Golden State Today

During the summer of 1964, students from the University of California, Berkeley joined activists in the southern United States to highlight the racial oppression that prevented Black Americans from voting. This activism continued upon their return to campus.

In the fall of 1964, Mario Savio, a 21-year-old UC Berkeley student, returned to his philosophy studies after participating in Freedom Summer in Mississippi. This was a pivotal event in the Civil Rights Movement aimed at drawing national attention to voter suppression faced by Black Americans. Inspired by his experiences, Savio sought to continue advocating for equality and freedom.

At Berkeley, Savio observed university administration penalizing students who spoke out on political issues deemed unacceptable by the campus authorities, including civil rights and anti-Vietnam war advocacy. When fellow student Jack Weinberg was arrested for tabling at Sproul Plaza to collect funds for civil rights work, it sparked a spontaneous 32-hour sit-in around the police car holding him. Savio addressed the crowd from atop the car about free speech rights and subsequently led the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley.

Berkeley history professor Leon Litwack, who passed away in 2021, witnessed this evolution in student activism firsthand. In interviews with Berkeley’s Oral History Center conducted in 2001 and 2002, he reflected on this period: "At places like Berkeley and other places around the country," said Litwack, "significant numbers of young people came to believe that direct personal commitment to social justice was a moral imperative, and that social inequities are neither inevitable nor accidental but reflect the assumptions and beliefs and decisions of people who command enormous power, including the university administrators. Well, these were important perceptions. So what began at Berkeley as a protest to obtain a very traditional liberal freedom, freedom of speech and advocacy, soon brought into question the official version of reality."

More information about Freedom Summer's legacy at Berkeley is available on the Oral History Center’s website. Additional resources include projects on student activism history at Berkeley through initiatives like SLATE—a campus political organization active from 1958 to 1966—where full transcripts of numerous oral histories can be accessed.