On Oct. 1, 1964, young climbed aboard the police car holding activist Jack Weinberg and energized a growing crowd of students in Sproul Plaza with the first of many impromptu speeches that would constitute the birth of the (FSM) as it is known today. 

 

The Free Speech Movement was a student protest on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley under the informal leadership of students Mario Savio, Brian Turner, Steve Weissman, Art Goldberg, Bettina Aptheker, Jackie Goldberg, and others. In protests unprecedented at the time, students insisted that the university administration lift a ban on on-campus political activities and acknowledge the students’ right to free speech and academic freedom. 

On that first day of October, former graduate student Jack Weinberg was sitting at the CORE table. He refused to show his identification to the campus police and was arrested. There was a spontaneous movement of students to surround the police car in which he was to be transported. Weinberg did not leave the police car, nor did the car move for 32 hours. At one point, there may have been 3,000 students around the car.

This moment might illustrate the most perfect microcosm of the Free Speech movement because after Savio jumped on the police car, the students, almost 10,000 of them, sitting around the car, passed around a collection to pay for the repair of the police car. You see, these Cal students wanted to prove above everything else that they were good Americans, and fighting for these liberties was only one part of their duty as citizens.

So Mario stood atop that police car an shouted”

                   “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you cant take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”   

 So Mario used the car as a speaker’s podium and a continuous public discussion was held which continued until the charges against Weinberg were dropped. The center of the protest was Sproul Hall, the campus administration building which protesters took over in a massive sit-in. The sit-in ended on the 3^rd of December, when police arrested close to 800 students. About a month later, the university brought charges against the students who organized the sit-in, resulting in an even larger student protest that all but shut down the university.

READ MORE ON MARIO SAVIO and the FREE SPEECH MOVEMENT

 Aftermath

After much disturbance, the University officials slowly backed down. By January 3^rd, 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. This applied to the entire student political spectrum, not just the liberal elements that drove the FSM

Most outsiders, however, identified the Free Speech Movement as a movement of the Left. Students and others opposed to U.S. foreign policy did indeed increase their visibility on campus following the FSM’s initial victory. In the spring of 1965, the FSM was followed by the Vietnam Day Committee, a major starting point for the anti-Vietnam war movement.

1966-1970

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. There was a substantial voter backlash against the players involved in the Free Speech Movement. Ronald Reagan won an unexpected victory in the fall of 1966 and was elected Governor; the newly elected governor directed the UC Board of Regents to dismiss UC President Clark Kerr because of the perception that he had been too soft on the protestors. The FBI had kept a secret file on Kerr.

Reagan had gained political traction by campaigning on a platform to "clean up the mess in Berkeley". In the minds of those involved in the backlash, a wide variety of protests and a wide variety of concerned citizens and activists had become lumped together.

Today, Sproul Hall and the surrounding Sproul Plaza are active locations for protests and marches, as well as the ordinary daily tables with free literature from anyone who wishes to appear, of any political orientation. A wide variety of groups of all political, religious and social persuasions set up tables at . The Sproul steps, now called "Mario Savio Steps," may be reserved by anyone for a speech or rally. An on-campus restaurant commemorating the event, the Mario Savio Free Speech Movement Cafe, resides in a portion of the Moffitt Underground Library.