UC Berkeley

An Offer to Teach in Africa: From Free Speech to Peace Corps

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

In the spring of 1965 Uncle Sam pointed his finger at me. He wanted warm bodies to fight a colonial war in Southeast Asia the French had already lost. Being a 22-year-old male about to graduate from college, I was a prime candidate.

If drafted, I would go.

I couldn’t imagine burning my draft card, running off to Canada or joining the Texas Air National Guard. I actually believe some type of mandatory two-year national service ranging from the military to the Peace Corps would be good for young men and women and good for America.

But fighting in a war I didn’t believe in and killing people I didn’t want to kill was at the very bottom of my bucket list. And there’s more. I am allergic to taking orders and can’t stand being yelled at. I’d make a lousy soldier. I saw a court martial in my future.

Luckily, a temporary solution popped up. Peace Corps Recruiters were coming to UC Berkeley.

John Kennedy had first proposed this idealistic organization to a crowd of 5,000 students during a campaign speech at he University of Michigan on October 14, 1960. He was running four hours late and it was two in the morning but the response was overwhelming. One of his first acts as President was to create the agency.

Peace Corps service would not eliminate my military obligation but it might buy time for the Vietnam War to sort itself out. Of more importance, I felt the Peace Corps provided a unique opportunity to travel and possibly do some good. I also believed I would be serving my country.

My fiancé and I sat down and talked it out. Jo Ann was excited. We would go together as a husband and wife team. When the Peace Corps recruiters opened their booth in front of the Student Union at Berkeley, we were there to greet them, all dewy-eyed and innocent.

“Sign us up,” we urged.

Of course there were a few formalities: small things like filling out the umpteen page blue application and taking a language aptitude test, in Kurdish. We also needed letters of recommendation.

Apparently we looked good on paper. In a few weeks, the Peace Corps informed us that we had been tentatively selected to serve as teachers in Liberia, West Africa. We were thrilled. The age-old question of what you do when you graduate from school and enter the real world had been answered, or at least postponed.

Uncle Sam with his growing hunger for bodies to fight the Vietnam War would have wait.

Next Blog: My roommate tells the FBI I am running a Communist Cell Block.

On Being Labeled a Radical… The 1964 Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley

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The Press, Governor of California and UC Administration labeled participants in the Free Speech Movement as a small group of radical revolutionaries bent on destroying law and order. Were we?

I was curious about the background of the students who were arrested during the Sproul Hall sit-in, considering I had almost been one. A sociologist was doing a study on who was involved so I volunteered to take part.

We were given extensive questionnaires, trained and told to hit the streets. I seemed to inherit some of the more elusive, fringe types who always hang around Berkeley. Just finding them was an adventure.

When our data was analyzed, we found that a quarter or so of the participants were relatively hard core in terms of having been actively involved in the Civil Rights movement. Most of the participants resembled me: students and grad students who were somewhat on the idealistic side, angry at the Administration, in sympathy with the Civil Rights Movement, and committed to our right to participate in the political process.

Were there truly radical students on campus who saw the protests as a way to radicalize students and achieve objectives beyond retrieving the basic rights that had been taken away?

Yes. I met some when I decided to help create a Free Student Union. A union made sense to me. The student government, by its very nature, was tied closely to the Administration. A union would go beyond the temporary, nonrepresentational nature of the FSM and give us ongoing power and representation that we lacked as individuals.

I participated in two or three meetings including one I hosted at our apartment. Chaos was good, I quickly learned. Policemen dragging students down stairs and bashing an occasional head was to our advantage. It created solidarity among the ranks and radicalized the student body.

We needed to goad the Administration into further action, the more outrageous the better.

It did not reflect who I was or my goals. After sharing my opinion on what I thought about the chosen strategies, I parted ways with the Free Student Union. Apparently, most students shared my perspective. The union, to my knowledge, did not get off the ground.

The focus shifted temporarily in the spring and maybe this shift reflected a more radical strategy. We had our so-named Filthy Speech Movement. People would get up in the free speech area and see how many obscenities they could mouth in the name of free speech.

From my perspective it was inane and counterproductive, a non-issue designed to infuriate the Administration and garner media coverage.  Rather than serve a positive purpose, it degraded our efforts of the fall and was utilized by the Oakland Tribunes of the world and their allies as justification for their condemnation of the campus.

More typical was a return to what some would define as an accepted activity of college life. I was amused to read a Junior Class party announcement in the “Daily Californian” one Friday.

“Everyone is welcome at our TGIF party, especially the FSM: it will give them a chance to quench their thirst.” Dennis O’Shea, Junior Class Activities Chairman was quoted. “It promises to be the hell raiser of the year – lots of girls, a screaming rock and roll band that frequently plays for the Hell’s Angels, and 150 gallons of liquid refreshments.”

I can imagine that the Administration was praying for a return to the good old days when a ‘hell raiser’ was defined as an ocean of beer and a screaming rock and roll band.

Next Blog: Looking back at the FSM: What did we accomplish?

