Berkeley Chapter

Berkeley Chapter

CHAPTER III

Conscience of the Community

J.N. Heiskell, owner and editor of the Arkansas Gazette, saw his newspaper win two Pulitzer’s in one year for the same event: covering desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. Despite his own personal belief in segregation, he also believed the newspaper must be the conscience of the community, and as such the newspaper must sometimes take stands that are right but not necessarily popular with readers.[1] Tammy Dunn, editor/general manager/publisher of the Montgomery Herald in Troy, North Carolina, had similar feelings about doing the right thing when she and an assistant editor wrote a mission statement for the newspaper in the late 1990s, which state that the newspaper should be  “The conscience of the community, a recorder of its history, a voice for all citizens and an advocate for good.”[2]

Being the conscience of the community and doing the right thing are not always easy. And certainly that’s what the staff of The Daily Californian found out in 1964-65 when protest came to its campus.

Covering the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley

Student reporter Peter Benjaminson was in The Daily Californian office in Moses Hall (Old Eshleman), talking to night editor Jim Branson on October 1, 1964, when he learned about the protest in Sproul Plaza nearby. “We were going like ‘what the hell? They’re actually going to do it,’” Benjaminson recalled. After three weeks of fairly mild demonstrations against the administration’s more strict guidelines for political activism on campus, University of California-Berkeley students had taken the most serious action so far. They had surrounded a police car brought onto the plaza to transport former student Jack Weinberg to jail for violating the activism rules. For the next 30 hours, the car — with Weinberg inside — did not move. The Free Speech Movement had begun.

Benjaminson immediately went to work. He and other reporters at The Daily Californian student newspaper remained at the forefront of reporting on the various protests and responses for most of the school year, writing about the Free Speech Movement throughout the fall and later what was dubbed the Filthy Speech Movement in the spring term.

Through it all the student reporters and editors worked diligently to be factual and accurate, and as objective as possible. That is what fall Editor Susan Johnson believed was the highest standard of good journalism, an ideal she tried to instill in her staff.[3] At the end of the semester, she identified the newspaper’s role throughout the Free Speech Movement in the final editorial that she wrote as editor. She said that although she had not realized it at first, she now knew that the newspaper had been the conscience of the university — pointing out the good as well as the bad on all sides of the issues as it diligently worked to write objective news stories about the movement. Her final piece criticized both administrators and protesters for failing to communicate without strings attached, but heaped most of the blame on the students behind the Free Speech Movement because they made the administration a “faceless mechanistic bureaucracy.”  It was more typical of editorials throughout the semester that had often seemed skewed toward the administration even if they did not offer outright support. Johnson’s final words were those of a loyal student who urged others “to keep the University in the best shape possible for student, administration and faculty alike. … Each of us has an investment in this University. The investment extends far beyond the four years we spend here and far beyond the corner of Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue.”[4]

Johnson’s desire to present all sides of an issue — to be the conscience of the campus — was apparent on the editorial page as well but actually resulted in more ambivalent and indecisive editorial positions. Examination of all the editorials shows the hesitancy the editors had most of the time in taking a strong stand to support the free speech issue or to get solidly behind the administration. However, they regularly called for both administration and protesters to communicate better. The three top editors who approved the editorial each day often did so without consensus. Editor Johnson and Managing Editor Justin Roberts usually went for the conservative position, with Roberts as the more conservative of the two, whereas Assistant Editor Jim Willwerth was more liberal and often disagreed with the other two. The majority overruled him.

Then a few weeks before Christmas, the paper finally took a strong stand and asked the Board of Trustees not to approve unrestricted speech. Johnson and Roberts wrote the editorial piece and, in an unusual move, signed their names at the bottom. Willwerth would not go along. When a group of disgruntled staffers who sympathized with the movement approached him, Willwerth asked Johnson for permission to write a dissenting opinion that was published the next day. It is perhaps through this publishing of many viewpoints that the newspaper was able to truly become the conscience of the student community.

This chapter considers how The Daily Californian provided that conscience to the Berkeley campus, particularly through the daily editorials, during the Free Speech Movement of the 1964-65 school year.  This chapter also considers the news coverage of the events and tells the story of The Daily Californian during that time through the memories of six editors and reporters: Justin Roberts, fall managing editor and spring editor; Jim Willwerth, fall assistant editor; Peggy Krause, fall city editor and spring managing editor; Jim Branson, fall night editor/reporter and spring city editor; Peter Benjaminson, fall reporter and spring assistant city editor; John Oppedahl, spring reporter. Susan Johnson, who was editor during the fall when the movement was at its height, died in 2006 before this book was begun. Her husband, Cebe Wallace, was her boyfriend at the time she was editor and shared his remembrances of her experiences as editor.

University of California-Berkeley

The Berkeley campus of the University of California is the flagship of the state’s multiversity system. Its history begins in 1869 when the university first opened its doors in Oakland with 40 students. In 1873, the university moved to Berkeley, located north of Oakland and across the bay from San Francisco. By fall 1964, the Berkeley campus enrolled more than 25,000 students.  The university became a statewide system when the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) began in 1914. Today, the University of California has 10 campuses[5] serving about 220,000 students.[6] A president, who answers to the 26-member Board of Regents, sits at the head of the University of California while chancellors run individual campuses.[7] The chancellor position was created in 1952, and professor Clark Kerr, who would serve as UC president during the Free Speech Movement, was named the first chancellor at Berkeley.[8]

The Free Speech Movement in 1964 was not the first student movement the university had encountered in the 20^th century nor was it the first time the university had regulated activism. In the 1930s, a movement influenced by communism had begun. UC President Robert Gordon Sproul, who had been selected to pull the university system out of near bankruptcy during the Great Depression and who ran the university for 28 years, chose to squash that activism by banning political activity from campus. Student activists handled the banning by simply moving off campus a short distance. At that time, Sather Gate with its adjoining footbridge over Strawberry Creek was the south entrance to campus. Moving their tables outside the gate along Telegraph Avenue between Sather Gate and Bancroft Way seemed to cause little problem for the activists; they could still reach most students who passed through the area on the way to and from school every day. Even President Sproul’s ban on using campus buildings for candidates’ speeches did not pose much of a problem as a YMCA-owned hall nearby was readily available. Bookstores along Telegraph provided interested students with all kinds of political material, even Communist Party literature.

Then the campus began to change. Eventually, the Berkeley campus pushed its boundaries south, buying up the land along Telegraph between Sather Gate and Bancroft Way. The administration building, named Sproul Hall, was built in that area on the east side of Telegraph in 1941, and a student union was added on the other side in 1961. The road between the two buildings was closed off and became Sproul Plaza. Now Sather Gate was well inside the campus, but even that was not much of a problem because activism had died down.

Kerr, who took over the presidency of the campus in 1958, was known as a more liberal leader but still opted to enforce the old rules regarding political bans. The rules regulating political speech became known as the Kerr Directives.[9] By 1964, activists had again set up outside the campus entrance, this time where Telegraph now dead-ended into Bancroft at the south entrance to campus.

The campus climate was also beginning to change in the early 1960s with the issue of power at the crux. While administrators worked to maintain the control they had tightly wielded over the university, the students were pushing against the envelope. For decades, the concept of in loco parentis (literally, in place of the parent) had been rigidly enforced with curfews for students, punishment by the university for civil offenses, and careful supervision of extracurricular activities. “In consequence much student political activity was reminiscent of outlaw cells meeting in secret under a repressive regime,”[10] one author wrote of the time.

In 1960, one of the most notable power struggles involved The Daily Californian student newspaper. Of course, that was nothing new for the student newspaper that for many years had battled the Executive Committee of the Associated Students of the University of California (the student government body) over the right to print what it wanted. The ASUC wanted more control. After all, a portion of student fees that the ASUC collected was designated as a subscription fee for the student newspaper, which was then made available for free to students. The students on the newspaper staff maintained they had a duty to keep the student body informed no matter what the administration or ASUC wanted, and the ASUC believed that not besmirching the reputation of the university should be of primary importance. As far back as 1947, the ASUC Executive Committee had tried to control the newspaper through the creation of an advisory board that it wanted to manage the editorial and news policies of the Daily Cal. The newspaper fought the action at that time and won, though the issue reared its head again in 1950 when the ASUC tried once more to create an advisory board and install an adviser at the newspaper.[11]

Still battling for control in the summer of 1960, the ASUC Executive Committee, with Daily Cal editor Dan Silver agreeing, made changes in the newspaper’s bylaws, which set up a consultative board while the Executive Committee retained the right to reject any editors selected by the Senior Editorial Board. That fall, though, the newspaper continued writing strong editorials that slammed compulsory military training for male students, the Kerr Directives, and the House Un-American Activities Committee that had been investigating Communism since its creation in 1938.

