UC Reaches the Boiling Point… Berkeley in the 60s

April 28, 2021April 27, 2021 / Curt Mekemson / 15 Comments

Mario Savio, who had risked his life registering black voters in the South during the Freedom Summer of 1964, became a key leader of Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement that fall. (Photo from UC Berkeley Library.)

In my last Blog-a Book post on my experiences at UC Berkeley, I reported on how I returned to the campus in the fall of 1964 to discover that the Administration had moved decisively to end student participation in Civil Rights battles taking place in the Bay Area.

The Administration’s actions were a testament to the students’ success. It wasn’t that the activists wanted change; the problem was that they were achieving it. Non-violent civil disobedience is a powerful tool. Base your fight on moral issues; use the sit-in and the picket line to make your point. When the police come, don’t fight back; go limp. If they beat you over the head, you win. Sing songs of peace and justice; put a flower in the barrel of the weapon facing you. It is incredibly hard to fight against these tactics.

As the demonstrations in the surrounding community became more successful, the businesses being targeted struck back. Calls were made to the Regents, the President of the University system, and the Chancellor at Berkeley. ‘Control your students or else’ was the ominous message. One of the people making the threats was William Knowland, owner of the Oakland Tribune and a former Republican Senator from California who had served as Senate Majority Leader. The Tribune was one of the targets of the anti-discrimination campaign.

The Regents, President and Chancellor bowed to the pressure. Some members of the Administration undoubtedly saw the student movement as a Communist inspired left-wing plot that California’s right-wing was promoting. Others may have believed that the students’ effectiveness would bring the powers that be down on the university. Academic freedom could be lost. Some likely felt that the activities were disruptive to the education process and out of place on a college campus. The latter two arguments had an element of merit.

One thing was immediately clear; the Administration woefully underestimated the reaction of the leaders of the various organizations and large segments of the campus population to its dictum. Maybe the administrators actually believed the message they had received from their student leadership the previous fall at the meeting I had attended, or maybe they just felt that the outside pressure was so great it didn’t matter how students reacted.

But react they did. These were not young adults whose biggest challenge had been to organize a pre-football game rally. Some, like Mario Savio, had walked the streets of the South and stared racism in the face, risking their lives to do so. That summer while I was driving a laundry truck over the Sierras, three of their colleagues had been shot dead and buried under an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi. I would later visit the spot. Many had cut their political eyeteeth four years earlier opposing the House Un-American Activities Committee meetings in San Francisco and had participated in the numerous protests against racial discrimination since. They understood the value of demonstrations, media coverage and confrontation, and had become masters at community organization. They were committed to their beliefs and were willing to face police and be arrested if necessary.

The Administration wasn’t nearly as focused. Mostly liberal in nature and genuinely caring for its students, it utilized a 50’s mentality to address a 60’s reality. Its bungling attempts to control off-campus political activity combined with its inability to recognize the legitimacy and depth of student feelings would unite factions as diverse as Young Republicans for Goldwater with the Young People’s Socialist League and eventually lead to the massive protests that would paint Berkeley as the nation’s center of student activism and the New Left. Over the next three months I would spend a great deal of time listening, observing and participating in what would become known world-wide as the Free Speech Movement. As a student of politics, I was to learn much more in the streets than I did in the classroom.

What evolved was a classic no win, up-against-the-wall confrontation. The Administration would move from “all of your freedoms are removed,” to “you can have some freedom,” to “let’s see how you like cops bashing in your heads.” The Free Speech leaders would be radicalized to the point where no compromise except total victory was acceptable. Student government and faculty solutions urging moderation and cooperation would be lost in the shuffle. Ultimately, Governor Pat Brown would send in the police and Berkeley would take on the atmosphere of a police state.

The process of alienation that had started for me with the student leader conference continued to grow, but I never made the leap from issue to ideology. It was no more in my nature to be left wing than it had been to be right wing. However, I would journey across the dividing line into civil disobedience, which will be my next Wednesday’s tale.

Friday’s Travel Blog: Peggy and I continue our exploration of Pt. Reyes National Seashore, driving out to the Pierce Point Ranch and hiking out toward Tomales Point where we encounter a herd of elk and sushi eating coyotes.

JFK Dies, a Barrel of Tequila, and Political Suppression… Berkeley in the 60s

April 21, 2021April 20, 2021 / Curt Mekemson / 12 Comments

In my last post from my Peace Corps book, The Bush Devil Ate Sam that I am revising and blogging, I wrote about the growing unrest on the UC Berkeley Campus in 1963. Today I finish up my semester and move on into 1964.