UC Berkeley on Strike… The 1964 Free Speech Movement

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When police occupied the UC Berkeley Campus in early December of 1964 and arrested the protestors in Sproul Hall, the University went on strike. I joined a picket line on the edge of Telegraph Avenue next to Sproul Plaza.

My bed was indeed much softer that the marble floors of Sproul Hall.

After a quick breakfast I hurried back to campus to rejoin the sit-in. I was too late.

Armed men in uniforms formed a cordon around the Administration Building where students were being dragged down the stairs and loaded into police vans. Windows had been taped over so neither protestors or media could not see what was transpiring inside.

We had an occupied campus.

The great liberal governor of California had acted to “end the anarchy and maintain law and order in California.”

Whereas Jack Kennedy had used troops to protect civil rights in the South, Pat Brown was using them to stifle civil rights in the West. Of course Brown didn’t see it that way; he was taking a courageous stand against anarchy, the anarchy I described in my last blog.

I am sure Laurel and Hardy would have seen something to laugh about. Dragging kids down stairs on their butts while their heads bounced along behind could easily have been a scene in one of the old Keystone Cop films. The Oakland police weren’t nearly as funny as the Keystone Cops, however.

As for Clark Kerr, President of the University, he felt we were getting what we deserved and argued that the FSM leaders and their followers “are now finding in their effort to escape the gentle discipline of the University, they have thrown themselves into the arms of the less understanding discipline of the community at large.”

The campus came to a grinding halt and a great deal of fence-sitting ended. Whole departments shut down in strike. Sproul Hall plaza filled with several thousand students in protest of the police presence. When the police made a flying wedge to grab a speaker system students were using, we were electrified and protected the system with our bodies.

It was the closest I have ever come to being in a riot; thousands of thinking, caring students teetered on the edge of becoming an infuriated, unthinking mob. Violence and bloodshed, egged on by police action, would have been the result. Kerr, Brown, Knowland and company would have had the anarchy they were claiming, after the fact.

A few days later we were to come close again.

Kerr, in a series of around the clock meetings with a select committee of Department Chairs, had arrived at a compromise he felt would provide for the extended freedom being demanded on campus while also diffusing the outside pressure to crack open student heads.

Sit-in participants arrested in the Sproul Hall would be left to the tender mercies of the outside legal system and not disciplined by the University. Rights to free speech and organization on campus would be restored as long as civil disobedience was not advocated.

Kerr and Robert Scalapino, Chair of the Political Science Department, presented the compromise to a hastily called all-campus meeting of 15,000 students and faculty at the Greek Theater. There was to be no discussion and no other speakers.

When Mario Savio approached the podium following the presentation, he was grabbed by police, thrown down, and dragged off the stage. Apparently he had wanted to announce a meeting in Sproul Plaza to discuss Kerr’s proposal. Once again, Berkeley teetered on the edge of a riot. We moved from silent, shocked disbelief to shouting our objections.

Mario, released from the room where he was held captive, urged us to stay calm and leave the area. We did, but Kerr’s compromise had become compromised.

A full meeting of the Academic Senate was to be held the next day and all of us waited in anticipation to hear what stand Berkeley’s faculty would take.  We knew that most faculty members deplored the presence of police on campus and the violent way they had responded to the nonviolent demonstrators. Dragging Mario off the stage had not helped the Administration’s case.

Some departments such as math, philosophy, anthropology and English were clearly on the side of FSM while others including business and engineering were in opposition.

My own department of political science was clearly divided. Some professors believed that nonviolent civil disobedience threatened the stability of government. Others recognized how critical it was for helping the powerless gain power. To them, having large blocks of disenfranchised, alienated people in America seemed to be a greater threat to democracy than civil disobedience.

The Senate met on December 8 in Wheeler Hall, ironically in the same auditorium where Peter Odegard had lectured on the meaning of democracy to my Poly Sci 1 class during my first day at Berkeley. Some 5000 of us gathered outside to wait for the results and listen to the proceedings over a loud-speaker.

To the students who had fought so hard and risked so much, and to those of us who had joined their cause, the results were close to euphoric. On a vote of 824-115 the faculty voted that all disciplinary actions prior to December 8 should be dropped, that students should have the right to organize on campus for off-campus political activity, and that the University should not regulate the content of speech or advocacy.

Two weeks later, the Regents confirmed our hard-won freedom. We had won the battle but not necessarily the war.

Next Blog: Looking back at the long-term results of the Free Speech Movement

Occupy Sproul Hall… The 1964 Free Speech Movement at Berkeley

/ Curt Mekemson / 2 Comments

 

The release of the hostage Police Car did not bring peace to the UC Berkeley Campus. Each time a solution seemed imminent, the Administration would renege or the FSM would increase its demands.

In addition to the right to organize on campus, the disciplining leaders of the Free Speech Movement became a central issue.

Demonstrations took place almost daily and were blasted in the press. I learned a great deal about media sensationalism and biased reporting.