Then, the day before the fall ASUC elections, the newspaper endorsed a candidate from the radical student group SLATE for the representative-at-large position in the ASUC, an unheard-of action that required at least seven of the 10-member editorial board to agree on the endorsement; the vote had been unanimous. A week later, the ASUC called a meeting to suspend both the bylaws of the newspaper and the Senior Editorial Board, claiming that the bylaws did not stop irresponsible behavior on the newspaper even though the students had carefully followed the bylaws in endorsing the candidate. The Judicial Committee halted the meeting because all the editors had not been given appropriate notice to attend. Two days later, the Executive Committee convened again to take up the matter of the newspaper. This time, 56 of the 58 editorial staff members resigned, including the entire Senior Editorial Board.[12]  The striking staffers started their own publication, Independent Californian, but without a sales staff and no financial backing from ASUC, it folded after a month. Less qualified students kept The Daily Californian afloat.[13]

            By the time school started in the fall of 1964, a lot of recent changes had occurred among the Berkeley student body that led to feelings of alienation for many students. With enrollment up by about 7,000 students in a four-year span, the university was overcrowded. Salaries had slipped to the point that about one-fourth of the faculty had left. Temporary employees were filling in, and graduate teaching assistants shouldered even more of the teaching burden. Grad students made up more than one-third of the student body, and the needs of the undergraduates were neglected. The multiversity system encouraged students to begin their college education at smaller community colleges, but many still started at the universities. At Berkeley, freshmen attended large classes with several hundred other students. The number of students participating in fraternities and sororities declined by almost half of what it had been six years earlier. Instead, many students chose living arrangements that supported more individuality not community. All these factors combined to further alienate students.[14]

The Civil Rights Movement had also captured the attention of student activists at Berkeley in the early 1960s. The city itself was struggling with racial issues involving school segregation and discrimination over jobs and housing. Even though one-fifth of the city population was black, few blacks were seen shopping downtown or on the Berkeley campus. The white majority in the community was fairly open about its anti-black feelings. In 1963, Berkeley voters stopped an open-housing ordinance that would have protected black renters. In 1964, the city’s school board was almost recalled over desegregation. In response to the racial concerns in the city, the students created the Berkeley chapter of the Congress Of Racial Equality (CORE), and the group regularly picketed various establishments in the Bay area that it decided did not hire enough blacks, including targeting the Oakland Tribune and car dealerships in San Francisco.[15]

The Free Speech Movement

At least two events occurred during the summer of 1964 that served as catalysts for more vigorous protesting at Berkeley and eventually the creation of the Free Speech Movement. First, a group of Berkeley students spent the summer in Mississippi as part of the Mississippi Summer Project — often called Freedom Summer. Mario Savio, who became the main voice of the FSM, was among that Berkeley group who traveled to the Magnolia State. He worked registering voters in Holmes County and then teaching at a Freedom School in McComb. He related one experience in Mississippi where he and a friend were beaten before they were able to fend off their white attackers. Experiences like these changed them. When the Berkeley students returned to campus, they were different. They were not afraid of continuing the fight for social justice on another front.[16]

The second event during that summer was the National Republican Convention in San Francisco where Barry Goldwater became the party’s presidential nominee. Jim Branson, night editor at The Daily Californian that fall, recalled that William Knowland, publisher of the Oakland Tribune and a former California senator, brought his Republican friends who were in town for the convention to see the “crown jewel of the East Bay,” the Berkeley campus of the University of California system. “There, to his horror, were all these scruffy kids collecting money for the Civil Rights Movement,” Branson said of the tables that were lined up along the entrance to the campus at Bancroft and Telegraph. “There was some outrage among the Republican hierarchy over this, and they put some pressure on the UC Berkeley administration. When the kids came back to school in the fall of ‘64, there was a new rule that no fundraising would be allowed on campus for political movements.”[17] Three months later, Knowland denied that he had ever personally exerted pressure on the administration to make any changes.[18] Also, the tables from which students distributed political materials were banished from along the campus entrance on land the university claimed it owned. The administration tightened rules about campaigning and recruiting members for groups interested in off-campus issues and continued a ban on those same groups meeting on campus. Mostly, however, the rules were vague and inconsistent and were inconsistently enforced.[19]

The administration’s plan to enforce the activist regulations hit the front page of the student newspaper from the beginning of the semester. In its third issue of the semester on Thursday, September 17,[20] The Daily Californian announced that on the following Monday the administration would be enforcing the Regents’ political policy that included removing the tables set up at the Bancroft/Telegraph entrance to campus and ending the soliciting that went along with them. The announcement angered the student political group SLATE. It was already itching for a fight. In its new Supplement to the General Catalog (one of the earliest attempts at evaluating classes and professors on a college campus), SLATE had called for students to rebel during the semester: “SPLIT THIS CAMPUS WIDE OPEN!”[21]

On Friday, the newspaper reported that the free speech issue could come to a head on Monday when administrators promised to start enforcing the rules; 16 groups expected to ignore the campus rules anyway and set up tables in the banned area.[22] On Monday, the administration said it would return the area to the students but with conditions such as material handed out there could be informational only without advocating a position, but absolutely no fundraising. Student activists from at least 20 groups rejected any conditions on their activism.[23] That same refusal permeated through every protest, picket, and sit-in that the students sponsored. They demanded complete freedom of expression. 

Pickets and discussions continued for several days. The ASUC got involved, asking students to support a petition to end the rules. They also proposed buying the Bancroft-Telegraph area from the university so students could use it freely. A debate on the free speech issue was scheduled and canceled. Students conducted an all-night vigil on the steps of Sproul Hall (the administration building). At a press conference, university President Kerr condemned the protests. Chancellor Edward Strong eased restriction on distributing political material (it could now advocate “yes” or “no” votes), but he still banned soliciting.

On September 30, the newspaper reported that the administration had had enough; a showdown was coming.[24] It started at 3 p.m. that day. After eight students had been called into the dean’s office for defying the rules, almost700 students crowded onto the second floor of Sproul Hall and refused to leave when the building closed. They finally left about 3 a.m. the next morning, but they were not done protesting. Tables returned to the banned area by noon. That is when Jack Weinberg, a non-student manning one of the tables, was arrested. A 30-hour sit-in around the police car followed, with thousands of students participating, many coming and going throughout the day and night.

When the sit-in around the police car began, reporter Peter Benjaminson immediately went into reporter mode. “I went down to find out what was going on and in fact climbed up on top of the police car,” he said. A photo taken at the event shows him sitting on the car, scribbling in a notebook as he talked to one of the protesters. He had already written several stories detailing the students’ complaints about the new rules and had interviewed several of the key protest promoters; many like Art Goldberg and Mario Savio would become the driving force behind the FSM. “Art Goldberg was my main contact, and I was often quoting him in the paper,” Benjaminson said. “When I went down there [to the police car], I saw him. There were hundreds of students sitting around the car, preventing it from moving. Goldberg or someone on his staff wanted me to come up there and sit on the hood. I somehow made my way through the sit-down strikers, which was difficult because they were all crammed together. I had to step over and between them without falling on them, which was somewhat difficult.”[25]

Benjaminson was one of several student reporters who provided information for the stories in the student newspaper the next morning. The main story that appeared on page one was a compilation of all the reporters’ efforts. “I was appointed the rewrite guy,” night editor Jim Branson recalled. “We had like10 reporters on it. They were rushing into me and giving me different bits of information. I was sitting there … typing furiously. We typed our stories on half sheets not a full sheet of paper, on these old stand-up Royal typewriters, one paragraph on a half sheet. I was juggling these half sheets around [to organize the story]. We were fighting like hell to get this out, and finally rushed down to the printer at, I don’t know, two in the morning to get this story out. The story that appears about that sit-in the next day has no byline on it, but I wrote it.”[26]

The sit-in finally ended when university officials struck a deal with the leaders of the protest. The pact called for the creation of a committee made up of administrators, faculty and students (including protest leaders) to make recommendations for managing political activism on campus. In return, students agreed to stop all protests against the regulations. The administration promised to not pursue charges against Weinberg and to let a Student Conduct Committee of the Faculty Academic Senate deal with students already found in violation of the regulations. A short-lived peace returned to campus. It was not long before the FSM was complaining about the way members were selected for the Committee on Campus Political Activity (the administration chose the student members), how the suspension of the eight students was being handled (six were reinstated whereas Savio and Goldberg were treated differently because they were deemed instigators of the sit-in), and how the administration was controlling negotiations.

