Free Speech Movement: Earlier Student Activism
1930s through '50s: from peace strikes to the loyalty-oath controversy
Peter Franck Interview, October 17, 1964, Campus history starting 1932
1/16/2017: NYU Prof. Robert Cohen notes that “1932 was not the start date of all this. It was the west coast red scare of 1934, sparked by the waterfront strike, the SF General Strike, and Upton Sinclair's socialistic campaign for Cal's governorship that led to the new restrictions on outside speakers at Berkeley and at UCLA.”Chronology of Events
Three Months of Crisis - Part One
From the U.C. Berkeley alumnii magazine
California Monthly, February, 1965September 10 [1964]
A letter authored by "a former student" and distributed with the Slate Supplement Report called for an "open, fierce and thoroughgoing rebellion" on the Berkeley campus. Although the letter did not relate specifically to the "free speech issue," it sounded the rallying cry for subsequent events:
The University does not deserve a response of loyalty and allegiance from you. There is only one proper response to Berkeley from undergraduates: that you ORGANIZE AND SPLIT THIS CAMPUS WIDE OPEN! . . .
"Go to the top. Make your demands to the Regents. If they refuse to give you an audience: start a program of agitation, petitioning, rallies, etc., in which the final resort will be CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. In the long run, there is the possibility that you will find it necessary to perform civil disobedience at a couple of major University public ceremonies . . ."
What led to the FSM? by Michael Rossman
The Birth of the Free Speech Movement by Michael Rossman
Michael Rossman on his FSM work and antecedents
May 1960 HUAC in SF and Aftermath at UCB
Burton White, Irving Hall, Michael Rossman and others formed Bay Area Student Committee for the Abolition of the House UnAmerican Activities CommitteeAdministrative Pressures and Student Political Activity at the University of California
Appendix on Student Activities
HUAC: May 1960—The events, the aftermath
Free Speech 1959
Daily Cal issues 1947 onward1960 HUAC film Operation Abolition
The Free Speech Movement, David Goines, p258
"Lee Felsenstein: I came to Berkeley from Philadelphia. I had read in a book called True Bohemia about the beatniks in San Francisco, and I’d heard some tape recordings of “songs of social significance”; the thrilling thing was that at the end of these subversive songs, on came an ID from KPFA. These songs had actually been broadcast on the air! Then I saw a presentation of Operation Abolition. I wanted to be there. I applied to Cal, and was accepted."Mark Kitchell's Berkeley in the Sixties film transcript
Franck Bardacke:
"But what I really remember clearly is thinking, hey wait a minute, what am I doing here? Why aren't I there? And I checked this story out with a whole lot of people who are at Berkeley and they told me the exact same story, that "Operation Abolition" had recruited them to Berkeley. That they had seen it round the country in pro--, gone in to see it as a protest and they thought wow, (laughs) let's go there!""Operation Abolition put Berkeley on the map as the protest capital of the country; for years to come it attracted politically conscious students to come to where the action was."
Irving Hall:
"HUAC's well-funded cinematic counterattack backfired. Newly politicized students from across the nation cheered the spunky kids in Operation Abolition and flocked to Berkeley, eager to change the world."In Administrative Pressures and Student Political Activity at the University of California (The Rossman Hollander Report) there is an Appendix on Communication which includes:
Daily Cal—Part I, 1947-1960
Daily Cal—Part II: The Strike of 1960
The Daily Cal—Part III: The Independent Californian
Daily Cal—Part IV: 1960-1964The May 13, 1963 Revival of The Cal Reporter