One day I would sit in on a democratic and spirited discussion of the pros and cons of a specific action and the next day I would read in the Oakland Tribune or San Francisco Examiner that I had participated in a major insurrection of left leaning radicals who were challenging the very basis of law and order. (It was documented later that the FBI was paying a reporter to write the Examiner stories.)

Older adults in suits taking photos looked suspiciously like plain-clothes policemen or FBI agents. It was easy to become paranoid.

If we signed a petition, demonstrated, made a speech or just stood by listening, would our pictures and names end up in some mysterious Washington file that proclaimed our disloyalty to the nation? These weren’t idle thoughts. A few years earlier people’s careers had been ended and live ruined because someone had implied they were soft on communism.

J. Edgar Hoover was known for tracking Civil Rights’ leaders and maintaining extensive files on every aspect of their lives. While we weren’t up against the KGB, caution was advisable. Hoover considered Berkeley a hotbed of Communism.

We looked warily at those who didn’t look like us. One day a small dog was making his way around the edge of the daily demonstration, sniffing people.

“See that Chihuahua,” a friend whispered in my ear. I nodded yes. “It’s a police dog in disguise. Any moment it is going to unzip its front and a German Shepherd will pop out.”

The wolf in sheep’s clothing was among us. It was a light moment to counter a serious time. And we were very serious. I sometimes wondered when the celebrated fun of being a college student would kick in.

One day I was faced with a test more serious than any I had ever faced in the classroom. On December 2, 1964, FSM leaders called for a massive sit in at Sproul Hall, Berkeley’s administration building. Once again communication had broken down and the Administration was back peddling, caught between students and faculty on one side and increasing pressure from the outside on the other.

I thought about the implications of the sit-it and decided to join. I needed to act. For three months I had listened to pros and cons and watched the press blatantly misrepresent what was happening on campus. I was angry, knowing that the public had little option but to believe that a small group of radicals was preaching anarchy.

It was not wrong to utilize an edge of campus for discussing the issues of the day, or for organizations to raise funds for supporting various causes, or even to recruit students for participating in efforts to change the community.

It didn’t disrupt my education. I was free to stop and listen, to join in, or pass on. What it did do was irritate powerful, established members of the community. And for that reason, our freedoms had been curtailed.

Maybe if enough students joined together, the Administration would listen and the press would dig deeper. I told my fiancé I was going inside and then joined the thousand or so students who had made similar decisions.

It was early in the afternoon and we were in high spirits. I believed it would be hard for the Administration to claim 1000 students were a small group of rabble-rousers bent on destroying the system. And I was right. It claimed we were a large group of rabble-rousers bent on destroying the system.

Inside I was treated to a unique experience. The sit-in was well organized. Mario Savio and other FSM leaders gave us directions on what to do if the police arrived. There were clear instructions that we were not to block doorways. The normal business of the University was not to be impeded and we were not to be destructive in any way.

Floors were organized for different purposes. The basement was set aside as the Free University where graduate students were teaching a variety of classes. These included normal topics such as physics and biology and more exotic subjects such as the nature of God. One floor was set aside as a study hall and was kept quiet. Another featured entertainment – including old Laurel and Hardy films, which seemed particularly appropriate.

After administrators left, a desk in the dean’s office became a podium for speech making. I felt compelled to add my dimes worth. Each speaker took off his or her shoes so the top of the desk would not be damaged.

The real treat though was an impromptu concert by Joan Baez. I joined a small group sitting around her in the hallway and sang protest songs. The hit of the night was “We Shall Overcome.” It provided us with a sense of identification with struggles taking place in the South. I felt like I belonged and was part of something much larger than myself.

Mainly I walked around and listened, taking extensive notes on what I saw and felt. Later I would sit in the Café Med on Telegraph Avenue and write them up. They would become the basis of talks I would give back home over the Christmas break. I also turned them over to Father Baskin, an Episcopal minister who wanted to use them for a sermon at his church in Placerville.

Along about midnight the un-radical part of my nature took over. I started thinking about my comfortable bed back in the apartment. The marble floors of Sproul Hall did not suggest a good night’s sleep and it appeared the police weren’t coming, at least in the immediate future. Yawning, I left the building and headed home.

I would come back in the morning to chaos and an occupied campus.

Next Blog: Berkeley on Strike. (See below for the story about Jack Weinberg and the police car.)

In Honor of Martin Luther King

/ Curt Mekemson / 1 Comment

It is easy to forget what America was like before the Civil Rights Movement changed how African-Americans are treated in the US. I’ve touched on this subject in my articles about UC Berkeley and the Free Speech Movement. Prejudice was not a problem relegated to the South.

Today, in honor of Martin Luther King, I would like to visit the South of 1968, however. I was serving as a recruiter for the Peace Corps at that time, working through out the Southern United States. It was the year Martin Luther King was shot.

The issue of skin color had faded away when I worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Africa from 1965-67. My travels through the South as a recruiter brought me face to face again with the reality and tragedy of prejudice.

Supposedly, I was recruiting in the ‘New South,’ a South that had made it beyond the ugliest parts of discrimination. But one didn’t have to dig deep to find old scars or even open wounds.