Finally, on December 1, the FSM issued an ultimatum, joined by the Graduate Coordinating Council, who planned a teaching-assistant strike: drop charges from the sit-in around the police car, make rules that allow only the courts to regulate political speech, and stop disciplining students for political activity. The next day, when the administration had not acted on the demands, students once again crowded into Sproul Hall and refused to leave. Outside the building, about 635 uniformed police prepared to force the students to leave. Beginning about 4 a.m. the next day — on the governor’s order — the officers spent 12 hours clearing the building, dragging out students who refused to walk. About 800 were arrested, and their trials dragged on through the next semester.

On January 3, 1965, acting Chancellor Martin Meyerson announced that students would be allowed to use Sproul Hall steps for rallies and to set up tables for any purpose, including soliciting funds and support. The FSM had won and the next day sponsored its first legal rally on the steps of Sproul Hall.

Then in March, according to The Daily Californian, a man who was not a student, was arrested at the Bancroft-Telegraph entrance to campus because he “held a small sign upon which was painted a four-letter word for sexual intercourse. Beneath the blue four-letter word, the word ‘verb’ was written in parentheses.”[27] Similar signs appeared, and speeches filled with that F-word and other curse words rang out over Sproul Plaza. Thus began the Filthy Speech Movement, which lingered through the rest of the semester. The controversial, crude Spider magazine that students produced and tried to sell on campus also helped keep the topic of regulating expression in the news that semester.

The Daily Californian

Throughout the controversy, The Daily Californian staffers covered as many aspects of the protests, negotiations, and meetings as time and space allowed. It was the same job the newspaper staff had been trying to do since 1871 when the paper, then the University Echo, first began as a stock-controlled company owned by campus fraternities. In 1874 it merged with a campus literary magazine and became the Berkeleyan. By 1897 it went daily, and the name changed to The Daily Californian. ASUC bought the stock in 1910.[28] It became independent in 1971, published by the Independent Berkeley Students Publishing Company, Inc., and operated solely on funds from advertising.[29] However, like professional newspapers, The Daily Californian suffered heavy losses of revenue in the late 2000s. As of April, 2012, the newspaper was attempting to get students to return to subsidizing the paper by approving a $2 fee to keep the 141-year-old newspaper afloat.[30] 

As is the case for most student newspapers, The Daily Californian has always required a great commitment from already busy students who want to work on the staff. It was no different in 1964. Most serious reporters and editors saw their grades suffer. “There was a lot of work involved,” said John Oppedahl, who joined the staff in spring semester 1965 and covered much of what became known as the Filthy Speech Movement. “I didn’t go to class that much, and I suffered the consequences. … The commitment for spending time at the paper was overwhelming. You didn’t have much time to socialize. I was never home. You studied, you went to class, you worked at the Daily Cal. And if there was some time where you could get a hamburger, great. I bet I worked harder there than almost any other time in my professional life, and I was a reporter and editor for 36 years.”[31]

Justin Roberts, who was managing editor in the fall of 1964 and editor the following semester, also remembers the long hours. “As it turned out, The Daily Californian became my second life,” he said. “I was literally spending 12 hours a day, every day that we published, working on the Daily Cal, essentially full time. And my grades, unfortunately, showed it.” A C-average student when he graduated, Roberts credits a good word from university President Clark Kerr for him even being accepted to law school.[32] Peggy Krause, who was the city editor in the fall of 2004, recalled the demands of the newspaper: “One night I was there so late that I went in the women’s restroom on a leather couch and slept there all night.”[33]

Working at the newspaper was hectic, Oppedahl recalled. “Sure we covered the pom-pom contest, and we covered the theft from the campus vending machines, but we were also writing these really important, thought-provoking stories involving the biggest political figures in the state and sometimes in the country because everyone wanted to weigh-in on what was going on at Berkeley. It was a supercharged atmosphere. It was heady stuff, and it was great fun.”[34]

The Daily Californian published Monday through Friday whenever school was in session. Writers were unpaid. Only editors received a small stipend for their work. Students interested in working for the newspaper did not automatically get to do so; they had to try out first, even Jim Willwerth who had already been a student newspaper editor during his time at College of Marin and had worked summers for professional newspapers. “It was not as simple as coming over and saying ‘I want to be part of this,’” he said of his experience in trying out for the staff. “I was surprised at how professional they were. They didn’t take just anybody. The standards of reporting were very, very high. You were expected to write well, and you were expected to report honestly. None of the news pages were going to have stories in them that appeared to be public relations efforts of any kind. You were expected to do your job just the same way a professional newsman would do his or hers.”[35]

Students found The Daily Californian was an excellent place to learn to become that professional journalist. “It was the greatest training you could have,” said Jim Branson, who went on to spend about 30 years as a news director for an Oakland television station. “Here we were kids, and we were covering real news. [The editors] taught us principles of journalism that I carried with me all my life. They were the best. We really got terrific training. It served me well the rest of my life.”[36]

Jim Willwerth, who was honored in 2004 as Alumnus of the Year for his career of 33 years at Time magazine, also praised his time at The Daily Californian: “Certainly my education as a journalist began at the Daily Cal. … You might have been young and foolish and full of silliness at one time or another, but you either had to be a journalist or you couldn’t stay. The Daily Californian said this is how journalism works, and this is what you have to do. I was always grateful for that.”[37]

Oppedahl, who was the publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle when he retired, recalled that the student newspaper was a good training ground for him: “I probably learned more as a reporter that spring than I learned in my career later. You went out of your way to be even more scrupulous about being fair and quoting everybody and trying to be as balanced and thoughtful as possible. As an educational experience, I think all of us who were involved learned more about basic reporting, how to be fair and how to be thorough. … You learned a lot right away.”[38]

Peter Benjaminson also began his journalism career at The Daily Californian. He later worked as a reporter, an educator, and a spokesman for various groups as well as writing several books.[39]

Students who worked on the newspaper did not have to be journalism majors or plan to become professional journalists. Managing editor Justin Roberts, who went on to become a lawyer, started reading the newspaper as a freshman and decided he wanted to become involved. He never took a single journalism class. City editor Peggy Krause took a few journalism classes to learn the style of writing but majored in education and taught school after graduation. Editor Susan Johnson was a sociology major.

Students with aspirations to be an editor first had to prove themselves as reporters one semester and then as one of five night editors the next semester. As one of the night editors during the fall of 1964, Jim Branson was also a reporter who usually covered student government meetings. In his night editor duties, he was responsible for getting stories edited and headlines written for the next morning’s paper. Just like in a vintage movie, Branson would sit in the center or slot of a horseshoe-shaped table that sat in a bay window, doling out stories to the cub reporters who sat around the rim of the table, editing and writing headlines.

