the countercultural rumblings which would define the decade, especially in the Bay Area. In the words of Mario Savio—who became the Free Speech Movement’s de-facto student leader when he spontaneously mounted a police cruiser in the middle of Sproul Plaza to prevent the arrest of fellow activist Jack Weinberg—“there is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even tacitly take part.” In those lines you can practically predict Timothy Leary’s epochal “turn on, tune in, drop out” speech delivered across the bay two years later. His sentiment, the hippies, and the anti-Vietnam war effort all got their start in Berkeley that fall.
