Author: Lee Anne Titangos

The Bancroft Library Reading Room will be CLOSED December 24th – January 4th.

Instersession hours will be in effect:

December 22nd – 23rd: 1pm – 5pm

January 5th – 18th: 1pm – 5pm

Fifty years ago this week, the Berkeley campus of the University of California was rocked by the Free Speech Movement (FSM). The Regional Oral History Office (ROHO) has made available nearly 40 never-before seen interviews that recount the experiences of a cross section of participants in or witness to the events, including: student leaders and the lawyers who defended those disciplined and arrested; faculty who were in favor of and others who vehemently opposed FSM; ordinary students who as one freshman noted, were “trying to figure out what was going on. People were really caught by how important this was and trying to sort out the adult world response to it. You knew that this was a big deal.” Because of repeated massive demonstrations – 10,000 students surrounding a police car in the middle of Sproul Plaza; 800 people occupying the central administration building – Berkeley drew national attention. In the words of one interviewee, a journalist who covered the FSM for the nation- wide Collegiate Press News Service: “FSM opened up everything – just blew out the tubes of being able to move large amounts of information across the country. It wasn’t exactly that Berkeley was the first place where this mechanism kicked in [political protest] but it was the place where it went critical.”

The project website, along with interview transcripts and selected audio clips, is available here for all to access:
http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/projects/fsm/

Project highlights:
– Charles Powell, the ASUC Student Body President, never before interviewed about his struggle with the FSM as it was happening
– Suzanne Goldberg, on the role of women in FSM and her struggles to overcome sexism among activists
– Robert Scalapino, a distinguished scholar of China and Japan who opposed the tactics of the movement
– Art Goldberg and Jackie Goldberg, siblings who came to Berkeley together, played key roles in the movement, and then went on to fight for social justice in law and politics

“It all started with a shot of Peruvian brandy, lemon juice and a jigger of pineapple syrup. They called it a Pisco punch, and it was the first cocktail ever mixed in San Francisco. Or, if it wasn’t a Pisco punch, maybe … hic … it was a whiskey concoction invented by miners. Or perhaps … burp … it was a sherry aperitif poured by Spanish missionaries.

In any case, the Bay Area has a rich and riotous history of mixed drink inventions, and a UC Berkeley historian has set out to document it, from the mai tai to the martini and beyond. Everything, that is, but the hangover. ‘What cocktails tell us, not just about drinking culture but American life, is incredibly fascinating,’ said Shanna Farrell, a historian at Bancroft Library’s Regional Oral History Office. ‘The Bay Area has been a center of that, and that history has never been researched.’

Farrell plans to interview bartenders, distillers, historians and bar owners, covering everything from recipes to Prohibition to political and social influences dating from the Gold Rush to the present. Her office is raising money online to finish the project. The idea was a no-brainer for the Bancroft Library, which has one of the country’s most comprehensive archives of Western memorabilia.” – Carolyn Jones, SFGate

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