John Kennedy signs legislation creating the Peace Corps. (Photo from the JFK Library.)

Without student government concerns, Berkeley became more doable and even fun. I disappeared into the library for long hours whipping out term papers, devouring books and becoming a serious student. The end of my first semester approached. Christmas vacation was coming. There would be a break in the endless studies, a time for long walks in the woods and more time for Jo Ann.

One crisp fall day in November, I came blinking out of the library to a brilliant sun and a hushed silence. Students and faculty were emptying out of classes. A young woman with long dark hair was standing on the library steps with tears streaming down her face.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” I asked.

“They’ve shot the President in Dallas,” she replied as her voice broke.

John F. Kennedy was dead. It was November 23, 1963. The young president who was standing up against racism in the South, the man who had created the Peace Corps, the leader who had called for international justice and inflamed people’s hopes worldwide, had been shot down in the streets of Dallas. And with his death, some of the hope he had created died; it died on the Berkeley Campus that day, and it died in me. Each of us lost something of the dream that things could be better, that we as individuals could be better. School stopped and we headed for the nearest TVs, newspapers and radio stations. Time and again I watched the car speeding away with the wounded President, watched Walter Cronkite announce that the President was dead, and watched as Lyndon Johnson was sworn in. It was a day etched into the collective memory of our generation.

Thanksgiving arrived and Christmas followed. Somehow, I worked up the nerve to ask Jo Ann to marry me. It would be a long engagement with marriage taking place after graduation, a year and a half away. The engagement ring would have to wait for me to dig up the money. She cried and said yes. It was a bright moment in an otherwise bleak year.

The battle between the Administration and the student activists continued during the spring semester while I focused on studies. On March 3, 1964, I turned 21 and became, according to law, an adult. Soon I would have to decide what I was going to do with my life. But on that particular day, I went to La Val’s Pizza and consumed far too much beer. Summer brought the resumption of my laundry route between Placerville and Lake Tahoe.

A new living arrangement greeted me when I returned to Berkeley that fall. Before summer break, two of my dorm-mates, Cliff Marks and Jerry Silverfield, had agreed to share an apartment with me our senior year. Landlords had a captive student population to exploit so prices were high. We ended up with a small kitchen, bathroom, living room, and bedroom. Things were so tight in the bedroom that Cliff and I had a bunk bed. He got the top. I would later wonder why this was superior to dorm life. We had more responsibility and less privacy.

We christened the apartment by consuming a small barrel of tequila Cliff had brought back from his summer of sharpening his Spanish skills in Mexico. Later that night, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and watched myself drool in a hallucinogenic haze, totally fascinated by the process. Cliff’s reaction was to talk nonstop. I’m not sure it was important whether anybody was listening. I drifted off and when I woke back up he was still talking. It led me to kick his mattress from my lower vantage point. This broke the bed and brought Cliff and mattress tumbling down on me. We roared with laughter and Cliff ended up sleeping on the floor. We all suffered appropriately the next day.

While Cliff, Jerry and I were recovering from our well-deserved headaches, the Administration moved decisively to eliminate on-campus political activities. There would be no more organizing of community-oriented demonstrations from campus, no more collecting of money from students to support causes, and no more controversial speakers on campus without administrative oversight and control. The Bancroft-Telegraph entrance free speech area was out of business, closed down. That incredible babble of voices advocating a multitude of causes would be heard no more.

The campus exploded.

Next Monday: The birth of the Free Speech Movement as student activists, advocacy groups, and the Administration clash in an ever-increasing spiral of conflict that involved more and more of the students and faculty.

NEXT BLOGS:

Friday’s Travel Blog: Peggy and I return to Pt. Reyes where we go for a cow walk in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

On the Edge of Revolution… UC Berkeley in the 60s

April 7, 2021April 6, 2021 / Curt Mekemson / 27 Comments

In my last two posts about experiences that led me to join the Peace Corps, I introduced my life as a student at UC Berkeley from 1963 to 1965. Under any circumstances, it would have been interesting and challenging. Berkeley is one of the leading academic institutions in the world. But it was politics of change that brought the campus to the forefront of people’s attention in the 60s. Today, I begin my exploration of the student revolution from my perspective of having a front row seat on the action as I struggled to understand what was happening and where I fit in.

