Traditionally students of the University of California at Berkeley had used the main campus entrance on Telegraph Avenue as a forum for political and social action--advocating ideas, collecting funds and members--in a wide spectrum of causes. These practices were prohibited on University property. On September 14, 1964 Dean of Students Katherine A. Towle sent a letter to all student organizations stating that the Telegraph Avenue entrance was also University property and therefore such political activities were also banned there.
A United Front of many campus organizations, liberal and conservative, was formed to protest Dean Towle's letter. The administration responded by designating eight areas open to political discussion, but recruiting, fund-raising, and open advocacy were still forbidden. Refusing to accept the administration's ruling, many of the United Front organizations planned to test the legality of this ban. The rules were deliberately violated, and on September 30, eight students involved in the test cases were indefinitely suspended.
Negotiations between administration and students were unsuccessful as the administration held firm in its plan to discipline Mario Savio and Arthur Goldberg, leaders of the Free Speech Movement, the name adopted by United Front organizations during an October reorganization, and the six other suspended students. Against this background occurred a series of administration building sit-ins, the resulting mass arrest of 800 students on December 3, and a strike against classes by University students and teaching assistants.
Throughout December, continued attempts were made to reach a successful solution to the problems. The Academic Senate (faculty) in a meeting on December 8 basically supported the Free Speech Movement's position. The regents appointed a study committee and put off a final decision until after Christmas vacation. The vacation and upcoming final examinations discouraged many students from participating in FSM demonstrations and on January 4, when the Movement held its first legal rally on Sproul Hall steps, it was poorly attended.
On March 3 a non-student, John Thomson, was arrested by campus police for carrying a sign with an “obscene four letter word” printed on it. This precipitated more controversy over the question of free speech, but it never reached the proportions of the earlier dissension.
Trials began for those arrested in the December 3 Sproul Hall sit-in on April 1, 1965, and later in the month Savio resigned from FSM. On April 28th Jack Weinberg and Bettina Aptheker announced that FSM would then be replaced by the permanent Free Student Union.
For a chronological outline of events, see the February and June, 1965 issues of the California Monthly in the collection (in “Publications - Miscellaneous”, Box 2, Folder 9).
(The above history was written primarily by Katheleen Davis, a student at the University of Wisconsin, in the summer of 1970.)