He then took the edited paper copies of each story down the hill from campus to Johnny Trench’s letter-press print shop where it would be printed some time after midnight. The night editor stayed at the shop to supervise the building of the pages and approve the final designs. The copy was set by grizzled, old Linotype operators who deftly operated large keyboards of 90 characters (upper and lowercase letters had separate keys) that were arranged in order of how frequently they are used rather than like a traditional typewriter or computer keyboard. Following the design outline or dummy prepared by the managing editor, the print shop workers built the pages using the pieces of lead type composed by the linotype machines, hammering the type into frames.[40] “If the story was too short,” Benjaminson said of his time as night editor, “they’d yell at the night editor to ‘gimme another graph.’ So you’d add something. If it was too long, they’d throw the extra lead at you, and you’d try to dodge it. They didn’t really hit anybody — it was a joke. But there was actual flying lead down there.”[41]

Typically, the students had to have the copy down to the press for typesetting in the early evening, usually no later than about 7 p.m., so the presses could begin running by midnight. The old rotary press took six to seven hours to print 27,000 copies of the eight- to 16-page newspaper for distribution on campus early the next morning. The night of the sit-in around the police car, deadlines went out the window. Reporters and editors were trying frantically to get as much in the paper as possible. Branson said he remembered being at the print shop well after midnight with the latest stories. That

delayed everything down the line, including the printing. It was late morning the next day before students could read The Daily Californian on campus.[42]

After a stint as a night editor, a student could apply to work in other editor positions. The full staff box during Fall Semester 1964 listed six editors covering news:  Susan Johnson, editor; Justin Roberts, managing editor; Jim Willwerth, assistant editor; Peggy Krause, city editor; Stanley Schmidt, news editor; and Nancy Tolbert, assistant city editor. Separate staffs handled sports on the editorial side and advertising on the business side of the newspaper. After serving in a mid-level news editor position for a semester, a student could ask to be considered for one of the top three editorial positions: editor, managing editor and assistant editor. Several students spent a semester as assistant editor, then became the managing editor and finally the editor. The top positions each semester were nominated by the outgoing Senior Editorial Board and approved by the Publication Board that included members from administration, faculty and student editors. In 1964, the Senior Editorial Board consisted of the editor, managing editor, city editor, assistant editor, news editor, sports editor and two assistant city editors.[43] The editor was the face of the newspaper and wrote some of the editorials but had little to do with day-to-day management of reporters and story flow. The managing editor — with the help of the city editor, news editor and assistant city editor — planned the news copy and made sure stories were assigned and written. The assistant editor was responsible for the editorial page and wrote most of the editorials under the direction of the editor.

The Editorial

Editorials, as well as the other items that traditionally appear on editorial and op-ed pages, play the vital roles of providing information, analysis, and forums for public discussion. These help readers to make decisions about issues and then take appropriate action.[44] Though editorials certainly are not expected to provide the objectivity required in news stories, they can provide meaning “by keeping in view the central values of our age despite the tides of passion and propaganda that swirl about and obscure them.”[45] The editorial and the editorial or opinion page of any newspaper should be the community’s conscience as well as a sounding board.[46] They give meaning to what is happening in the world, fight for the rights and needs of citizens, dispel myths, and provide a daily forum for discussion.[47] Indeed, editorials should help people make sense of the world and at times point out issues and concerns that its readership may have failed to understand or take into account, a kind of inner voice as Johnson said The Daily Californian had been as it served as the campus conscience.

The job of writing the first draft of most of the editorials during the Free Speech Movement fell to Jim Willwerth, who was the assistant editor. He, Johnson and Roberts would discuss what the editorial position would be, and Willwerth would usually write it though they seldom agreed on the focus. “We divided along ideological lines,” Willwerth said. Roberts was an ardent, conservative Republican whereas Johnson was more moderate and middle-of-the-road but less sure of herself and usually accepted the more conservative, pro-administration position favored by Roberts. Willwerth was undecided about the speech issue in the beginning, but as the protests continued he took a stand. “I thought the students were right, so I became the liberal who supported the students who were rebelling,” he said. That led to many intense discussions and even arguments in the newsroom, especially if Willwerth found out the other two had changed his original editorial, often to be more supportive of the administration.[48]

Finally, for only the second time during the fall semester, a signed editorial appeared on December 9. Johnson and Roberts put their names to the position they took, a position Willwerth could not endorse. The editorial filled two columns on the editorial page. The piece described the Free Speech Movement as “pre-occupied with the means of civil disobedience and disrespect for authority,” calling the protests a “ludicrous spectacle.” The FSM’s demand for open discussion is not the way to becoming a greater university, they argued, and some regulation of speech is imperative for the campus. They urged the Board of Regents, who was considering how to deal with political activism at the university, to not throw the campus wide-open to political expression.[49] Though the editorials throughout the semester had criticized both sides for various actions, it was the first time the editors had taken such a direct stand on the issue of free speech. It was difficult for Johnson to do, too. Her husband, Cebe Wallace, who was Johnson’s boyfriend during this semester, said his late wife had developed a strong journalistic sense that she had to remain impartial, a standard she learned from her father and an uncle who were both journalists. So expressing opinions did not come easily to her. “She thought her job was to be a presenter of facts, an honest broker of events, and not an advocate,” he said. “Everyone wanted her to take a position. It was hard to be what she thought a good journalist should be.” [50]

Several staff members, who had been unhappy with the regular pro-administration editorial position, finally approached Willwerth, concerned that the views of so many of the staff were not being represented in the editorials just like the one Johnson and Roberts published. So Willwerth did something that was not common at the newspaper at the time; he penned a dissenting position, which Johnson allowed to run on the editorial page the next day.  In it, Willwerth endorsed a faculty proposal sent to the Regents. That proposal favored no restrictions on free speech issues on campus. Willwerth was adamant that the campus should enjoy “full campus freedom of ideas” without regulation, while at the same time not condoning illegal activities of protesters. Thirteen other editors and reporters joined Willwerth in signing the piece.[51] Afterward, Willwerth said, he received a note from President Clark Kerr. “It was a note of congratulations that I had framed the issues well and exercised my first amendment right,” he said.[52]

More than half of the daily editorials in the Daily Cal dealt with some aspect of what would become the Free Speech Movement. Early in the semester, it appeared the newspaper might be more supportive of the students, particularly after an editorial that appeared the first week of the semester that was critical of the Board of Regents. During the previous semester, the Regents had turned down a request to allow the students to start an FM radio station. Now the editorial bristled when it recounted how one Regent had suggested that the board did not need another student voice like the student newspaper that they could not control. The editorial went on to urge students to support the ASUC president’s quest to continue seeking approval for the radio station.[53]

In the beginning of the semester, it was evident the editors did not have a well-defined position on the free speech issue. They would present both sides of whatever had happened, sometimes presenting the administration in a negative light, but then they would fill the final sentences with ambivalence or criticism about what they had just praised. The day the administration said it would begin to enforce the regulations on political activism that would only allow informational not persuasive leaflets, the editorial ended with two questions:  Is there really a difference between information and persuasion in politics? And just how does the administration plan to enforce the rules?[54] The next day, the editorial started out strongly against the Regents. It said the Regents had misinterpreted the state Constitution when they applied the requirement for political independence at the university to political speech. The Constitution had only meant to keep politics out of the appointment of administrators, it maintained. “Campus administrators are making a mistake” in enforcing the activism rules on students. Students picketing and conducting vigils were within their rights to do so, it added. Then, in a kind of about-face, the editorial ended with a warning that pressure tactics to get the administration to capitulate were not the answer.[55]

Almost three weeks later, and after the sit-in around the police car, another editorial considered the state Constitution again, this time showing that the Regents and administration were acting within the power granted to them by the Constitution to manage the university, but noted that it was not yet clear that the right decisions had been made in managing the free speech issue.[56] Near the end of the semester, Johnson joined with editors of The California Aggie at UC-Davis and Daily Bruin at UCLA in a joint editorial that blamed the FSM for problems and then ended with an admonition to President Kerr to step up to the plate and really try to understand students.[57]

As the semester went on, the editorials became more critical of the movement though not necessarily more supportive of the administration. They often condemned one side while not supporting the other. The day after the first sit-in inside Sproul Hall that lasted until about 3 a.m., the editorial was light-hearted and short, noting that it was too early to judge the situation. “We admire the intrepidity and old fashioned persistence of the mixed political groups, despite a certain amount of rashness creeping into their methods. The time is not ripe for an observer’s assessment of the controversy, since its face and facets change daily. Earlier this week, we thought it had ended.” The editorial concluded with the hope that students got at least a little sleep before facing the realities of schoolwork.[58]

A day later, with student protesters surrounding the police car, the newspaper ran no editorial. In its usual place on the editorial page was a statement from ASUC President Charles R. Powell calling for the demonstrations to cease. He said the rules the students were protesting were mandated by the state Constitution and not the administration, and further demonstrating would only jeopardize the Open Forum Policy that allowed for speakers of all persuasions to present on campus (with some restrictions).[59] Allowing the ASUC statement to replace the editorial was a kind of tacit approval of the statement.