This iconic image of Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement was featured in media around the world at the time. Imagine my surprise when I opened our March 22, 2021 copy of the New Yorker and found it featured in at article titled “Change Your Life.” What happened on campus in 1964 still influences how we think today.

What truly fascinated me about Berkeley was the palpable sense of being involved in the events of the day. I was drawn toward these issues, and the call to action tweaked my interest. Limiting the future of a potential Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein or Mahatma Gandhi because of who his parents were went beyond being counterproductive. It was stupid. We all lost. But I wasn’t ready to take up a picket sign. This was my first year at Berkeley and my hands were more than full in struggling with classes and eking out time to be with Jo Ann. There were also numerous responsibilities to fulfill in my role as dorm president.

I did strike one tap hammer blow against the machine, however. We were expected to participate in the annual Ugly Man Contest. Its purpose was to raise money for charity by having someone or thing really ugly as the dorm’s representative in competition with other dorms, fraternities and sororities. People would vote by donating money (normally pennies) to their favorite ugly man. In addition to being pure fun, it was on the top of the Dean’s list as an acceptable student activity.

I proposed that our ugly man be an unfortunate Joe College student whose computer card had been lost by the Administration. Consequently, he no longer existed. Early computers used punched cards to contain data and had become ubiquitous in our lives. They came with the warning “do not fold, spindle or mutilate.”

We made up a casket and wandered about campus in search of poor Joe. It was a small thing, but it reflected a growing unease I had about the alienation created by assembly line education where numbers were more important than individuals. It seems that the student body wasn’t ready for the message. A popular bartender, selected by a fraternity as its ugly man candidate, walked away with the prize.

While my concerns over student alienation were evolving, the administration was monitoring off-campus student activism with growing concern. The University perceived its primary objectives as carrying out research and preparing young people to become productive members of American society. There was little room in this view for students seeking social and political change— in Mississippi, in Oakland, or on campus.

But the world was changing. A young President in Washington, Jack Kennedy, was calling on the youth of America to become involved and had created the Peace Corps to encourage involvement. Racial equality seemed attainable in the United States, and people the world over were yearning for and demanding freedom. It was easy for idealistic young Americans to believe we were at the dawning of a new age, and natural to want to be involved in the transformation.

Had the students restricted their political efforts in the early and mid-sixties to the far off South, the eruption of conflict on the Berkeley Campus may not have taken place. But they chose local targets as well. When the students marched off campus to picket the Oakland Tribune, Sheraton Hotel, United Airways and Safeway over discriminatory hiring practices, they were challenging locally established businesses with considerable power. Not surprisingly, these businesses felt threatened and fought back. Rather than deal with the existing discrimination, they demanded that the University, local authorities, the state government and even the Federal government do whatever was necessary to reign in the protesters.

Their arguments for the crackdown were typical of the times: A few radical off-campus agitators with Communist connections were working in conjunction with left leaning professors to stir up trouble. The participating students lacked mature judgment and were naively being led astray. The vast majority of students were good law abiding kids who just wanted to get an education, party, and get a paycheck.

The University was caught between the proverbial rock and a very hard place. The off-campus political activism was creating unwanted attention. Public dollars could be lost and reputations tarnished. There was a justifiable fear of reprisal from the right. The ugliness of McCarthyism was still alive and well in America. Its half-truths, outright lies and accusations had created a deep paranoia and distrust within American Society.

Only a few years before, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) had held hearings in San Francisco in its ceaseless search for Communists. UC had been a target. Clark Kerr and others had worked hard to protect and restore the academic freedom on campus that loyalty oaths and other McCarthy-like activities had threatened. Student activism would refocus right wing attention on the Berkeley Campus.

My greatest insight into the mindset of the Administration was when the Dean of Students called student leaders together to discuss the growing unrest on campus. Our gathering included members of the student government and presidents of the resident halls, fraternities and sororities. Noticeable in their absence were student representatives from off campus organizations such as CORE, SNCC, SDS, Young Democrats, Young Republicans and other activist groups. We sat in a large room with tables organized in a square; there must have been at least 40 of us. I was eager to participate and imagined an open discussion of the issues. I couldn’t have been more wrong, which is the subject of my blog-a-book post from The Bush Devil Ate Sam next Wednesday.

Friday’s Travel Blog: Last Friday I featured the magnificent sea stacks found at Harris Beach State Park on the Oregon Coast. But what about ordinary rocks? This Friday, Peggy and I lower our cameras to look at a collection of ‘not so normal’ rocks and driftwood at the park.