A few years earlier, George Wallace was announcing his schools would not be integrated, Lester Maddox was waving his pick ax handle, students from Berkeley were participating in the Freedom Rides and young people were being murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi for registering black voters.

One of our black recruiters had grown up in Alabama and described the experience. I was still mastering ‘Southernese’ so her statement lost a little in the translation but I report it as I heard it.

“When I was growing up,” she had reported, “I always had to step off the sidewalk and into the gutter whenever the Polish came walking along.”

“Wow,” I had replied, trying to comprehend what it would be like to have to debase yourself in such a way and at the same time wondering about the problem with the Polish that I had never heard about before.

“I never knew that there was a problem in the South with the Polish,” I observed.

“Polish,” she had replied in an irritated voice, “P, O, L, I, C, E.” Read my lips.

Properly chastised my mind made the leap. I thought back to Berkeley and remembered my feelings about police on campus. I wondered what it would be like to grow up fearing the very people who were supposed to protect you. How long it would take for those feelings to leave you… if they ever could? How could such experiences do anything other than teach you hatred?

Not long after that my wife, Jo Ann, and I were recruiting at the University of North Texas in Denton along with a black recruiter. The three of us had gone out for breakfast at a local restaurant.

I had noticed that people became quiet when we walked in. Gradually conversations resumed. I really didn’t think much about it. A family with young children was in the booth next to us. Suddenly a little four-year-old head poked up and was staring over the seat at us, all eyes.

“Mama, there is a nigger sitting with those people,” she had announced to her mother and everyone else in the restaurant in a loud, clear voice. From the ‘mouth of an innocent babe’ the prejudice of generations was repeated.

Jo Ann and I were also to learn that prejudice went both directions. One of our assignments was to recruit at Black Campuses. We had accepted readily. Why not?

When we began our recruitment efforts, we quickly realized that we were less than welcome, that there was a barely concealed resentment about our presence. No one yelled at us or threatened us, but the looks and mumbled side comments spoke volumes.

We were guilty of being white. It wasn’t who we were, what we were committed to, or what we had done; it was the color of our skin. It was a powerful lesson on the unthinking, disturbing nature of prejudice. A few weeks later the hatred it spawns would lead to one of America’s greatest tragedies.

It was in the spring of 1968 and we were recruiting at the University of West Virginia in Morgantown. It was our second visit to the campus and we felt like we were returning to see old friends. Students were excited about the Peace Corps and eager to sign up.  We had set up our booth and were well into persuading students to leave the country when the news came.

Martin Luther King had been shot and killed.

For the second time in our relatively short lives (John Kennedy’s assassination was the first), we were struck by instant grief and anguish for someone we had never known, a man who had stood as a symbol of hope that the hatred and bigotry in America could be overcome, and that it could be done without violence.

The preacher of non-violence, the Christian black man with a golden voice and stirring words had been shot down in cold blood. Another hero was dead, destroyed because he believed that he could make a difference, shot down because he had dared to dream. And we were left with the question: why?

Today, the fact that a black man can serve as President of the US, speaks to how far we have come as a nation and honors the efforts of Martin Luther King.

Still, as King would remind us if he were alive today, the struggle against prejudice is not over, and may never be. Hate crimes are a daily occurrence in our world; people continue to discriminate against others because of their religion, ethnicity, sex, economic status and color of skin.

The best way to honor Martin Luther King, and the thousands of others who have sacrificed to make this a fair and just world, is to continue the struggle.

Holding a Police Car Hostage: UC Berkeley’s 1965 Free Speech Movement

/ Curt Mekemson / 5 Comments

Jack Weinberg, creator of the statement "Never trust anyone over 30," was arrested for raising funds to support Civil Rights efforts on the UC Berkeley Campus in the fall of 1965. Students surrounded the police car and held it hostage.

In the fall of 1965, the UC Berkeley Administration declared that the Bancroft-Telegraph Free Speech area was closed and that there would be no more organization of off-campus Civil Rights demonstrations at Berkeley. Student organizers of the various community efforts reacted immediately.

These were not young adults whose biggest challenge had been to organize pre-football game rallies. Some, like Mario Savio, had walked the streets of the South registering black voters and risking their lives to do so.

In the summer of 1964 three of their colleagues had been shot dead and buried under an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi. Many had cut their political eye teeth four years earlier in the anti-HUAC demonstrations in San Francisco and had participated in numerous protests against racial discrimination throughout the Bay Area since. (HUAC was the House Un-American Activities Committee, a hold over from the McCarthy era.)

The student organizers understood the value of demonstrations, media coverage and confrontation and had become masters at community organization. They were focused in their vision to the degree they were willing to face police and be arrested for their beliefs.

The Administration wasn’t nearly as focused. 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.

It eventually led to the massive protests that painted 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 (FSM). As a political science major, 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 National Guard troops and Berkeley would take on the atmosphere of a police state.

I found myself being radicalized in the process as well although I never reached the point of moving beyond 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 move across the dividing line into civil disobedience.

