The 1990 documentary, Berkeley in the Sixties, offers a retrospective of the realization and evolution of the Free Speech Movement (FSM) at the University of California, Berkeley. Through a mixture of archival footage and “talking head” interviews, the film makes a compelling argument about the importance of Berkeley in the protest movements of the 1960s, but at the same time falls victim to some of the pitfalls common in documentary films that make them unreliable as historical documents. The film offers plenty of firsthand accounting and contemporary footage that give it a sheen of authenticity, however, in its lionization of UC alums it also manages to conflate an entire decade and a complex national gestalt with static instances and the hindsight remembrances of a handful of activists. According to the film, the FSM of the 1960s began incubating in response to the House of Un-American Activities Committee at the start of the decade and came into full bloom with the campus protests of 1964. In the fall of that year, the administration of UC …show more content…
According to testimony in the film, the FSM exposed students the “mechanisms of oppression” and their hard-won right to open discussion allowed for a collective understanding of the omnipresence of those mechanisms throughout US society and foreign policy. Validated by the success of the FSM, student interests turned toward the national civil rights struggle and the deepening conflict in Vietnam. UC Berkeley’s location in the Bay Area also allowed for a hybridization of student activism with the burgeoning counterculture in San Francisco and the radical politics of the Black Panther Party in Oakland. The film ends with a rumination on the People’s Park experiment, an attempt to create a material manifestation of countercultural values in a land rights struggle that joined student organizers with the local
The film Pleasantville directed by Gary Ross is about two modern teenagers, David and his sister Jennifer, somehow being transported into the television, ending up in Pleasantville, a 1950s black and white sitcom. The two are trapped as Bud and Mary Sue in a radically different dimension and make some huge changes to the bland lives of the citizens of Pleasantville, with the use of the director’s cinematic techniques. Ross cleverly uses cinematic techniques such as colour, mise-en-scene, camera shots, costumes, music and dialogue to effectively tell the story.
Free speech is the fundamental right, almost assumed as a divine ordinance on humans. Preliminary development of free speech starts at universities. Though considered an integral part of academic institutions and student intellectual growth, in the recent past there is growing intolerance for free speech ‘opinions’ expressed through different mediums. This paper compares two texts, “Free speech is flunking out on college campuses” by Catherine Rampell, and “Restoring free speech on campus” by Geoffrey R. Stone and Will Creeley. This paper argues that any text, without provisioning a counter narrative for the core argument, is lacking in its sense of completeness and ability to pre-resolve reactionary dissent.
Despite nearly one hundred years passing since the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in Southern States were still faced with the most distinct forms of racism. The so-called “Jim Crow” laws that were present in United States at the time, served to segregate blacks and whites from all aspects of public life, including schools, public transport and juries. Often faced with extreme right-wing terrorist groups such as the white supremacist Klu Klux Klan, many among the African American community chose to live in a society of oppression that to actively campaign for equal rights for all humans regardless of the colour of their skin. It wasn’t until the 1950’s and 60’s that the people attempted to challenge the established order by engaging in influential protest movements with the help of key activist groups and their leaders. In particular, one key example of a powerful protest campaign was that which occurred in 1965 in Selma, a small town in Alabama. Here, the African American community united in an effort to ensure that all citizens were equal before the law in regards to their ability to register to vote. Their work in banding together and marching from Selma to the state capital Montgomery, was vastly important to both the Civil Rights Movement as a whole, as well as the assurance of the Black vote within the United States. Consequently, this essay seeks to emphasize just how influential this act of protest was to the movement as a whole, whilst analysing the
The war in Vietnam did not affect only matured political leaders. In fact, one of the largest demographics affected by the war was the population of young adults ages 18-35. These people, who were commonly referred to as ‘college aged’, experienced a time of revolution during 1961-1975. Previous to the war, students in universities could not voice their opinions on political or social issues. The voting age at the time was actually 21, meaning many students in college could not even vote in elections. Despite their oppression, many students felt that their opinions were valid and wanted to be heard. This birthed the Free Speech Movement. Programs and organizations such as Chicago’s JOIN (Jobs or Income Now), SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), and other campus-based political organizations fueled the fight for equality of all ages. Much of the Free Speech Movement’s success can be credited to Mario Savio’s intense speeches. The generation of students in
