Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Paving the way for campus activism

Abstract

On most American college campuses today, students enjoy the same rights to free speech as do all citizens. They are free, for example, to raise money and distribute literature on behalf of political causes. But in the early 1960s these rights were still routinely denied collegians. When, in the fall of 1964, students at the University of California at Berkeley sought to attract campus support for the civil rights movement?which was working to end racial discrimination and segregation in America?they encountered opposition from the university's president and deans. These university officials, citing a formerly unenforced school regula tion which prohibited campus political advocacy, told students they could not raise money or distribute literature on campus for the civil rights movement or any other off-campus political cause. Students at Berkeley united in October 1964 to fight these political restrictions. Their successful campaign to gain free speech rights at college became known as the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. It was the first major cam pus rebellion of the turbulent 1960s. The first major confrontation in the Berkeley free speech controversy occurred on October 1, 1964, when student ac tivists set up tables on university property to raise donations for civil rights organizations. This defied the ban on campus political advocacy. The students had decided to defy the ban because they viewed it not only as an infringement on their free speech rights, but also as an attempt to undermine the growing involvement of Berkeley students in the civil rights movement.