Ode to a Grecian Urinal… Life at UC Berkeley in the 60s

March 31, 2021March 30, 2021 / Curt Mekemson / 22 Comments

In last Wednesday’s blog-a-book post from “The Bush Devil Ate Sam,” I arrived at UC Berkeley and provided a view of my life in the surrounding community. Today I will take you onto campus and provide a broader view of my life as a student.

I had a number of classes at Wheeler Hall shown here, including one with over a thousand students. The campus’s iconic Campanile is peaking out behind. (Photo by UC Berkeley.)

My ambitions at Berkeley far exceeded the time and energy I had. There were student politics to jump into, classes to master, a relationship to support, bookstores to explore, cappuccino to consume and a thousand causes to sort out. Moderation was not an option. I did understand that my primary reason for being there was to learn and I soon discovered that learning was defined differently than at Sierra.

But first, I had to find my classes. Berkeley seemed like a maze to me. Single buildings had more classrooms than were found on Sierra’s campus, and each building held its own secrets. The Life Science building, for example, displayed enough jars of pickled fetuses to stop the heart of a pro-lifer and give me nightmares.

Even the social science buildings had surprises. I was searching for a political science class in Wheeler Hall when I came upon a string of marble encased urinals in the basement. I decided there was enough marble to refurbish the Parthenon, which led my mind to contemplate penning a new poem, ‘Ode to a Grecian Urinal.’ My apology to Keats. Stream of conscious thinking can be dangerous.

I finally found the class and discovered I had over 1000 classmates. It was located in a large auditorium I had passed by because my mind hadn’t been able to comprehend a classroom of that size. The professor, Peter Odegard, was a star in the field of political science and frequently received standing ovations for his stirring lectures. In another life, he had served as President of Reed College in Oregon. His lectures inspired me but there was scant chance I would ever meet the man. Personal contact was through graduate teaching assistants, folks struggling to complete their own education while being paid minimum wages to interact with us.

I had one class that was so large we had to sit in another classroom and watch the professor on television. This was mass education on a grand scale and the University’s job, according to Clark Kerr, the University President, was the mass production of educated people to go out and fill slots in society.

It was easy to be overwhelmed. I was assigned 15 books in one class and actually thought I was expected to buy and read each one in detail. I was a fast reader but not that fast, nor that wealthy. It would take a year to master the art of skimming, buying old books, using commercially prepared notes and pursuing all of the other tricks of the trade that getting a higher education at Berkeley entailed.

For all of that, there was an excitement to the classes that was lacking at Sierra. I might be sharing my professor with a thousand other students, but he or she might also be a confidante of Presidents. Did I learn more than I had at Sierra? I actually don’t think so, but I did have a sense of being part of what was happening in the world and this made what I was learning seem more real.

Life quickly evolved into a routine that primarily consisted of attending classes and studying. Mainly I lived in the Bancroft Library with occasional forays over to Café Med. Friday nights were reserved for Jo Ann. We had met at Sierra College and decided to attend Berkeley together. We struggled to spend time with each other, to find moments of privacy, and to bridge the gaps that our new life was creating. Even though we had gone off to the University together and now lived less than a mile apart, we saw less of each other than we had at Sierra when we lived 30 miles apart. Dates, given my super tight survival budget, normally consisted of going out for pizza at Laval’s or a hamburger at Larry Blake’s or at Si’s Charbroiler. Later, when we both turned 21, beer was added to the menu. On rare occasions, we would go to a movie. One that I remember was the Italian film “8 ½” directed by Federico Fellini and starring Marcello Mastroianni. Its surrealistic, artsy nature seemed to match our university experience.

Sunday mornings, in lieu of church, I would go for hikes up in the hills behind Berkeley. Grassy knolls provided views of San Francisco and the Bay. The beauty and quiet provided my mind with an opportunity to contemplate what was happening in my life, to gain perspective. There was solace to be found in the woods.

Participating in student politics at UC was an added burden I didn’t need. But I had been student body president at Sierra and gamely jumped into the fray. The dormitories were new; so, the residents were new. They hadn’t had time to get to know each other. The fact that I was a community college transfer made little difference. Within a week of my arrival, I was president of Priestly Hall. I quickly learned that my new role of mastering football chants and organizing parties was boring in comparison to what was happening in the real world. That was about to change as I struggled to make the position of dorm president more relevant— and get in trouble. That will be the subject of my post next Wednesday.

