Free Speech Movement: How News of FSM Traveled

Barbara Epstein “Free Speech Movement Oral History Project: Barbara Epstein” conducted by Lisa Rubens in 1999, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2014

pp 2-3
Epstein:
As a matter of fact, I’m wrong about that. They didn’t have a WATS line. The story about the WATS line was that the SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] office in Atlanta had a WATS line, and in the middle of the night, when people in SNCC heard about the sit-in at Berkeley, they began calling people around the country who were their contacts. So they called my friends, Max and Simon. Max and Simon got hold of the rest of us. They must have called me first thing in the morning. I was on a steering committee of SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] and by eight o’clock in the morning, the steering committee of SDS was in front of the office of Dean Monroe, who was the dean of students of Harvard, telling him about the FSM and demanding that we be allowed to conduct political activities on campus.

Jo Freeman, "At Berkeley in the Sixties," (Indiana University Press, 2004), p223
"Mario, Bettina, Steve and Suzanne went east on a speaking tour of college campuses. The ABC television network paid their fare to New York City so that they could appear on a TV show, and they used the opportunity to talk about the FSM at several campuses. The press generally reported this trip as a flop because only hundreds, not thousands, of students came to hear them speak. But for hundreds to turn out for anything political on most campuses was a lot, especially the last week of classes before the Christmas break, which was also exam week for some. They left the evening of December 9th and spoke at Michigan, Wisconsin, Brandeis, Columbia, and of course Queens College, where Mario had once been a student. All but Steve were from New York."

Bettina F. Aptheker, "Intimate Politics," (Seal Press, 2006), p153
"Mario, Suzanne Goldberg, and I flew to New York City courtesy of ABC television. We used the cross-country airfare to stop at colleges and universities in New York and New England and in the Midwest on our return flights. Between us, singly and together, we spoke at Columbia, Queens College, Harvard, and the Universities of Chicago, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Everywhere we were greeted with standing ovations by hundreds and often thousands of students."

12/4/1964, Le Monde, HUIT CENTS ARRESTATIONS A L'UNIVERSITE DE CALIFORNIE A LA SUITE DE MANIFESTATIONS, ,
[trans:] "At the request of democratic governor Edmund Brown, the California State Police arrested Wednesday and Thursday more than eight hundred students of the university at Berkeley who were protesting to gain greater political freedoms. The demonstration was organized by the Free Speech Movement and protested disciplinary actions taken against four of its members who participated notably in the demonstrations favoring racial integration.

The president of the university, who opposes free speech, and who also opposes the organization of clubs and groups of a political nature on the campus declared that 40% of the participants were not students of the university, and that among these 40% were certain 'COMMUNIST SYMPATHIZERS'."

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1964/12/8/sds-to-hold-protest-march-rally/?print=1
12/8/1964, The Harvard Crimson, SDS to Hold Protest March, Rally In Sympathy for Students at Cal., unattributed,
"Barney Frank '62, asst. senior tutor of Winthrop House, will address the marchers inside Lowell Lecture Hall. Leonard K. Nash, professor of Chemistry, will chair the meeting, and Dave Van Ronk, the folksinger, will sing."

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1964/12/10/fsm-ecstatic-over-apparent-victory-pberkeley/
12/10/1964, The Harvard Crimson, FSM Ecstatic Over Apparent Victory, unattributed,
"The more than 6000 students in the plaza, scene of countless bitter protest rallies, rose to sing happy birthday to FSM leader Mario Savio when he came to the microphone. Tuesday was Savio when he came to the microphone. Tuesday was Savio's birthday, and he called the Academic Senate vote in support of the students 'the best birthday present I've ever had.'"

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1964/12/11/mario-savio-to-talk-tonight-in/
12/11/1964, The Harvard Crimson, Mario Savio To Talk Tonight in Lowell Lec, unattributed,
"Mario Savio, leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, will speak at 8 p.m. tonight in Lowell lecture Hall. The address is sponsored by the Harvard chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society.

Savio, who has called the settlement proposed by the Berkeley Faculty Senate an 'FSM victory,' will arrive in Boston at 5 p.m. today. He will attend and address a dinner here before his appearance at Lowell Lecture Hall.

