50 years after Berkeley students started a revolution the stories behind the pictures the people behind the movement sit in for an NBC bay area special the Free Speech movement hello I'm Diane dwire in all social movements from the revolution to civil rights and Beyond history shows us that it takes a Confluence of events that makes the perfect storm for that movement to take hold so too was the case for the Free Speech movement it happened here in the fall of 1964 50 years ago on the UC Berkeley campus now is the time to get rid of segregation and discrimination all over this nation now is the time is a time when the operation of the machine become so odious makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part you can't it was almost as if the country was waking up from a long Slumber of the [Music] 1950s it was November 22nd and I was already at Cal and uh came out of classes and uh there were clusters there was a great silence on the campus we kind of lost our innocence from from that time forward the summer after the Kennedy assassination lawmakers passed the Civil Rights Act that same summer students from Berkeley and around the world traveled to the South to try to register African-American voters it was called the Mississippi summer project and a Young Berkeley student whose name would soon become synonymous with the Free Speech movement Mario Savio was one of them this was at in mome uh during the Mississippi summer project [Music] you will not understand the Free Speech movement if you fail to see that it's an it's a continuation of the Civil Rights Movement we were part of something bigger than us you know this there was a civil rights movement going on it was led by African Americans it was an assertion that the old way is not going to rule anymore that change has to [Music] happen part of that change happened in the fall of 1964 when those students returned here to campus they also returned to this small brick sidewalk at the corner of bankof and Telegraph the university misunderstood the significance of the space and that misunderstanding sparked the Free Speech movements traditionally there were tables here for all sorts of political activity uh U the for supports of civil rights all the way from the farle from the Communists and farther left all the way to the uh uh Young Americans for Freedom the Goldwater conservatives so it was right in the midst of all of this intense political feeling and activity that the Regents announced that that strip of red brick belonged to them and not to the city of Berkeley and therefore the rallies that we were holding and the events the picket the um leafleting the rallies the tables that we had set up there which we had always done in accord with the city of Berkeley uh we were told we're no longer legal but the university uh said no you can't have your tables there we told we couldn't do that anymore and um no way were we going to you know stop and that's really what precipitated the Free Speech mov I see the the the first sitting there were people Mario included sitting on those standing at those balconies opposite the the welcome sign up there and they were standing up there and they were shouting you know join us join us and uh I thought about it and I did we set up the tables anyway the Deans came out and started taking names of the student students sitting at the tables and um well every time a Dean came took your name the student got up and another students sat down on September 30th of 1964 students who had violated the uh the um uh order not to raise funds were cited and told to report for disciplinary hearings at the Dina students office up there on the secondary third floor and uh uh I believe it was eight students the number of students it wasn't eight students who showed up for for the disciplinary hearings it was several hundred and there was of course a standoff and we ended up staying inside Sprout Hall um to well past midnight I remember being at a meeting with Mario and Jack wber a bunch of other people and he said well this is Mario speaking he said well if the principle is freedom of speech on the campus why don't we move the the tables from that strip of sidewalk right onto Sprout Hall Plaza and make a a declarative statement and why don't we hold our rally there so that's that's what happened that was October uh October 1st coming up next and look at what happened on October 1st when the university miscalculated yet again and handed the students the perfect platform and imagery to capture the attention of not only only the bay area but also the nation 50 years ago this week on October 1st which was a Thursday the protesters gathered here in front of sprout Hall at the center of campus to openly challenge the ban on oncampus political activity Jack Weinberg set up a table for core the Congress of racial equality and what happened next no one could have predicted [Music] and so at noon um several of our groups including our Core Group set up tables um with information literature violating the rules um I had the Good Fortune of being the person they came to First Jack uh was sitting at the core table and um he refused to identify himself when the Deans asked for his registration and they made the incredible decision to bring a cop car onto the center of the plaza at the noon hour and I mean how anybody could be that stupid I don't know I was right in front of the car I was by the the right fender on the driver's side and I heard somebody shout sit down by the time I got put in the police car it had people sitting down on all sides of it and there I sat for the next 32 hours by most accounts it was 21-year-old Mario Savio who in a sports jacket collared shirt and slacks first found his place in history by taking off his shoes and climbing on top of that police car the symbolism is striking protest over power the symbol of authority the police car became a a a symbol of a protest became a symbol of Revolt because um it was surrounded by protesters The Authority was emasculated and we took our shoes