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Snapp Shots: Film on Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement likely definitive

On Oct. 1, 1964, a UC Berkeley grad student named Jack Weinberg was manning a table on Sproul Plaza for the Congress On Racial Equality (CORE) civil rights organization. The school administration had banned all political activity on school grounds, and Weinberg was arrested. A police car was summoned to take him to jail.

The Berkeley Historical Society has produced a new documentary video series called “Inside the Free Speech Movement” about the city and university’s famed protests of the mid-1960s. (photo by Howard Harawitz, courtesy of Linda Rosen) 

Unhappily for the administration, the police arrived just as students were pouring out of their classes for lunch. When they saw Weinberg being shoved into the car, they spontaneously sat down around it and refused to move.

For the next 32 hours Weinberg remained in the car, peeing into coke bottles and being interviewed by reporters through the car’s window while students mounted the roof one by one to voice their opinions, taking care to remove their shoes first so they wouldn’t harm the roof.

It was the beginning of Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement. Weinberg’s arrest was followed by a mass sit-in at the administration building, headed by Joan Baez, who sang “We Shall Overcome” as she led more than 800 students into Sproul Hall, where they were roughly arrested and sent to the Santa Rita jail.

Next came a strike that shut down almost the entire campus, followed by a kiss-and-make-up meeting in the Greek Theater organized by University President Clark Kerr, who was anxious to settle the crisis before it got even more out of hand.

Kerr had ordered the campus police to keep their hands off the protesters, but he was double-crossed his own chancellor, Ed Strong, who went behind his back and commanded the cops to attack any student who tried to speak up.

So when Mario Savio, who, along with Bettina Aptheker, had emerged as one of the students’ leaders, mounted the stage to announce an upcoming rally, the cops pounced on him and beat him up, tearing to pieces the new suit his friends had bought him to wear for the occasion.

That was the turning point. The students were outraged, the Academic Senate passed a resolution condemning the administration, and the ban on political activity on Sproul Plaza was lifted. It wasn’t a total victory, but it was a victory.

Today, the Free Speech Movement — or FSM, as everyone called it — is regarded more than ever as the most important event in the university’s history. The steps in front of Sproul Hall where Savio gave his most famous speeches are now named the Mario Savio Steps.

A stone marker on the pavement marks the spot where the police car that held Jack Weinberg was parked. The campus even boasts a restaurant called the FSM Café. The “student power” movement quickly spread to campuses all over the country, where it eventually morphed into the anti-Vietnam War movement.

Now the Berkeley Historical Society, which always does such a great job commemorating important events in the city’s history, has outdone itself with a documentary video series called “Inside the Free Speech Movement” that I think will be the definitive word on FSM for many, many years to come.

I don’t have enough words to praise director Linda Rosen, video editors Jai Jai Noire, Tonya Staros and Melanie Mentzel and the many FSM veterans and allies who gave their eyewitness memories, including the aforementioned Aptheker, graphic artist David Lance Goines, professor Leon Wofsey and the documentary’s Shelby Foote, who provides historical context and some great stories.

It’s amazing, but a group of amateurs have managed to put together a documentary that any professional filmmaker would be proud to call their own — and you can see it yourself for free on YouTube!

Just search for “Inside The Free Speech Movement” on YouTube online or its app on your device, and voila! The documentary is in four segments, ranging from 40 to 55 minutes long. Parts 1, 2 and 4 are already posted, and Part 3 should be up there in a few months.

One of FSM’s staunchest allies on the faculty was a young assistant professor named Reggie Zelnick, who rose to become chair of UC Berkeley’s history department.

“As a student of history, I always try to remind people that nothing is ever as glittery as it appears on the surface,” he told me. “But FSM was as good as it gets. It certainly never got that good again.”

Martin Snapp can be reached at catman442@comcast.net.

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