WWI through the 50's
In the World War I era, an autocratic University president, Benjamin Wheeler, rode about campus on horseback as he issued edicts to the generally progressive campus community. The faculty rose up in rebellion against Wheeler, forced him out of office and established the Academic Senate with powers over curriculum and faculty hiring.
In the 30's, the student Left at Berkeley helped the labor movement on the picket lines in the 1934 San Francisco general strike. Students also campaigned for radical Upton Sinclair in his bid for governor and pushed educational reform. In 1933 students organized the first co-op student house, which evolved into the United Students Cooperative Association, still around today.
The largest upsurge on campus was over the spread of fascism in the world. Many leftists went to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War. While American industrialists traded extensively with Hitler (who in turn armed the Spanish fascists), leftist Americans took up arms in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain. Berkeley was also a national center for the peace movement before the war.
Berkeley continued to be active after World War II. When radical Henry Wallace ran for President for the Progressive Party in 1948, the first Young Progressives in Support of Wallace club in the country was formed at Berkeley.
Civil Liberties And Civil Rights
In 1950 (the low point for leftist activity in this country because of the McCarthy witchhunts), the faculty began a several year struggle against a mandatory "loyalty" (anti-communist) oath, one of the greatest acts of faculty resistance to McCarthyism on any American campus. Although they received a majority of student support, the faculty chose not to include students or working people in their fight so that their 'role as gentlemen' would not be compromised. This marked the end of a tradition of faculty initiation of university reform.
For students, Berkeley lacked most civil liberties during the 50s. No off campus speakers were permitted, political groups couldn't meet and the Daily Cal editor met with the administration to plan the paper. The chief administrator of student affairs had been on record for over a decade declaring that moves to racially integrate fraternities were part of a communist plot. In 1956, Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson was not allowed to speak on campus and had to address 20,000 from the gutter of Oxford street. In the wake of this, students organized to get rid of Rule 17 which barred off-campus speakers.
The bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama opened the Civil Rights Movement in 1955. In Berkeley, the graduate representatives on the Academic Senate raised the issue of racial discrimination at Greek letter houses in early 1957. This became a major issue on campus and led to the establishment of SLATE, a student political party and action group.
In the spring of 1958 SLATE campaigned for an end to racial discrimination in Greek letter houses, fair wages and rent for students and protection of academic freedom, which at the time meant free speech and an end to political firings of faculty members. The administration responded by throwing SLATE out of the ASUC election. A petition was circulated to get SLATE back on and in one day the petitioners collected 4,000 student signatures.
Confrontation With HUAC
In May, UC students were angered when a UC student was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Several hundred noisy demonstrators were kept out of the hearings which were being held in San Francisco. Without warning police opened up fire hoses on the students, washing them down the steps of city hall. 12 were injured and 64 arrested.
The next day, 5,000 demonstrators showed up and things were peaceful. The press around the country was horrified and covered the event closely. HUAC made a propaganda movie of the event and sent copies around the country. But the movie's message about the subversive menace was ignored by students. Rather, they identified with their fellow students and in the end it attracted leftist students to Berkeley.
During the summer and fall of that year the administration attacked activism on campus by throwing graduate students out of the ASUC and censoring the Daily Cal. In 1961, Malcolm X was barred from speaking on campus because he was a minister - even though ministers had spoken before. SLATE sponsored a speech by anti-HUAC leader Frank Wilkinson before 4,000 people; the administration responded by throwing SLATE off campus.
From 1961 to 1963, there was constant conflict between students and the administration over civil liberties issues. The administration was steadily forced back. In effect, the campus was opened up to all outside speakers and compulsory ROTC for all men was dropped.
In 1963 and 1964 when the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing nationally, most campus political activity in Berkeley focused on a fight for job opportunities for African Americans. People protested Lucky Supermarket's racist hiring policies by organizing large numbers of people to fill their shopping carts and then abandon them inside the store.
Sit-ins and picketing of the Sheraton Palace Hotel and the Cadillac agency in San Francisco brought industry-wide agreements to open up new jobs to black applicants.
The Free Speech Movement
From 1960 to 1964, students had greatly strengthened their political rights and civil liberties and had become involved in off-campus as well as on campus struggles. The Free Speech Movement (FSM) in October of 1964 was the most famous demand for student civil rights at Berkeley.
Traditionally, students had set up political tables on the strip of land at the Telegraph/Bancroft entrance to the university since this was considered to be public property. However, the Oakland Tribune (which students were then picketing) pointed out to the administration that this strip of land actually belonged to the university.