Within hours of the time that Dean Katherine Towle sent out her ultimatum to campus organizations, the brother and sister team of Art and Jackie Goldberg had pulled together activist organizations ranging in orientation from the radical to conservative and a nascent FSM was born.

Shortly thereafter the mimeographs were humming and students were buried in an avalanche of leaflets as they walked on to campus. I read mine is disbelief. The clash I had predicted at the student leader meeting a year earlier had arrived. There was no joy in being right.

In an era before social networks and cell phones, FSM organizers relied on mimeographed fliers and word of mouth to build instant support. The above flier is one I saved in my files on the Free Speech Movement.

As soon as it became apparent that the Administration had no intention of backing off from its new rules, the FSM leadership determined to challenge the University. Organizations were encouraged to set up card tables in the Sather Gate area to solicit support for off campus causes.

I had stopped by a table to pick up some literature when a pair of Deans approached and started writing down names of the folks manning the tables. Our immediate reaction was to form a line so we could have our names taken as well. The Deans refused to accommodate us. The Administration’s objective was to pick off and separate the leadership of the FSM from the general student body.

A few days later I came out of class to find a police car parked in Sproul Plaza surrounded by students. The police, with encouragement from the Administration, had arrested Jack Weinberg, a non-student organizer for CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) who had been soliciting support for his organization.

Someone had found a bullhorn and people were making speeches from the top of the police car while Jack sat inside. I situated myself on the edge of the fountain next to the Student Union and idly scratched the head of a German Short Haired Pointer named Ludwig while I listened. (Ludwig visited campus daily and played in the fountain. Later, in Berkeley-like fashion, the fountain would be named for him.)

A scanned photo of Ludwig from Berkeley's student newspaper.

Eventually I stood up and joined those on the edge of the crowd thereby becoming a part of the blockade. It was my first ever participation in civil disobedience. It was a small step. There would be plenty of time for more critical thinking if the police showed up in force.

Being only semi-radical, I did duty between classes and took breaks for eating and sleep. Eventually, after a couple of days, the FSM negotiated a deal with the Administration. Jack was booked on campus and turned loose, as was the police car. A collection was taken up to pay for minor damages the police car had sustained in the line of duty while serving as a podium.

Next Blog: The Police and National Guard occupy Berkeley’s campus

 

On the Edge of Radicalism… Berkeley’s 1965 Free Speech Movement

/ Curt Mekemson / 1 Comment

A major confrontation erupted on the UC Berkeley Campus in 1965 known worldwide as the Free Speech Movement. At stake was the right of students to be actively involved in the Civil Rights movement and other political issues of the time.

While I was playing in Puerto Vallarta, my nephew, Wayne Cox, posted the video of a Campus Cop using pepper spray on students at UC Davis. The students were involved in a nonviolent protest supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement.

It was a strong indictment of the policeman, a bully using his power of position to intimidate and physically strike out at the protestors.

Those who oppose the Occupy Movement rushed to classify the incident as a random act of a disturbed individual. It was bad PR and the video had gone viral. But the use of violence to counter protest movements has a long history in America, dating all the way back to the Revolutionary War and the Boston Massacre.

I was to experience incidents similar to Davis during student protests at UC Berkeley in the mid 60s. I’ve already written a two blogs about the roots of the protest (see below).

I returned to UC in the fall of 1965 excited about my senior year. Two of my former dorm mates, Cliff Marks and Jerry Silverfield, had agreed to share an apartment. Prices were high. Landlords had a captive student population to exploit. We ended up with a small kitchen, bathroom, living room, and one bedroom. Things were so tight in the bedroom that Cliff and I had a bunk bed. I would later wonder why this was superior to dorm life.

Jerry (on the right), Cliff and I in our small apartment.

We christened the apartment by consuming a small barrel of tequila Cliff had brought back from his summer of sharpening Spanish skills in Mexico.

While we were recovering from our well-deserved headaches the next morning, UC’s Administration moved decisively to eliminate off campus political activities from being initiated on campus.

There would be no more organization of Civil Rights demonstrations and no more money collected to support political candidates or causes. Controversial speakers would not be allowed on campus without tight administrative control.

The Bancroft-Telegraph entrance free speech area was out of business, closed down, caput. That incredible babble of voices advocating a multitude of causes would be heard no more.

The Administration’s actions were a testament to the success of the 1960s Civil Rights struggle taking place in the Bay Area. It wasn’t that the activists wanted change; the problem was they were achieving it.

Non-violent civil disobedience is a powerful tool. Base your fight on legitimate moral and political 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. People tend to get upset when they see nonviolent protestors being beaten with nightsticks in national and international media. It gives power to the powerless.

Major businesses being targeted for their discriminatory practices in the Bay Area, the Sheraton Hotel, United Airlines and Safeway, blinked. Each would alter their practices.

One business that didn’t back down was the Oakland Tribune, owned by William Knowland, a conservative Republican, former Senator from California and leader of California’s Republican Party.

As the protests in the surrounding community became more successful, the power structure being attacked 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.