The next editorial — “We Plead for Peace” — was a lengthy piece that filled two columns when it appeared on Monday after a pact between the FSM leaders and the administration had halted the sit-in around the police car. The editorial tried to balance the blame for what had happened: “No one was completely right, none were completely wrong.” As the editorials usually did, it summarized much of what had happened — in this case it was the mistakes made by each side in the fracas. Still there was more praise for the administration as it several times pointed to President Clark Kerr as the one who acted with courage. It ended with an echo of the ASUC statement: stop demonstrating or lose freedoms already enjoyed.[60]

At times it was difficult to determine which position the newspaper supported. It often appeared to side with either side at various moments, sometimes playing devil’s advocate. When the ASUC talked about buying the Bancroft-Telegraph area at the entrance of campus to create a free-speech zone, the newspaper opposed it. After all, the editorial pointed out, the ASUC is ultimately responsible to the administration and Regents, who could still exert some control. Even deeding the property to the city of Berkeley would not solve the problems because then the city would be controlling the actions on the property, and the city had not been eager to support the student protests so far. “The plan, we hope, will be short lived.”[61]

The next day, the newspaper came close to endorsing the free speech movement when it criticized a city councilman for saying free speech that threatens the country should be controlled. Such a position “is contrary to every principle of democracy,” it pointed out.[62] But the following day, it was back on the administration’s side. FSM leaders were claiming the administration had acted in bad faith when it entered into an agreement with protesters the week before in order to end the sit-in around the police car. “We do not believe that the administration has shown ‘bad faith,’” concluded the editorial that filled two columns after reiterating the points of the agreement and the process of the negotiations before offering some suggestions for handling the situation.[63]

Then, a week later, the editorial verged on supporting the protesters again even though it insisted the editors were not trying to condemn any one side. Still, “if the students had not protested loudly, visibly and illegally, this campus would not have questioned the ban” on student activism. Now, “we must not relax. We must bend every effort to earn the right of a real open forum now denied this University but granted to other state schools of higher education.” [64]

The next editorial about the free speech issue was one of criticism and resignation. First, it blasted the chancellor’s latest statements on maintaining the current rules as being “ill-timed and ill-thought prejudgments,” then ended with a what-is-the-use shrug because “the chancellor has already made a decision.”[65] Then a secondary editorial that same day took sides with a student group, Particle Berkeley, that was threatened with losing campus status if members did not stop participating in the FSM and stick to its goal of furthering scientific research. “Certainly even the organizations whose purposes are not strictly political should be allowed to participate in the entire spectrum of campus affairs,” the editorial maintained.[66] With decisions looming about how the administration would handle discipline for students cited in the early protests, two editorials in a row reminded students that protesting before the decisions were made was really just finding the administration guilty without a fair trial, something the students were demanding for themselves.[67]

Though the newspaper’s allegiance seemed to sway between both sides of the free speech issue, it certainly did have one position that never changed: Everyone needs to work for a solution that would come with improved communication,[68] cooperation and especially the involvement of the Academic Senate (faculty) and ASUC Senate (students). [69]  At times, the editorials pointed out that the current protesting was unnecessary, such as the vigil students planned to coincide with a meeting of the Regents, a move the editors said was “as useful at this stage of the game as holding a wake for a man gone for years.”[70] One editorial pointed out that students had staged a rally demanding change for something the chancellor had already changed.[71]

Many times it seemed the editorial was more against a proposal or action than for the opposing side. They did it by pointing out problems with whatever plan was being considered and encouraging more discussion before making decisions. That was the tenor of the editorial on the same day the newspapers ran full statements from the FSM supporters, President Kerr, and a faculty group that made recommendations for regulating activism. The editorial pointed out that those recommendations included requirements that would be stifling to speech just because groups could not easily comply with them.[72] Editorials criticized the Regents for the way they were handling things,[73] the legislature for considering getting involved,[74] the students for forcing the governor to step in to end the Sproul Hall sit-in,[75] the FSM for being too reliant on Mario Savio for leadership.[76] Another editorial praised the Academic Senate for considering both students and administration in liberal proposals it made to the Regents, and then concluded by warning that a completely open campus was not the answer.[77] One editorial recognized that the 800 students facing court action for the Sproul Hall sit-in would likely feel the impact of their civil disobedience for some time, and encouraged the administration to extend some mercy or have 800 martyrs on campus, which would only prolong the conflict.[78]

The editorials also echoed the feelings of many students, whether or not they were protesting. One pointed out that the Berkeley students were not being treated the same as students at other state colleges on the speech issue, a condition that made students feel even more alienated.[79] Editors added their approval to a long piece from nine political science professors that replaced the editorial in early December. The professors said it was time to return to class and serious academic studies. They also commended the majority of the student body who did not participate in the protests.[80] As the campus prepared for Christmas break, another editorial told of the challenge students would have in explaining to their family and friends at home what had happened that semester.[81]

The editorial pages also featured columns and Letters to the Ice Box (letters to the editor). The daily columnists wrote about many topics, including the free speech issue. Eric Levine, the most prolific on the topic, wrote 10 columns about free speech during the fall semester. (Willwerth, who edited all the material for the page does not remember Levine. Daily Cal alumni records show Levine is now deceased.) Levine usually didn’t offer much background about the issues — he assumed students knew what was going on. Instead he plowed headlong into his opinion and pointed fingers, usually at the administration. In his first free-speech column, he made connections between the students picketing the hiring practices at the Oakland Tribune and the administration suddenly deciding that the area outside the main gate of campus was not the city’s property to control but the university’s. Without naming Tribune publisher Knowland, Levine claimed complaints from the newspaper prompted administrators to ban political activity in the area because picketers were recruiting others to help their cause.[82] A few days after the sit-in around the police car, Levine reiterated some of the history of free speech on campus from the 1930s to the present, and then applauded the FSM for becoming “a legitimate political force.”[83] He generally sided with the FSM, found the administration’s various rulings confusing, and criticized the faculty for not fighting for more control. After the 800 arrests in the Sproul Hall sit-in, Levine accused the administration of going to war against the students.[84]

Dozens of letters addressed the free speech issue as well, both for and against what was happening. Willwerth said letters usually had to be cut to fit the space, but now does not remember much controversy with them. No letter writers waged wars with each other or generated any controversy on their own. Willwerth said he has few recollections about the letters as being passionate or defining in any way. He said he printed most of what was submitted though “I would look for letters that actually were thoughtful if I could find them.”[85]

In the spring semester, the editorial policies made a marked change. Roberts, who had taken over the helm as the editor of the student newspaper, decided from the start that whoever wrote the editorial would add his or her name at the end as a tagline. “This created something different,” he recalled. “Generally, the person who was the editor at the Daily Cal was never really known. But with my name on the editorial, I instantly became known as the editor of the Daily Cal.”[86]He wrote most of the editorials that semester.

His pieces often voiced stronger positions than the newspaper had seen the previous semester. During the first month of the term he wrote mostly about other issues. Then in March, just after the first obscenity arrest, he christened the Filthy Speech Movement in the final sentence of his editorial.[87] He penned 14 editorials that dealt with what was essentially the aftermath of the fall’s Free Speech Movement. Personally, Roberts said, he supported the issue of free speech but abhorred the group’s tactics, “the way the FSM confronted the university, to call for strikes, to call for boycotts, to call for sit-ins. All of this created a hell of a lot of bad publicity for the University of California. … What we went through for many months, topped off by the Filthy Speech Movement, why we were the laughing stock of the nation.” The administration wasn’t guiltless either. “It’s sad that the university took a position that essentially dared the students to have sit-ins and strikes and boycotts and so forth.”[88] In print, Roberts supported the Meyer report to the Regents on political activism,[89] but criticized a second report to the Regents because it favored the FSM.[90] He supported in loco parentis[91]and thumbed his nose at the possibility of a renewed surge by FSM leader Mario Savio.[92]

Another editorial policy Roberts changed was to allow the publication of more dissenting opinions. During the fall semester, he had been concerned when the newspaper had endorsed Lyndon B. Johnson for U.S. president, something no one could remember ever happening before. He disagreed with the endorsement and argued with editors Susan Johnson and Jim Willwerth to write a dissenting position. In it, he supported the Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater. “I’m telling you, the shit hit the fan,” he said. “He [Goldwater] was not regarded well in the liberal community. I was like a traitor.” Roberts did not view himself as a strong political person: “I wasn’t even eligible to vote at that time.” So when he had the power to make changes in how the student newspaper ran, he did. Student reporters and editors would no longer have to fight to air a dissenting opinion. Several times during the semester, other editors joined in group editorials that Roberts did not support, and he was OK with that. It kept the staff happy and still allowed him to get his thoughts out there as well.[93]

News Coverage

Student reporters wrote about the Free Speech Movement almost every day. In fact, all but two issues of the fall semester featured stories related to free speech. By the end of the term in January, though, the FSM was running out of steam. Still, only a handful of editions during spring semester did not report something related to the free speech issue, especially after it morphed into the Filthy Speech Movement in March. Its life did not last as long nor engage students as vigorously as the Free Speech Movement of the previous semester. Still, along with stories about a controversial magazine that students tried to sell on campus, the Filthy Speech Movement kept the topic of regulating expression as the dominate theme in the student newspaper for the remainder of the school year.