When the university announced that sudents could no longer set up their tables on "the strip," a broad coalition of student groups -- civil rights, Democrats and Republicans, religious and pacifist, radical and conservative -- responded by forming the United Front to protest the new rule. The groups defied the ban through direct action. They deliberately set up tables where they were forbidden and collected thousands of signatures of students who said they were also sitting at the tables.
A police car moved up and the police took into custody a man sitting at a CORE(Congress of Racial Equality) table. First one, then two, then thousands of people sat down and trapped the car on Sproul Plaza for 32 hours. While Jack Weinberg sat inside and police officers stood around outside the car, a procession of speakers talked to the issues from the top of the car.
Clark Kerr, then president of the UC system, got the governor to declare a state of emergency and send hundreds of policemen, but the mass support of thousands made Kerr retreat.
The Free Speech Movement built enough support that a subsequent notice of disciplinary proceedings against four FSM leaders triggered a sit-in of 800 students and a student strike of 16-20,000. This forced Kerr to go before a gathering of 18,000 in the Greek Theatre with some pseudo-concessions. When FSM leader Mario Savio attempted to speak, the administration ordered UC police to drag him off stage. But they underestimated the FSM's hold over students. The repression caused increased anger and activated additional efforts on behalf of free speech. The eventual settlement greatly expanded student political rights on campus, and led to a strengthened role of students in universities all over the country.
Opposition To The Vietnam War
From 1965 to 1968 the anti-war movement grew and students focused on the draft and the university's role in defense research. The number of troops in Vietnam increased from an initial 125,000 to 500,000 by early 1968 and tens of thousands of G.I.'s came home in body bags. Protesters responded with a gradual increase in militancy.
Spring 1965 saw the formation of the Vietnam Day Committee (VDC), which sparked a huge outdoor round-the-clock teach-in on a playing field where Zellerbach Hall is now located. About 30,000 people turned out.
During the summer of 1965 several hundred people tried to stop troop trains on the Santa Fe railroad tracks in West Berkeley by standing on the tracks. In the fall, 10-20,000 people tried three times to march to the Oakland Army terminal from campus. Twice they were turned back short of Oakland by masses of police.
In the spring of 1966, a majority of students voted for immediate US withdrawal from Vietnam in a campus-wide VDC-initiated referendum. One third of all graduate student TAs used their discussion sections to talk about the war. Soon after the vote, the VDC's offices were bombed and students responded by marching 4,000 strong on Telegraph Ave.
The Fall of 1967 saw a new level of anti-war militancy in Berkeley, focusing around Stop the Draft Week. Antiwar activists planned to shut down the Oakland Induction Center and run teach-ins on campus all week, but authorities responded with court orders, clubs, and mace. This culminated on Friday with 10,000 helmeted, shield-carrying protestors engaging in a running battle with police to stop departing troop busses.
The Third World Strike
The next quarter saw the Third World Strike at Berkeley. For the first time third world students on campus played a leading role in a major struggle. It was also the first time that different third world groups were able to unite among themselves and seek support from white students.
Three third world groups had been involved in seperate smaller negotiations and confrontations with the administration for a year, trying to get the university to allow the voices of oppressed people to be part of the university education. Influenced by the earlier strike at San Francisco State, these Berkeley students formed the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) and put forward their demands, chief among them a Third World College with adequate funding, open admissions and financial aid for third world people and third world control of programs affecting them.
First the TWLF sought to educate the campus about the importance of dedicating resources to supporting third world studies and students. Picket lines were set up, along with a program of dorm speaking, convocations and circulation of literature. Later came disruption, like blockades of Sather Gate and the Telegraph Ave. entrance.
Governor Reagan declared a "state of extreme emergency" and placed control of the campus in the hands of Alameda County Sheriff Madigan. The administration and police began a campaign to crush the strike. Peaceful picketers were arrested and beaten in the basement of Sproul Hall. Leaders were arrested. Despite rallies and public meetings on the campus being banned, the demonstrations got bigger and bigger. On campus, battles between police and students were fought with rocks, bottles, tear gas and clubs. Hundreds were injured or arrested.
After two months of the strike, students were worn down and involved with court battles. A divisive debate about tactics had arisen. The TWLF decided to suspend the strike, and entered into negotiations with the administration over specifics of an Ethnic Studies program, which, while falling short of their demands, was a partial victory and created today's ethnic studies departments.
U.S. Invasion Of Cambodia
In early 1970 the students continued to do extensive education about ROTC and war research. On the April 15 Moratorium Day against the Vietnam war, Berkeley students attacked the Navy ROTC building. The university declared a state of emergency. Campus was still under a state of emergency when the media announced the invasion of Cambodia. Yale University students called for a national student strike over the Cambodian invasion and the strike spread even more when news came about national guard murders at Kent State, Jackson State and Augusta.