The Regents, President and Chancellor bowed to the pressure.

Some members of the Regents and Administration undoubtedly agreed with the businesses being challenged and saw the protesters as part of an anarchic left-wing plot. 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.

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. Possibly the administrators believed they were dealing with a small, unpopular minority, or maybe they just needed to believe: the outside pressure was so great it didn’t matter what the students believed or how they reacted.

Next blog: I become involved in ‘civil disobedience.’

Proud to be a UC Berkeley student, I display my sweatshirt.

Berkeley on Edge… the 60s

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

Within a week of my arrival at Berkeley, I was President of Priestly Hall, my dorm. Following my stint as Student Body President at Sierra College, I decided to jump into student politics at the University. The dormitories were new so the residents were new. The fact that I was a Community College transfer made little difference.

Student politics seemed dull and almost frivolous compared to the real thing, however. What truly fascinated me about Berkeley was the palpable sense of being involved in the events of the day.

Fellow students had actually signed up for and gone on Freedom Rides in the South. An active effort to end discriminatory hiring practices was underway in the Bay Area and organizations such as the Congress of Racial Equality were recruiting students to support their efforts.

I was drawn toward these issues and the call to action tweaked my interest. Limiting the future of a potential Martin Luther King 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 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 such as organizing parties, collecting rolls of toilet paper to throw during Cal football games and learning the football fight songs.

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 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. 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. Apparently the student body wasn’t ready for the message; a popular bartender representing a fraternity 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. These weren’t bad goals but there was little room in the equation for students seeking social and political change… in Mississippi, in Oakland or on campus.

But ‘the times they were a changing,’ as Bob Dylan sang. A young President in Washington was calling on the youth of America to become involved, 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 also a justifiable fear of reprisal from the right.

The ugliness of McCarthyism was still alive and well in America. Only a few years before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) had held hearings in San Francisco in its ceaseless search for Commies. UC had been a target.

HUAC created a deep paranoia and distrust within society and may indeed have constituted the most un-American type of activity ever perpetrated on the American public. Clark Kerr, the University President, 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 might 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, Young Democrats, Young Republicans and other activist groups.

We sat in a large room in a huge square; there must have been at least 40 of us. I was eager to participate and imagined an open discussion of the issues.

A Dean welcomed us, thanked us for agreeing to participate, and then laid the foundation for our discussion. A small group of radical students was disrupting the campus and organizing off-campus activities such as picketing and sit-ins that were illegal in nature.

While the issues being addressing were important, there were other, more appropriate means available for solving them that didn’t involve Berkeley. The Administration had been extremely tolerant so far but was approaching a point where it might have to crack down for the overall good of the University.

The Administration wanted our feedback as student leaders. What did we think was happening, how would our constituencies react to a crack down, and how could we help defuse the situation? We were to go around the room with each student leader expressing his or her view. I expected a major reaction… hopefully a protest or at least a warning to move cautiously, to involve all parties in seeking some type of amenable agreement.

The first student leader stood up. “The radical students are making me extremely angry,” he reported. “I resent that a small group of people can ruin everything for the rest of us. The vast majority of the students do not support off-campus political action. I believe the student body would support a crackdown by the Administration. You have my support in whatever you do.”

I could not believe what I was hearing. Was the guy a plant, preprogrammed by the Administration to repeat the party line and set the tone for everyone else? If so, he was successful. The next person and the next person parroted what he had said. I began to doubt myself.

Normally, I am quite good at reading political trends and sensing when a group leans toward supporting or opposing an issue. My read on what was happening at Bancroft and Telegraph was that the majority of the students were empathic with and supportive of the causes the so-called radical students were advocating.

The Martin Luther Kings of the world were heroes, not bad guys, and their tactics of nonviolent civil disobedience were empowering the powerless. Sure, the majority of the students were primarily concerned with getting through college. To many, an all night kegger and getting laid might seem infinitely more appealing than a sit-in. But this did not imply a lack of shared concern.

Or so I believed. Apparently, very few of the other participants shared in my belief. Concerns were raised but no one stopped and said, “Damn it, we have a problem!”

As my turn approached I felt myself chickening out. I was the new kid on the block, wet behind the ears. What did I know?

Acceptance in this crowd was to stand up and say, “Yes, everything you are talking about is true. Let’s clamp down on the rabble rousers and get on with the important life of being students.” And I wanted to be accepted, to be a part of the establishment. I stood up with shaking legs.

“Hi, my name is Curt Mekemson and I am the president of Priestly Hall,” I announced in a voice which was matching my legs, shake for shake. This was not the impression I wanted to make. As others had spoken, I had scribbled some notes on what I wanted to say.

“I believe we have a very serious problem here, that the issues are legitimate, and that most students are sympathetic. I don’t think we should be cracking down but should be working together to find solutions. Now is not the time to further alienate the activists and create more of a crisis than we presently have. I believe it is a serious mistake to not have representatives from the groups involved in organizing off campus activities here today.”

