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1.
FSM Newsletter #1-3 (Berkeley, CA: privately printed, October 9, October 20 and November 2, 1964).
Four-page leaflets, printed offset. Each 28x21.6cm. Illustrated with three photographs and several small cartoons. Mimeographed inserts present in issues #1 and #3, as issued. Ed. Barbara Garson and Stephen Gillers (with Deward Hastings, Truman Price, Mickey Rowntree, Marston Schultz and Linda Sussman).
The first three issues of the FSM newsletter, a publication intended to inform students and faculty about “What happened day by day” in Berkeley, and to provide a forum for the FSM to present their political positions. The first issue prints a photograph of FSM leader Mario Savio speaking from the roof of a police car in Sproul Plaza, UC Berkeley on October 1, 1964, the day Jack Weinberg was arrested for violating regulations prohibiting political activity on campus (the police car, containing Weinberg, was spontaneously surrounded by thousands of students, and its roof provided a platform for extemporaneous speeches; later, a mass sleep-in was held around the car until, after 32 hours, the charges against Weinberg, who remained inside the car for the duration, were dropped). The second issue includes an article by (mentor to Mario Savio) Hal Draper, titled “U.C.’s Real Politics”, and the third prints positional statements and a piece titled “Where We Go From Here”. Two subsequent issues were produced (November 17 and December 10, 1964). Near Fine.
The Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, in which students protested the ban on political activities on campus and asserted their right to free speech and academic freedom, was the first mass act of civil disobedience on an American college campus in the 1960s, and paved the way for future protests, in particular against the Vietnam War. It also inspired the movement for free universities and experimental colleges across the United States, notably the Free University of New York, with many others following in its wake (more than 50 were founded in 1965, and by 1970 that number had grown to somewhere between 300 and 500).