Berkeley students paralyzed the school with massive rioting the first week of May. Students went to their classes and demanded that the class discuss the Cambodian invasion and then disband. 15,000 attended a convocation at the Greek Theater and the regents, fearing more intensified riots, closed the university for a four-day weekend.
The Academic senate voted to abolish ROTC but the regents simply ignored the vote. A faculty proposal called the Wolin proposal sought to "reconstitute" the university so students could take all classes pass/not pass and could get credit for anti-war work. Thousands of students participated.
Stop The Bombing
During the spring of 1972, a coalition of groups organized an April 22nd march of 30-40,000 people to oppose the continuing war and Nixon's increase of the bombing of North Vietnam during Christmas. They called for enactment of the Seven Points Peace Plan, which was proposed by the North Vietnamese.
When the demonstrators returned from San Francisco, a national student strike had been called. At Berkeley, construction workers had gone out on strike to protest administration efforts to break their union. Other campus unions joined the strike. The possibility of a campus-wide strike, including both campus workers and students, was beginning to emerge.
At the same time, Chicano students held a sit-in at Boalt Law School in order to get more Chicano students admitted. Other Third World students were also fighting for greater representation in Boalt. With these events facing them, students held massive meetings, rallies and spirited marches, and joined the workers on the picket lines. The strike lasted for 83 days.
During the summer of 1972 the April Coalition worked for the election of radicals and for three initiatives: rent control, the legalization of marijuana and the establishment of a Police Review Commission. One coalition member was elected to the city council and all three initiatives passed, although the first was later overturned and the others watered down (but still important!).
In the fall of 1972, just a few years after it was established by the Ethnic Studies strikes, the Black Studies Department was absorbed into the College of Letters and Sciences, despite a Black Student Union-led boycott. The Research Institue on Human Relations, also established by the Ethnic Studies strikes, was closed by the chancellor.
Actvism in the 80's
The nuclear arms issue continued to gain importance nationally during the early 80s. In early 1982, 174 people were arrested in the first blockade of the Livermore Labs. Another 100 people were arrested that spring in various actions around the labs. On June 21st, 1,300 were arrested in another huge protest at Livermore. At the start of 1983, over 100 students and community members were arrested in a blockade of California hall, again over the issue of nuclear weapons involvement by UC.
In spring of 1982, the Berkeley Feminist Alliance collected hundreds of signatures on petitions demanding the administration take steps to prevent rape on campus. These steps included better lighting, self-defense classes and increased hours for the university escort service. The campaign was in response to 3 rapes of students that spring. The ASUC senate later passed a bill mirroring the demands of the petition.
The Anti-Apartheid Movement
In early 1977, as a response to the increased struggle against apartheid in South Africa, the campus antiapartheid movement began to demand divestment of university holdings in companies doing business in South Africa. The movement quickly led to sit-ins, demonstrations, and mass arrests across the state, and regent disinterest fueled student outrage.
In 1978, 10,000 petition signatures were collected demanding that the UC system hold a hearing on their investments by May 5. When there was no response, sit-ins were held at the LA regents meeting and at 5 campuses.
In the Spring of 1983, hundreds of students plastered Sproul Hall with banners and signs and renamed it Biko Hall, after the murdered South African Consciousness Movement leader, Stephen Biko, and occupied it overnight. This led to student strikes of more than half of the student body, more building occupations, and eventually the regents agreed to hold a forum on apartheid which, despite attendance by 2,500 students demanding a decision, produced nothing.
The struggle continued through 1985, when leading antiapartheid groups Coalition Against Apartheid and United People of Color, with massive support, built a shantytown reflecting the conditions in apartheid South Africa in front of California Hall, that was forcefully and bloodly evicted.
In Spring of 1986, the regents realized the movement would persist if they continued to resist divestment. That June, the regents voted to divest $3.1 billion of investments in companies with South African ties. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a sham -- their investments continued to increase -- but this wasn't discovered until the movement had dissipated.
Women Get Organized
Women at Berkeley began to organize during the height of the sit-ins and throughout the anti-apartheid movement because they felt they didn't have a significant voice in decision making, although their numbers equalled those of the men involved. They organized groups to deal with these issues and in the mid 1980s began organizing to tackle the issues face women daily.
One group, Women's Liberation Front (WoLF), became widely known in the fall of 1986 when it acted in support of a young woman who had been gang-raped by four football players. The university actually protected the football players, while the victim was so traumatized that she dropped out of her first semester at UCB. WoLF sponsored emotional rallies that included speak-outs and testimonies. WoLF also organized Take Back the Night marches to protest the virtual curfew imposed on women due to the fear of rape.