off we had all taken our shoes off CU we didn't want to damage the car and um and stood on top of it and pretty soon with within an hour or two there was a sound there was a microphone on top of the police car and a big sound system and there was and anybody who wanted to speak um could sign up and and and and I was right in the middle of it I mean it was just it was just thrilling and then that night was the first time I'd ever made a speech a public speech and it was from Top of the police car I remember quoting Frederick Douglas a great abolitionist who said that power concedes nothing without a demand I remember that I quoted that and the crowd roared back its affirmation by Friday night October 2nd some 30 hours after the sit in had started the pressure was mounting the next day was Parents Day it could not have been worse timing for the University and better timing for the protesters when night Drew and people were negotiating and we were scared I mean there there was they had assembled all these police from all around and we've been told to take off wrist watches and earrings and stuff so that they couldn't pull on those it was very scary most of the people involved were not um hardened political um you know sophisticates many people it was the first demonstration they'd ever been involved in I remember Mario racing toward the car we could all see him coming waving a piece of paper and um getting up on top of the car taking his shoes off getting up on top of the car and saying that we had reached an agreement and then enumerating what it was and urging us to accept the agreement by acclamation and to uh quietly disperse and we did after that Savio became the prominent leader of the united front of groups movement that was soon to have a new name and over that weekend the united front of groups met and realized that we had a struggle ahead of us and and sort of developed a more formal organizational structure and came up with a name and that was the Free Speech movement so the Free Speech movement was form that weekend it captured something that appeals to every American free speech there was a sense of a New Day Dawning coming up next a look at the war as Savio called it that took just 3 months to win and why one Cal Professor calls it a rare moment in history that rare moment happened on December 8th 1964 Less Than 3 months after the Free Speech movement had begun on campus during those three months Mario Savio made his famous bodies upon the gears speech police made their largest mass arrest in California history at the time and momentum was building individual students must ask themselves whether they wish to be a part of such action the image of speakers carefully removing their shoes so they could stand with their stocking feet or bare feet on the roof of a police car that's striking the contrast between the car the arrested person and the speaker free to speak was a very powerful image Jack Weinberg was that arrested person inside the police car for 32 hours until the university agreed to negotiate and that was on a Friday night um and we knew we had one so now we're going into negotiations with the university over these issues which they were never willing to do before now we now we were a serious force that we reckon with I think at that point we began to realize that this was this was way bigger than anything we had imagined but I don't think we even yet understood that this was historic what they also may not have imagined was that negotiations with the university would quickly fall apart one of the failures I think of the administration and the 1964 Free Speech movement example uh was a reluctance on the part of people in this office and this position uh to talk with students about matters of principle to attempt a dialogue uh and a real exchange about uh about values about views about the purposes and uh and and role of the of the education that is offered here they just didn't get it I mean that would they were living the UN they were living in a different era I mean they they they they they continued for weeks to think this was just a variation of a panty raid we were committed and I think we sustained that commitment to nonviolence so we did not use any form we used classic forms of Civil Disobedience during October and much of November students faculty and University Representatives did meet but made little to no progress and the campus was relatively quiet no protests or rally that was part of the agreement that is until November 20th I had dressed about 10,000 people I we couldn't believe that the size of the audience we got and they were hanging off the Student Union bill like Bunches of grapes there's an iconic photograph that was taken November 20th so it's just before Thanksgiving we're walking in a March and it's the sther gate and we're going through sather gate and we have a banner that says speech the guy in the middle in his best suit that's me I knew we're going to win we just have numbers we have too many people a significantly smaller group headed up the counter-protest Bruce Roberts freshman class president was one of them at Berkeley in those days the counting was eight of us and 10,000 of them the the so-called Law and Order Group of which I was a member were very small in number uh we I'm told although I don't know it for a fact that we got our funding from one of the regions I I don't know which one I don't know if it's true we met in the basement of echelman Hall we would do the same things that Free Speech movement would do we would stay making posters and making plans until 11: or 12:00 at night and then going out and and occasionally Manning Manning booths and talking to people and and so that was uh what we did to try to counter the uh Free Speech movement and then December 7th we held a the rally that's the one that were the the estimate is there were 20,000 there's only 27,500 students on the campus I ask you to the most famous speech that Mario Savio gave and you've got to make it stop and You' 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 