 When the movement began, none realized the true importance of the movement. “We just covered it,” Roberts said, noting that as the fall semester began, it seemed as if the administration was making a lot out of nothing. The tables at the entrance to the campus, along with the soliciting, were more of a nuisance than a serious problem. As managing editor, he had a lot of work to do in organizing the coverage of the various events and had little time to actually watch what happened. But when about 800 students jammed into Sproul Hall in early December, he decided to cover some of it himself. “I got myself inside to see what was going on,” he said. “I can’t remember how I talked my way in, but I did. I saw them all sprawled out on the second floor and in the stairwell also. And I was there when they started to haul them out and put them aboard buses to take them off to Santa Rita Jail.”[94]

Curiosity drew Jim Willwerth to the sit-in around the car, where he spent time observing and soaking up the atmosphere whenever he had time. “I was very drawn to it, even though I would not have joined it,” he explained. “Reporters don’t join; they just report.” He decided to write a column describing the experience around the car. “It was just color and a lot of feeling in it, what people were talking about. Some coed handed me an apple in a kind of sharing thing, stuff like that. Meanwhile, Mario Savio was up on top of the car. He was a very, very impressive orator. And Jack Weinberg, of course, was inside the car, pissing in a coke bottle. So I had a lot of great color there.”[95]

Peter Benjaminson wrote many of the FSM stories throughout the fall semester. He wrote about the first protests before the sit-in around the car, but “I didn’t even see it as the beginning of anything, just a giant incident.” Only in hindsight did he realize the events were an important part of history. He attended many of the FSM meetings, whether he was covering them for the newspaper or not. “I went to some just out of interest and told the people I wasn’t there for the Daily Cal. I just wanted to see what was happening,” he said. The meetings often lasted many hours as the students discussed the fine points of the agreements that were at times many pages long. All students were allowed to speak, which lengthened the meetings. “It was a political thing in the sense that the movement wanted to give everyone the chance to express themselves so they wouldn’t feel left out,” Benjaminson explained. The FSM leaders wanted to “get the real low-down on the public opinion — that is the public opinion of their followers, to see what they wanted.” The student newspaper did not cover every meeting either, but the FSM never complained about the amount of coverage that fall. After all, they were front page news every day.[96]

One moment after the sit-in around the car stands out in Benjaminson’s mind: “I was walking through the center of campus, which you could hardly avoid doing most days, and [FSM leader] Art Goldberg saw me from maybe 200 yards away and started running toward me. It was like one of those scenes in a slow motion movie. He wasn’t running in slow motion, of course, but I remember it in slow motion. He was running toward me and he was saying ‘the committee has rejected the settlement.’ It was the precursor to the Sproul Hall sit-in [where 800 were arrested]. I don’t remember his exact words but he was implying heavily that this would get much worse. That’s why I remember it in retrospect as being a great thing. So I took notes of what he said and went over to the Daily Cal office and wrote a story about it. By that time, I realized we were in a historical setting that people would look back on. I saw him [Goldberg] as the prophet of the future, which he was. By that time, I believed the threats.”[97]

Accessing information was one of the biggest challenges for the newspaper, according to John Oppedahl, who joined the staff in the spring semester. “We were not professionals, so we sometimes had difficulty finding out what was going on with the Regents,” who ultimately would be deciding how the activism rules would change. He remembers frustrating discussions late at night as the editors tried to find out what the FSM leaders were doing because they did not always allow reporters to attend their meetings.[98]

Oppedahl was one of the main reporters writing about the Filthy Speech Movement when it sprung up on the coattails of the Free Speech Movement. The lead on one of his stories about that part of the movement remains one of his favorites to this day: “____, ____, ____, ____, and ____” were entered into evidence yesterday in the trial of nine persons arrested last month on campus for obscenity.[99] “We never printed the word,” he explained, noting that typically newspapers from the ‘40s into the ‘90s reflected the parameters of mainstream society, the limits of polite society. Avoiding public profanity was the norm for that time and the newspaper followed suit. “It wasn’t that we were afraid of anybody. We could have printed the word, and we would have been criticized. But we weren’t afraid of retribution. Our stance was that it was in poor taste to use words like the ones they were using on campus in our newspaper. … We talked about it. Our view was, ‘No, we don’t do that stuff. We’re not putting naked girls in the paper. We’re not putting crude language in the paper. We’re not putting Nazi symbols in the paper.’” As a professional editor and publisher, he banned profanity from every newspaper where he worked. “‘We have a higher standard here,’ I would say. ‘That standard is that we don’t use profanity’.”[100]

Students worked hard to maintain objectivity in the news stories they wrote. Jim Willwerth found out early on that just accurately reporting an event could be perceived as not being neutral, depending on how one side’s position might appear. One of his first assignments at the newspaper was to report on a civil rights demonstration by CORE (Congress Of Racial Equality) at a local grocery store. As he started the assignment, he expected to talk to both sides of the issue and find that the CORE people were heroic in their protest for equality. Instead, he found demonstrators who were not just marching with signs or chanting or singing songs. “They were going into the store and vandalizing the store, throwing whole shelves of things on the floor, stuff like that, which struck me as not being in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr.,” he said. They also threatened to destroy the store. Then he talked to the grocery store management, who said they had not expected to be treated this way but had hoped to enter into civil negotiations with the protesters. Afterward, Willwerth wrote the story exactly as he had seen and heard the demonstration. CORE was angry. “All I had done was go there and see what was happening and then report it. Of course, when I reported it, [CORE] didn’t look very good.”  CORE members claimed the student newspaper really had two editorial pages — one on the front page and the traditional one inside.[101]

Despite similar challenges throughout the Free Speech Movement, the newspaper continued to work for objectivity in its reporting of the issues. “You went out of your way to be even more scrupulous about being fair and quoting everybody and trying to be as balanced and thoughtful as possible,” John Oppedahl said, noting that these basic principles should always continue in journalism. “I really do believe there is something you can aspire to called objectivity and balance. I know there are a lot of people who would disagree with that, but I think they’re wrong. You don’t get it all the time, but you do aspire to it. You try to get as close to being as objective as you can. I still think that is a goal and model for what a reporter does.”[102]

Generally, FSM supporters seldom complained about the coverage. However, Justin Roberts recalled one incident during the spring semester when FSM leader Mario Savio stormed into the newspaper office to complain about an editorial Roberts had written that criticized the FSM. Roberts said he did not think the piece had been groundbreaking in any way, but it still struck a chord with the FSM leadership. Savio told him that he had no right to publish such a position and started arguing with Roberts about the piece. “The idea of Mario Savio, the leader of the Free Speech Movement, coming into my office, complaining about an editorial, slamming the newspaper down on my desk and telling me I have no right as an editor to write that — I thought it was just incredible,” Roberts recalled. “It always got me as being indeed ironic.”  Some 20 years later, Roberts had the opportunity to visit with Savio and reminded him of the encounter at the Daily Cal. “He put his hands on his face and he said, ‘I said that?’ And I said, ‘you sure did. I have never forgotten it.’ And he said, ‘Oh, my god, that’s not something I should have said.’”[103]