Legal abortion (established in 1973) was being threatened by several of Reagan's conservative Supreme Court appointees. Retain Our Reproductive Rights (RORR), a pro-choice group on campus organized counter-demonstrations against so-called "operation rescue," an anti-abortion group that blockaded abortion clinics and tried to intimidate pregnant women. In spring of 1989 they also began a 50 day, 24 hour vigil on Sproul Plaza in favor of a women's right to an abortion.
During the spring of 1989, Students United for Diversity, a coalition between the various Third World student groups, organized protests to demand more diversity in the faculty at Berkeley. The group particularly targeted the Political Science department, which only had 3 women and only one person of color out of 40 faculty members. Several rallies as well as an occupation of Poly Sci, in which 32 students were arrested, were organized.
A different group focusing on faculty diversity at Boalt Hall law school organized a national law student strike. At Berkeley, 90% of law students struck and several students occupied the adminsitration offices and were arrested.
Barrington Hall
During the fall of 1989, with the war on drugs in full swing, students held a smoke-in on Sproul Plaza that attracted 2,000, the largest event of the semester. Barrington Hall, a student co-op that helped organize the smoke-in and that had long provided a haven for activists and organizing efforts was threatened with closure from a vote within the co-op system. In November, the referendum passed.
After the vote, residents took legal action to remain in their home and started to squat the building. There had been irregularities in the vote, including involvement on the part of staff who were supposed to be neutral parties. Suppression of the house's political and counter-cultural spirit seemed the real issue in the closure of the hall. Finally in March, a poetry reading was declared illegal by police who cleared the building by force. A crowd developed which built fires and resisted the police. Finally police attacked, badly beating and arresting many residents and bystanders and trashing the house. Eventually, the house was leased to a private landlord.
Also during the spring of 1990, student protests demanding a more racially and sexually diverse faculty continued. Students occupied the Chancellor's office in California Hall. After a long educational effort, the United Front, a coalition of groups, called a two day strike for April 19 and 20. Pickets were set up around campus and many classes moved off campus or were sparsely attended. Earlier in the school year, the first issue of Smell This was published, reflecting the increasing self-awareness and organization of women of color.
The Persian Gulf War
Berkeley students have participated in the resistence to the Persian Gulf war, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the ongoing occupation of Iraq. Thousands marched in Berkeley to protest each war, and helped to shut down parts of downtown San Francisco on the day following each invasion (see the Iraq article).
Graduate Student Organizing
Increasing corporatization of the university in the 1980's, manifesting in a decline in real wages, fewer tenure-track jobs and more reliance on temporary lecturers, led the graduate student instructors (GSIs) to organize. They recognized that as GSIs, they were doing much of the instruction work in the University, and yet recieved almost none of the benifits of University employees.
In 1989, a 2-day strike of UC GSIs won them health insurance. In 1991 the Berkeley GSIs struck for, and won, a partial fee waiver, that to avoid further strikes, was extended to GSIs at all UC campuses. In 1998, GSIs at all eight UC campuses organized a union drive that culminated, after a several-day strike threatening to leave finals ungraded, in recognition of the UAW as the official union for all UC GSIs. The union continues to be a resource for graduate students working to improve the quality of education in the UC system.
Ethnic Studies, Again
In the Spring of 1999, Ethnic Studies (the departments of Native American Studies, Asian American Studies, and Chicano Studies) was losing four faculty members that the University was refusing to replace, and was facing budget cuts that would eliminate over half of its classes. Students organized in support of the program, and after months of trying more diplomatic routes, decided on direct action.
On April 14, students locked down to occupy Barrows Hall for 10 hours, demanding funding and faculty for the Ethnic Studies program, as well as a multicultural center and mural space to make real the University's "commitment to diversity". Facing rejection from the administration, two weeks later students began a hunger strike. For eight days, six hunger strikers and many hundreds of supporters camped out in front of California Hall, 24 hours a day. Following those who orginally forced the university to establish the studies, they took the name "Third World Liberation Front", distributed yellow armbands, and held rallies of thousands. Several times, University police hauled off hundreds to Santa Rita Jail in predawn raids, but the strikers held strong.
After eight days, the administration met with the strikers and promised to grant the Ethnic Studies program eight new full time faculty and a return of the $300,000 budget cut, to fund a new Center for Study of Race and Gender, a multicultural center (this is the Heller Lounge) and a mural in Barrows Hall, to allow a student representative on the Ethnic Studies department task force, and granted amnesty to almost all of the people arrested.