I was met with deadly silence. A few heads nodded in agreement, but mainly there were glares. “Next,” the Dean said. No yea, no nay, no discussion. I was a bringer of bad tidings, a storm crow. But it wasn’t ‘kill the messenger.’ It was more like ‘ignore the messenger,’ like I had farted in public and people were embarrassed.

After that, my enthusiasm for student government waned. I should have fought back, fought for what I believed in, fought for what I knew deep down to be right. But I didn’t. I was still trying to figure out what to do with 15 books in Poly Sci 1. I had a relationship to maintain on campus and a mother fighting cancer at home. The dark, heavy force of depression rolled over my mind like the fog rolling in from the Bay.

Finally I decided that something had to go and that the only thing expendable was my role as President of the dorm. So I turned over the reins of power to my VP and headed back to Bancroft Library. Politics could wait.

Next blog: John Kennedy Is Shot Down on the Streets of Dallas.

Held at Gun Point… Training for Berkeley in the 60s

/ Curt Mekemson / 2 Comments

The man rested his rifle on the hood of my 56 Chevy. His message was clear. I wasn’t going anywhere

My summers between college were spent working for American Laundry driving a laundry truck between Placerville and Lake Tahoe. In addition to having one of the country’s most scenic routes to travel over each day, the job paid for my college education.

At the beginning of my summer between Sierra and Berkeley, Roger Douvers, the owner of the business, asked if I wouldn’t like to move up to the Lake and work for his son-in-law, John Cefalu. John had taken over a laundry that Douvers had owned, sold and then reclaimed because of back payments.

As an incentive, Roger threw in free rent in an old trailer next to the laundry.

I was happily sleeping in my trailer one morning when the laundry trucks roared to life.  I jumped out of bed. Over sleeping was no excuse for being late. I looked accusingly at my alarm clock. It said 6 AM, an hour before we normally went to work. My watch concurred.

More than a little confused, I looked out my window. An armed man stood in front of my door while other men with rifles were posted around the laundry.

Not having a phone, there was no way to contact Cefalu or Douvers. I decided it was time to vacate the premises.

I threw on my clothes, sidestepped the gunman and jumped into my car. The guard immediately repositioned himself as a hood ornament and looked threatening. Guys with guns can do that.

“Don’t be worried, Curt,” a familiar voice told me.

“Right,” I thought as I checked out the tough looking guy. I turned my head and spotted Woody, our lead driver. “What in the hell is going on?” I demanded.

“We’ve taken over the laundry,” Woody replied casually.

The next question followed naturally.  Who in the heck constituted ‘we?’ Woody had an answer for that, too.

“I work for the people who Douvers screwed when he took the laundry back,” he told me. “We’re here legally and these armed men are professional security guards to protect our interests.” Apparently Woody had been quietly arranging a coup while taking Roger’s money.

“I am leaving now,” I informed Woody.

“I don’t think so,” Woody replied. “Relax, it will all be over in a few hours and you can go to work for us.”

I was beginning to feel like I had been caught up in a Grade B movie.

“Woody, you are not going to shoot me,” I said with a lot more confidence than I felt. “Tell the man to get out of my way.” I was irritated to the point of irrationality. I turned on the car and started rolling forward. At the last possible moment, when it was clear that I intended to keep going, Woody motioned for his man to move. I was glad they couldn’t hear my sigh of relief.

Once away from the laundry, I shoved the gas pedal down and made a dash for Cefalu’s. My trip was over in a flash but it was not nearly as quick as the trip back. I knocked on the door of the dark house and was surprised to find Roger open it in his pajamas. He’d come up from Placerville the night before.

“What’s wrong Curt,” he said sounding a little alarmed. Obviously I wouldn’t show up at 6:30 A.M. to wish him a good morning.

“Your laundry has been taken over by armed men,” I blurted out and then quickly filled in the details. Roger responded by saying some very unpleasant things. He grabbed his jacket, yelled for his daughter to call the sheriff, and told me to jump in his truck.

There are three red lights between where Cefalu lived and the laundry. We managed to run all three. Our truck screeched to a halt in front of the office and Roger jumped out with me close behind.

“Fine,” I thought to myself. “I just escaped from this place and here I am back providing muscle back up for an angry man who is probably going to pop someone in the nose and get us both shot.”

Fortunately there were a lot of words before any action and the Sheriff’s deputy showed up with siren blasting. It would all be settled in court. I was still in one piece. My experience at facing armed men would make a good story.

And, unknown to me at the time, it would help prepare me for being a student at Berkeley.

Next blog: The strange world of Berkeley in 1963.

How Being a Minority, Facing Nuclear Oblivion and Becoming Green Can Change Your World View: the 1960s

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

I graduated from high school in 1961 as a budding Young Republican. College changed my perspective.

I spent my first two years at Sierra, a small, rural community college nestled in the rolling foothills east of Sacramento. I then transferred to the University of California at Berkeley, the flash point of worldwide student unrest in the 60s. Sierra liberalized my view of the world; Berkeley radicalized it.

Three things happened at Sierra that changed my political views. The first took place in the first hour on my first day at school.