Getting Along

Unlike many other student newspapers, The Daily Californian had few challenges at that time with the administration trying to control what it printed. Some of the staff remembers the administration as sometimes being difficult to work with, particularly Richard Hafner, who was the public affairs director at the university. “Dick Hafner had a contentious relationship with us, even though he was a member of the Publication Board,” recalled Jim Branson. “He was constantly on us to try to bend the coverage in his direction, which is what spokesmen do.”[104] Peter Benjaminson remembers Hafner as not being offensive but friendly in his approach with the newspaper. Hafner always tried to make sure that he had made the administration’s position clear though he never tried to force the newspaper to write anything.[105] Justin Roberts also said working with Hafner, a former Daily Cal editor himself, was not contentious. Indeed, he was one of the people Roberts would talk to about troubles or concerns at the paper.[106]

John Oppedahl found the administration to be helpful even though Hafner would let the staff know if he thought any position was unfair or erroneous. However, Oppedahl learned early on that he needed to find someone to trust, someone who would tell the truth about what was really going on. That was Ray Colvig, another public relations representative at the university. Colvig provided background information to help really understand the issues. “Once in a while he would close the door, and he would say something like ‘we didn’t have this conversation, and here’s what the administration is trying to do.’ This was way off the record. You talk about Deep Throat. Well, this was Deep, Deep Throat. He would tell me what the administration was really trying to do, compared to their public statements. I would go back to the office, and I would never quote him. But I would be better able to frame my story in a more sensible way.” Oppedahl was not alone in his frustrations over understanding what was really going on with the administration. “Even professional newspapers couldn’t figure it out,” he said. Colvig helped him understand that perhaps the Regents were exerting pressure or that the Regents were split on a decision. 

Few major conflicts occurred among the Daily Cal staff members. Benjaminson remembers that some staffers got along and others did not, as in any workplace. “I was fairly prickly myself,” he said. “Certainly [night editor] Branson and I had arguments about whether a story I had written should be used,” he said. One incident in particular, regarding a series of stories Benjaminson wrote about foreign student political rights on campus, stands out. “We got into a big row, desk pounding and shouting,” Benjaminson said. “We were friends later that day, and I still call him occasionally.”[107] Branson no longer remembers the argument.

Peggy Krause remembers a staff that all worked together and taught each other. “I didn’t go on in journalism,” she said, “and I had not had any journalism before [working on The Daily Californian] so they taught me what I needed.”[108]

Jim Branson remembers less agreement than the others do. “There was a lot of conflict on the paper about how to cover and how to comment on the protests that were going on,” he said. “We [newspaper staff members] wanted to be more supportive of the movement than the paper was as a whole. The administration was trying to stifle free speech, and it was pretty clear who was right and who was wrong.”[109]

Jim Willwerth remembers some intrigue at the newspapers with plots to get more power over how things were done, to get better assignments and to get more space in the newspaper. “It really produced an atmosphere that was just full of all the great stuff that goes on whenever the social fabric is being torn — just all that good stuff starts happening when someone raises the temperature or makes the pot boil over.”[110]

Conclusion

As one would expect, the Free Speech Movement was the main topic of discussion around the campus and in the student newspaper during the 1964-65 school year. The reporters and editors extensively covered the movement but do not believe their work fueled it in any way. They just covered as much of what happened as they could and as many sides of the issue as they could. Occasionally, they also reported on how the movement had spread to other college campuses, but the bulk of the news coverage was about what was happening at Berkeley: the interminable FSM meetings and actions, the court trials and official campus proceedings that protesters faced, the Regents’ and administration’s responses.

A true campus conscience would have been found on the editorial page, and sometimes it was indeed there. Often an editorial that praised one side might also criticize that same group for something or urge it to consider other points as well. A piece that castigated one group may also criticize the opposing group.  Almost always the editorial writer did an excellent job of summarizing the various issues, even though most of the space might be that summarization with just a few sentences of real opinion.  Still, very few editorials took hard, fast positions, which made the opinions seem more ambivalent and less decisive than a strong conscience would have provided. Yet, when it came to finally taking a clear stand, the opinion supported some regulation of speech on campus, a position a number of the staff did not support. In many ways, the editorials show the struggles the three top editors had in agreeing on point of view the newspaper would put forth as the staff’s opinion. According to most of the reporters and editors interviewed, most of the staff did not support the editorial positions of the newspaper that fall. However, they only wrote dissenting opinions a few times throughout the entire year.

The Free Speech Movement only seemed to encompass spoken speech, even though the written word was also imperiled when the sale of the crude Spider magazine was banned from campus. Still, student newspaper editors and reporters never feared that the sanctions might extend to them as well. The Free Speech Movement was not “exactly about speech,” Jim Willwerth said. “It was about the right to be political, which of course at the bottom is free speech, the right to be political in a public arena, and the right to be controversial. In other words, the First Amendment contains the right to be controversial. And those students [at Berkeley] were not being allowed to be controversial.” [111]

For many students involved in the turmoil, the movement was the highlight of their college careers. “I basically remember it as a good time to be a journalist,” recalled Peter Benjaminson. It was anything but that for Editor Susan Johnson. Her husband Cebe Wallace recalled many teary phone calls and letters she wrote him while he was stationed away from the area during his Air Force service, telling him about pressure from the governor and students groups who all telephoned her at home. Being torn like that was difficult. “For many people, it was the high point of their lives,” Wallace said of the FSM. “For her, it was anything but the glory days. It was terrible.” She was reluctant to relive those days when various people writing articles or books about the FSM contacted her throughout the following decades, he said, and she seldom participated in interviews.[112]

Still it was a history-making time, John Oppedahl said. “What was exhilarating about it was that most of the stories that I covered were big stories, and they were also handled by the professional press, so our competition wasn’t just the campus radio station. We were competing for reportage with all of the pros. That was pretty heady stuff. It was great fun as a young journalist to be tossed into this sort of maelstrom.”

Susan Johnson Wallace graduated in sociology, worked in various jobs before becoming a full-time mother who later in life worked as an ESL teacher. She died November 20, 2006.

Justin Roberts went on to law school at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco and for more than 40 years practiced law in California, specializing in medical malpractice.

James Willwerth graduated from Berkeley with a bachelor degree in Journalistic Studies (a combined journalism and political science degree) and then spent a year in a journalism master’s program so he could be the Berkeley campus stringer for Time magazine. Five years later he finished his master’s thesis on war correspondents in Vietnam. His stringer position turned into a full-time job with Time that lasted 33 years, working in such places around the globe as Asia, Central America, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco. He has published five nonfiction books.

Peter Benjaminson graduated in political science at Berkeley and the School of Journalism at Columbia University. His varied professional career included stints at several newspapers (Detroit Free Press, Atlanta Journal Constitution and Chief Leader). He did a fellowship at Princeton, wrote several books (including the how-to book Investigative Reporting that he co-authored with Dave Anderson), acted as a spokesman/public information officer in New York City, taught journalism classes, and was a claims examiner and investigator for the New York State Department of Labor. He continues to write books in retirement.

James Branson graduated from Berkeley but returned to work as a copy editor and managing editor of The Daily Californian for several years before becoming managing editor of KTVU Channel 2 News in Oakland for 30 years. He is now retired.

John Oppedahl earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Berkeley and a master’s in journalism from Columbia University. He was a reporter and/or editor at the San Francisco Examiner, The Detroit Free Press, Dallas Times Herald, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and The Arizona Republic. He was the publisher at The Arizona Republic and San Francisco Chronicle before he retired in 2003.

Peggy Krause McCormick taught social studies and ESL after she finished college.

Benjaminson and Oppedahl both ended up at Columbia University as graduate students when the 1968 student protesters there occupied various campus buildings. The two were walking across campus one day and saw the tear gas canisters flying around, Oppedahl recalled. “We just walked over to the journalism school and looked around and we thought, ‘yeah, it’s a pretty good demonstration but not quite up to the level of Berkeley.’”[113]

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[1] Donna Lampkin Stephens, “The Conscience of the Arkansas Gazette: J.N. Heiskell faces the storm of Little Rock,” Journalism History 38 (Spring 2012): 35.

[2] Tammy Dunn, telephone interview by author, May 18, 2017.