Savio will also visit Brandeis University, probably between 9 p.m. and midnight. His trip to the East coast is being paid for by a New York television station." [eds note: Jo Freeman, "At Berkeley in the Sixties," (Indiana University Press, 2004), p223: "Mario, Bettina, Steve and Suzanne went east on a speaking tour of college campuses. The ABC television network paid their fare to New York City so that they could appear on a TV show, and they used the opportunity to talk about the FSM at several campuses. The press generally reported this trip as a flop because only hundreds, not thousands, of students came to hear them speak. But for hundreds to turn out for anything political on most campuses was a lot, especially the last week of classes before the Christmas break, which was also exam week for some. They left the evening of December 9th and spoke at Michigan, Wisconsin, Brandeis, Columbia, and of course Queens College, where Mario had once been a student. All but Steve were from New York."]

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1964/12/12/savio-blasts-kerrs-knowledge-factory-pmario/
12/12/1964, The Harvard Crimson, Savio Blasts Kerr's 'Knowledge Factory', Parker Donham,
"In a press conference at Sever Hall, just before his speech, Savio responded sharply to questions about Communist infltration in the FSM. 'Of the 50 representatives on our steering committee,' he said, 'four would term themselves 'revolutionary socialists.'

'But I'm sure,' he continued, 'that the Goldwater people and the followers of Ayn Rand, who were with us in Sproul Hall, would resent the assertion that they had been communist infiltrated.'"

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1964/12/15/mario-savio-pmario-savio-the-leader/
12/15/1964, The Harvard Crimson, Mario Savio, Parker Donham,
"Mario Savio, the leader of Berkeley's Free Speech Movement whose demonstrations this fall have--as he puts it--brought the University of California 'to a grinding halt,' seems curiously unprepared for the role in which he has been cast. Today this 22-year-old junior is acclaimed by his followers, and acknowledged by his opponents, as a charismatic orator whose public speaking has amassed powerful popular support at the Berkeley campus. Six months ago he was unknown to the students who now risk jail in support of the FSM, and he stuttered so badly that even his private conversation was difficult to listen to. 'Everytime he raised his hand to speak, people in the class sort of shuddered and felt sorry for him,' said a student in Savio's philosophy section."

http://www.archive.org/details/thejustice05reel05
12/15/1964, The Justice, Mario Savio Evokes Enthusiastic Response, ,
"Only four days after being dramatically carried away from a microphone at the Berkeley Greek Theatre, Mario Savio, leader of the student rebellion at the University of California, was given a microphone at Brandeis' Schwartz Hall Friday evening--and was interrupted only by applause.

According to Saturday's Boston Globe, Savio 'sparked enthusiastic response' from both Harvard and Brandeis audiences. 'The nation's leading college rebel drew cheers from Harvard and Brandeis students, elicited hisseswhen he mentioned the enemies, and spread the protest message before jammed audiences,' the paper reported."

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1966/6/3/sds-harvards-new-left-feels-underprivileged-in/
6/3/1966, The Harvard Crimson, SDS-- Harvard's New Left--Feels 'Underprivileged' In Generation Which Prizes Making Own Decisions, Daniel J. Singal,
"This very point came into perspective at a recent Leverett House Junior-Senior dinner during a speech by Archibald MacLeish, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, Emeritus. MacLeish pointed to the other senior faculty members at the head table, such as Mark DeWolfe Howe and Howard Manford Jones, and called for a return to the traditional Harvard values. He derided the concept of the University as a vocational school and insisted upon education for its own sake. Many present observed that MacLeish was making the same demands as Mario Savio and the other leaders of the Free Speech Movement. Ironically, senior faculty members must lecture their students against "professionalism" at Harvard, while just the opposite is true at Berkeley."

10/13/2019, Davis Enterprise, As if a $5 coffee wasn't bad enough, Bob Dunning

"I still remember back during the revolutionary '60s how Mario Savio and his buddies would come up to Davis to tell those of us attending the University Farm exactly what the Free Speech Movement was all about."

Brandeis University and the FSM