Friday’s Travel Blog: I will continue our exploration of Harris Beach State Park near Brookings by focusing in on sea stacks, including Goat Island, home to over 100,000 nesting seabirds.

Berkeley… We Are Not In Diamond Springs Anymore Toto

March 24, 2021March 23, 2021 / Curt Mekemson / 28 Comments

I transferred from Sierra College to Berkeley in 1963. Here I am looking proud in my UC sweatshirt.

My wandering off to Berkeley in the fall of 1963 introduced me to a totally different world compared to my childhood home of Diamond Springs with its population of 750 and nearby Placerville with a population of 4,000. Sierra College got me out of the sticks, but just barely. I rode a school bus there and the kids came from small rural communities not much different from Diamond and Placerville.

Telegraph Avenue became my Mecca at Berkeley. Exotic smells emanated from a dozen different ethnic restaurants, while numerous languages assaulted my ears. I quickly discovered the Café Mediterraneum. In an era before Starbucks made coffee houses safe for middleclass America, Café Med was an original. It was a microcosm of Berkeley, filled with offbeat characters, esoteric discussions and great coffee. I became addicted to both the cappuccino and the atmosphere. I would grab my coffee and climb the narrow wooden stairs in back for a coveted balcony seat where I would watch the ebb and flow of the city’s unique flotsam.

Cafe Mediterraneum as it looked on my last visit a few years ago.

A quick jaunt across Telegraph produced another treasure, Cody’s Bookstore. Started on a shoestring by the Cody family in the 50s, it had become one of America’s premier bookstores by the mid-sixties. I saved my explorations for Saturdays when there was time to indulge my passion for books. I would disappear inside and become lost to everything except the next title.

I was equally fascinated by the ever-changing kaleidoscope of soapbox oratory provided at the south entrance to the campus on the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph. During any given hour, a dozen speakers could be found there espousing as many causes. I considered it high entertainment and would sit on the steps of the Student Union and listen during breaks from my studies. Over one lunch period, I reported in a letter home, I listened to a student who had spent her summer working in the South registering voters, a black South African talking about apartheid, a socialist railing against the evils of capitalism, a capitalist railing against the evils of socialism and a Bible thumper detailing out the many paths Berkeley students were following to hell. Apparently, there were too many to count.

Many of the speakers urged that there was more to college life than studies, football and parties. Change was in the wind and we should be part of it. Work for fair housing in Berkeley; oppose the unfair hiring practices at Safeway; picket the Oakland Tribune, sign up to help in Goldwater’s political campaign. Join CORE, SNCC, SLATE, SDS, YAF or a world of other acronyms. I struggled to take it all in, absorb it through my pores. It certainly wasn’t Kansas, Toto, nor was it Diamond Springs, Placerville or Sierra College.

To simplify my first year, I opted to live in a college dorm. I would have a room, a bed and regular meals. The University assigned me to Priestly Hall, which was ideally located a block away from campus and a block away from Telegraph Avenue. Three other dorms, one for men and two for women, comprised our corner of the universe. Co-ed living accommodations were still in the future. Strict House Mothers existed to enforce the rules and protect their charges. Women were only allowed on the first floor of the men’s residence hall. Slipping one up to your room was an expellable offense.

Each dorm was nine stories high, brand-new and exactly the same as the others. One of the grad students responsible for our well-being immediately dubbed them monstrosities of oblivion. My sixth-floor room came complete with a roommate, Clifford Marks. Cliff was a slightly built young man with bright red hair, freckles and a mischievous personality. Later, we would share an apartment. Like me, he was a political science major. Eventually, he too would join the Peace Corps.

For entertainment, we could watch the antics of the girls in the dorm directly across from us. If we were lucky, they might wave. One evening a pair of roommates pulled their shade, set up a lamp between them and the window. And undressed. Slowly. It was a surprise our building didn’t fall over, given that every guy in the dorm was glued to the windows on the women’s dorm side.

But all of these were the lighter side of Berkeley and college life. I was soon to learn how serious academics were at UC— and that a revolution was brewing. I’ll continue my story next Wednesday.

Friday’s Travel Blog Post: I finish off Peggy’s and my exploration of the tide pools of Harris Beach, Oregon. The shells of turban snails provide dandy homes for hermit crabs, limpets are masters of creating a vacuum, barnacles suggest why keel-hauling might make walking the plank seem like a stroll in the park, and we find acres of grass growing where we only expected seaweed.