[3] Cebe Wallace, widower of Susan Johnson Wallace, telephone interview by author, May 21, 2012.

[4] Susan Johnson, “The Last Stand,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), January 8, 1965, 14.

[5]“History of UC Berkeley,” University of California, Berkeley.Accessed 7 May 2012, at http://berkeley.edu/about/hist/foundations.shtml.

[6] “It Starts Here: UC at the Frontier,” University of California, accessed May 8, 2012, http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/aboutuc/.

[7] Division of Business Operations, University of California, accessed May 8, 2012, http://www.ucop.edu/busops/.

[8] W.J. Rorabaugh, Berkeley at War: The 1960s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 11.

[9]Ibid., 11-15.

[10] David Lance Goines, The Free Speech Movement: Coming of Age in the 1960s (Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1993), 63.

[11] Karen Spencer, “Daily Cal — Part 1, 1947-1960,” in Michael Rossman and Lynne Hollander, Administrative Pressures and Student Political Activity at the University of California: A Preliminary Report (University of California, 1964), accessed May 7, 2012, http://www.cdlib.org.

[12] Larry Marks, ”Daily Cal — Part II: The Strike of 1960,” in Michael Rossman and Lynne Hollander, Administrative Pressures and Student Political Activity at the University of California: A Preliminary Report (University of California, 1964), accessed May 7, 2012, http://www.cdlib.org.

[13] Goines, The Free Speech Movement, 276-277.

[14] Rorabaugh, Berkeley at War, 12-18.

[15]Ibid., 18-19.

[16] Goines, The Free Speech Movement, 97-98.

[17] James Branson, telephone interview by author, April 4, 2012.

[18] Ben Nyburg, “Knowland Interview: ‘Never Talked to Kerr,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), December 4, 1964, 5.

[19] “The Grievances of the Students,” in Michael Rossman and Lynne Hollander, Administrative Pressures and Student Political Activity at the University of California: A Preliminary Report (University of California, 1964), accessed May 7, 2012, http://www.cdlib.org.

[20] Pete Benjaminson, “Politics Banned at Bancroft Entry,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), September 17, 1964, 1, 3.

[21] Jim Branson, “SLATE Supplement Appears, Letter Asks for Rebellion,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), September 16, 1964, 1.

[22] Pete Benjaminson, “Political Groups May Defy Dean,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), September 18, 1964, 1.

[23] Pete Benjaminson, “Bancroft Groups Refuse Conditions,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), September 22, 1964, 1.

[24] “University, Political Groups Look to Possible Showdown,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), September 30, 1974, 1.

[25] Peter Benjaminson, telephone interview by author, April 3, 2012.

[26] James Branson, telephone interview by author, April 4, 2012.

[27]Andy McGall, “Obscene Sign Causes Arrest; Protest Rally Called For,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), March 4, 1965, 1.

[28]“Many Changes in Daily Cal Over the Years,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), October 1, 1964, 6.

[29]The Daily CalifornianHistory, accessed May 15, 2012, http://www.dailycal.org/about/.

[30] Tomer Ovadia, “The high cost of independence,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), April 11, 2012, accessed May 15, 2012, http://www.dailycal.org/2012/04/11/the-high-cost-of-independence/.

[31] John F. Oppedahl, telephone interview by author, May 9, 2012.

[32] Justin Roberts, telephone interview by author, April 6, 2012.

[33] Peggy Krause McCormick, telephone interview by author, April 5, 2012.

[34]Oppedahl interview.

[35] James Willwerth, telephone interview by author, April 3, 2012.

[36]Branson interview.

[37]Willwerth interview.

[38]Oppedahl interview.

[39]Benjaminson interview.

[40]Branson interview.

[41]Benjaminson interview.

[42]Branson interview.

[43] “Senior Editorial Board Controls Daily Production,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), October 1, 1964, 6.

[44] Ernest C. Hynds, “Editors at Most U.S. Dailies See Vital Roles for Editorial Page,” Journalism Quarterly 71, no. 3(Autumn 1994): 573-582.

[45] John Hulteng, The Opinion Function: Editorial and Interpretive Writing for the News Media (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 10.

[46] Steven M. Hallock, Editorial and Opinion: The Dwindling Marketplace of Ideas in Today’s News (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007), 9.

[47] Gayle A. Waldrop, Editor and Editorial Writer (Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown Company, 1967), 4-5.

[48]Willwerth interview.

[49]Susan Johnson and Justin A. Roberts, “An Appeal to the Regents,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), December 9, 1964, 8.

[50]Wallace interview.

[51] Jim Willwerth, et al., “Dissenting Opinion: Faculty Proposal Endorsed,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), December 10, 1964, 6.

[52]Willwerth interview.

[53] “”What Kind of Fools Are We?” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), September 18, 1964, 12.

[54]“The Finish Line,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), September 21, 1964, 12.

[55]“The Long, Long Line,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), September 22, 1964, 8.

[56]“The Legal Basis,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), October 12, 1964, 8.

[57] “We Need a Leader,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), December 4, 1964, 12.

[58]“The ‘Sleep-In,’”The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), October 1, 1964, 10.

[59]“ASUC Statement,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), October 2, 1964, 12.

[60] “We Plead for Peace,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), October 5, 1964, 8.

[61]“The Act of Deeding,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), October 7, 1964, 8.

[62]“On Free Speech,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), October 8, 1964, 8.

[63]“Bad Faith,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), October 9, 1964, 12.

[64] “Peace, We Hope…,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), October 16, 1964, 12.

[65]“Strong Statements,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), October 21, 1964, 8.

[66]“Particle Off-Campus,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), October 21, 1964, 8.

[67] “Decision Before the Trial,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), December 2, 1964, 8; “During the Course of Action,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), December 3, 1964, 6.

[68]“Promising Start,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), November 6, 1964, 12.

[69]“Back at the Start,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), November 11, 1964, 8.

[70]“The Regents Know,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), November 18, 1964, 8.

[71] “Cal’s Strange Creatures,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), September 30, 1964, 8.

[72]“A Matter of Record,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), November 14, 1964, 12.

[73] See “Too Complicated,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), November 23, 1964, 6; “On Shaking Ground,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), December 10, 1964, 6; “Tomorrow’s Decision,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), December 17, 1964, 12.

[74]“New McCarthy Era,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), January 6, 1965, 8.

[75] “We Need a Leader,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), December 4, 1964, 12.

[76]“Feathered Super-Men,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), November 24, 1964, 12.

[77]“A Reasonable Solution,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), December 8, 1964, 6.

[78]“The Quality of Mercy,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), January 7, 1965, 8.

[79] “Where Do We Belong?” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), November 19, 1964, 8.

[80]“Return to Class,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), December 7, 1964, 12.

[81]To Grandmother’s House,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), December 14, 1964, 6.

[82] Eric Levine, “Free Speech Now!” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), October 1, 1964, 10.

[83] Eric Levine, “Free Speech’s Odd History,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), October 6, 1964, 6.

[84]Eric Levine, “War with the Students,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), December 2, 1964, 8.

[85]Willwerth interview.

[86] Roberts interview.

[87]Justin Roberts, “For the Courts Only,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), March 5, 1965, 12.

[88] Roberts interview.

[89] Justin Roberts, “A Welcome Philosophy,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), May 6, 1965, 8.

[90] Justin Roberts, “A $75,000 Bluebook,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), May 13, 1965, 8.

[91]Justin Roberts, “…in loco parentis,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), April 20, 1965, 8.

[92] Justin Roberts, “Whose Honeymoon is Over?” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), April 23, 1965, 12.

[93] Roberts interview.

[94] Roberts interview.

[95]Willwerth interview.

[96]Benjaminson interview.

[97] Ibid.

[98]Oppedahl interview.

[99] John F. Oppedahl, “’Word’ Presented at Obscenity Trial,” The Daily Californian (Berkeley, CA), April 21, 1965, 1.

[100] Ibid.

[101]Willwerth interview.

[102]Oppedahl interview.

[103] Roberts interview.

[104]Branson interview.

[105]Benjaminson interview.

[106] Roberts interview.

[107]Benjaminson interview.

[108]Krause interview.

[109]Branson interview.

[110]Willwerth interview.

[111] Ibid.

[112]Wallace interview.

[113]Oppedahl interview.