On Being a Minority

The faculty had arranged for a speaker to kick off the school’s welcome and orientation. He was a Chinese man who stood up in front of a sea of white faces and smiled like he had access to secrets we didn’t.

“You think I look funny?” our speaker asked with a grin.  His question was greeted by nervous laughter. As naive as we were, we still knew enough to be made uncomfortable by such a question.

“Well I think you look funny,” he went on to much more laughter, “and there are a lot more of me who think you look funny than there are of you who think I look funny.”

It jolted my perspective. The Civil Rights movement was gaining momentum in the South in the early 60s and I was sympathetic with its objectives. Providing people with equal rights regardless of race, sex, religion or other arbitrary factor seemed like the correct thing to do. I also had a vague concept that we all lose when we limit a person or group’s ability to succeed because of prejudice.

But I had never perceived of myself as being a minority. Instead, I belonged to an exclusive club. In 1961 white males dominated the US and the US dominated the world. It was easy to assume that this was how things should be.

The fact that it might be otherwise put a new spin on the issue. What if we ended up in a situation where we were in the minority and lacked power? I added enlightened self-interest to my list of reasons for supporting equal rights. They might be the only protection we had.

On Facing Nuclear Oblivion

The second event was one of the most scary our generation would face. All of our lives we had been raised under the threat of a nuclear cloud. We were constantly treated to photographs and television coverage of massive, doomsday explosions and their tell-tale clouds.

Growing up in the 50s meant growing up paranoid. In elementary school, we even practiced drills where we would hide under our desks and assume a fetal position for when the big bomb hit.

Atom bombs, which could destroy whole cities and kill millions of people, weren’t massive enough. We needed bigger bombs and we needed more. It was important that we could kill everyone in the world several times over and blast ourselves and the rest of life into times that would make the so-called Dark Ages seem like a Sunday picnic in the park.

None of this was our fault, of course. We had the evil Russian Communists and their desire to rule the world to blame. “We will bury you!” Khrushchev threatened and we believed him. Losing a soul to communism was worse than losing a soul to the devil. Better Dead than Red was the motto of people whose fingers were very close to the nuclear button.

The closest we have come to the nuclear holocaust took place during two terrifying weeks in late October 1962.  I, along with most of the student body and faculty at Sierra College, sat tethered to the radio in the Campus Center as our nation teetered on the edge of nuclear abyss.

It all came about because a cigar chomping right-wing dictator we liked was replaced by a cigar chomping left-wing dictator we didn’t. It was known as the Cuban Missile Crisis and has its own headlines in the history books as being a highlight of the Cold War.

Castro and his revolution had provided a toehold for Communism in the western Hemisphere. Jack Kennedy waged a crusade to get rid of him that included an alleged assassination attempt using Mafia hit men and the invasion fiasco known as the Bay of Pigs.

Castro called on Khrushchev for help and Russia responded by offering nuclear missiles. This made the folks in Washington rightfully nervous. Kennedy set up a blockade of Cuba. It was here that things got dicey. Fingers hovered over the launch buttons.

Fortunately, Khrushchev blinked. Aided by promises that the US wouldn’t invade Cuba and that we would remove our missiles from Turkey, Russia retrieved its nuclear missiles and we entered our decades long stare-down with Castro.

From that point on in my life, I became convinced that here had to be solutions to solving international differences beyond blowing each other off the map. Nation states rattling sabers was one thing; nation states rattling nuclear bombs and other forms of mass destruction was something else.

On Becoming Green

Another concept I was introduced to at Sierra was environmental activism. For this, I owe thanks to Danny Langford. Dan liked to talk and could fit more words into a minute than I could five. One Monday morning he proudly informed me that he had spent his weekend pulling up surveyor stakes in a new development called El Dorado Hills.

“You did what?” I asked in a shocked and disapproving voice. Pulling up surveyor stakes was malicious vandalism.

“I pulled up stakes to discourage a developer from building houses,” he responded in greater detail assuming it would make sense to me.

It didn’t. Why would someone want to discourage a developer? My Republican roots were offended to the core.

“Why would you pull a destructive stunt like that?” I wanted to know as I pictured several days of surveyor work going down the drain.

“It’s a beautiful area,” Dan responded, “covered with oak trees and grass. They are going to cut down the trees, plant houses, and pave over the grass.”

Suddenly what Dan was talking about made sense. I wasn’t about to join him on one of his destructive forays but his comments made me think about how fast we were paving over California.

Many of the wooded areas I had wandered as a kid a few years earlier had already met their demise at the business end of a bulldozer. Progress was how this destruction was defined and progress was a sacred American tradition. For the first time in my life, I questioned its value.

Possibly there were other costs that needed to be considered and weighed in our blind rush toward the future. It would be nine years before I made the leap into being a full-time environmental activist but the seed had been planted.

So here I was in mid-1963, part internationalist, a future environmentalist, and a Civil Rights advocate. I had definitely made a left turn out of the right lane. I figured I was ready for Berkeley.  Not.

Next blog: I am held at gunpoint.