the bodies uh on the machine bodies on the gears uh Speech was in fact completely atypical almost all of his speeches until then had been uh more educational police arrested more than 800 students that night the largest mass arrest in California history at the time I'll never forget seeing the arrest I was called at midnight by the head of the associated students and he called me up and he said come on down you're going to see something you're not going to believe so at midnight I went down to the Student Union stood up on the eighth floor office building and watched at midnight as probably a thousand policemen came marching down bankr it was a scary time too cuz there were students in there and there were people who uh standing up for their rights were thrown around I have to applaud them for standing out for what they believed after the mass arrest in December 2nd in Sprout Hall and the faculty revolted from the administration and passed in Wheeler Auditorium the uh the at a mass meeting of the faculty passed the December 8th resolutions which demanded the resignation of the chancellor which had accomplished the chancellor resigned Edward strong and demanded that from now on the University not control the content of speech on campus only time place and manner the faculty in effect said uh the uh the ideals articulated on the Free Speech Movement platform were correct there ought to be free speech on the campus the university should should have no restrictions on the content of speech it was one of the Great Moments Of My Life I think it took a while before we we realized the impact that this was having um not only in the country it had enormous impact in the country but in in other parts of the world I don't like sitting on the sidelines and it's really not like me to do that I just never have I kind of sat on the sidelines there and I wish I hadn't I think I've softened as I've gotten older I think that in many ways in major ways what the students were protesting over turns out to be something I think very valuable in our society so I think certainly the ends were were were good and they the ends were achieved what I told Mario at the time is one of those rare moments in life where we're both right and successful we're both on the right side and we won it's very hard to do both you can be right or you can win very rarely you do both on December 8th we did both and to this day it excites me it was a hell of a time you had to live through it on January 2nd a little more than than 3 months after the protest began the chancellor was out and Free Speech was in that was the beginning of student activism here at UC Berkeley and across the country it also though went beyond empowering students it empowered a young actor an aspiring politician named Ronald Reagan that's coming up next 50 years later UC Berkeley is embracing the Free Speech movement even naming a cafe here at Moffett library in honor of the protests what many people may not know though is that the Free Speech movement is an organized group technically dissolved in early 1965 but its Legacy spans the political Spectrum from launching Ronald Reagan's career to the anti-vietnam war and occupy movements the FSM was a kind of a revolution because it created this enormous expectation the counter Revolution was tougher than the revolution part of the thing that fueled that was the war in Vietnam the anti-war movement uh the uh other uh movements uh even uh with regard to disabilities and women's rights and and so on uh all had a common core and that Common Core was a sense that America had to change we had Unleashed this enormous Force the force of student protest this free speech movement started an era of protest on college campus did the movement accomplish anything um yeah it it won certain rights and it made a reputation for this University as a Bastion of Free Speech but it may also have led to the backlash that propelled an arch conservative Ronald Reagan to the governorship and uh eventually presidency it began a year ago when the so-called Free Speech Advocates who in truth have no appreciation for Freedom the Free Speech movement was the foil for Ronald Reagan both gained a lot out of that confrontation part of his stump speech that aroused the most applause was when he attacked Berkeley the University of California um certainly at Berkeley uh is synonymous still to this day with a free speech movement Whenever there is a movement around the country or the beginnings of a movement around the country having to do with uh the rights of people who are are uh otherwise subjugated in some way uh usually Berkeley is if not at the Forefront involved in some degree uh it's a tradition here it's almost in the genes here in fact all incoming students this fall were asked to read Mario savio's biography Freedom's oror ly Savio spoke to students during small orientations over the summer as well 50 years ago a lot of people were willing to go to jail for civil rights there is a s a sense on Loris sprawl of how the Free Speech movement really did change uh the character of Life on campus and became uh the basis on which this place is known for uh for the desks where every kind of political cause can be uh described Advanced uh argued about and um and certainly made part of the fabric of the campus 50 years and you know ideas change and and uh I think there's a a sense in which um the Cal campus as a as an institution has embraced the Free Speech movement as being part of its Legacy so what's next there are going to be many issues that are going to come up both this fall and and months and years ahead where students and faculty and administration are going to have to uh agree to disagree but can only do so I think if they use the The Inheritance the legacy of the Free Speech movement uh to develop the kind of the kind of sense of engaged listening but also respectful understanding of difference anybody who was part of it or remembers that era uh also remembers the exuberance of the time [Music] [Music]