The civil rights movement of the sixties is one of the most controversial times of the last century. Many, if not all, who lived through that time, and the generations following were enormously impacted. At the time passions ran so high that violence at peaceful
As the world’s eyes are observing the United States and President Eisenhower desperate to regain control over the U.S., and Federal Troops were called in to protect African Americans, and Governor Fabus closed the schools in 1958 and 1959. Still, the Movement accentuated the idea of peaceful coexistence and the establishment of legal authority for members of all races. What maybe made the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s so significant is not essentially what battles were won but what training had been done as the decade drew to a close. (Jackson, 2006). If the 1950s were traditional politically, and filled with media images of the perfect family, despite the turmoil of the Civil Rights Movement, the 1960s were anything but peaceful. The 1960s were especially unique in that so many children had been born in the years after WWII that now, in the 60s, they were becoming of age, thus '' the 60s are also known as the Age of Youth. Several general trends characterize the era: a vast counterculture and social revolution, typically youth rebelling like never before; increased attention to civil rights, feminism, the Vietnam War and the anti-war
Voices of Freedom: A Documentary History. Vol. 1, 3rd edition New York, NY, 2011. 84-86. Print.
fight for civil rights, and what was known as the radical 60’s; which saw student
Throughout the 60s, new cultural factors begin to appear, as the country divides from just the liberal ideas awakened in the 50s, to the “New Left.” The new ideology went extremely far with their views. This is most evident through student groups, such as the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). This extremely active group, and many others like it began to cause waves by taking protests too far and disrupting universities. So much so, the University of California at Berkeley had to prohibit some protests (Hewitt 876). Photographs capture how disruptive these groups can be, like the one taken on December 3rd, 1964, which shows a college protests of students literally cramming a building so full, hallways become impassible (Hewitt 876). This idea within the young generation that they can make a change is referred to as “baby boomer power.” They were told they were important economically their entire lives, so they believed they could also have political power. Additionally, the Civil Rights Movement reached its full potential in the 60s with leaders like Malcom X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., even though King was about integrating peacefully, Malcom X’s Black Power aggressive movement was an extremely far left
Social movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s have been interpreted and written about in varying ways. While contemporary scholarship disagrees with past analyses and offer fresh perspectives, past research can also provide a pathway for defining important questions for future research on social movements in America.
George Kerr, my mother’s father and my grandfather, was born in January 1950, making him 67 years old. Consequently, he was a teenager living in Aberdeen, Maryland (roughly 40 miles from Baltimore) during the 1960s. The 1960s were a time filled with protests and demonstrations against the establishment and typical social and political activity. From the Civil Rights movement to the Anti-Vietnam War movement to Women’s Liberation to the student movement, the 1960s were a rejection of societal norm in an attempt to alter a course towards a better, more accepting, liberated United States. Out of all the protests and demonstrations that occurred in the Sixties, Mr. Kerr recalls one specific event, known as “The Baltimore Four” in 1967, as the
The final movement took place at San Francisco State College and was organized by the college’s Black Student Union in 1966. They demanded that Black Studies become a department offered at their school and they were dedicated to achieving it. After two years of strikes, demands, and negotiations the movement was successful and San Francisco State College became the first to offer a Black Studies Program and Department. (Karenga)
The 1960s was a decade full of cultural, political, and social change in the United States that saw activism in the areas of civil right and anti-war ideals. It is remembered in history as a time where many ideas about counterculture permanently changed. It was the decade where African-Americans were passionately fighting for equal recognition, where young Americans who didn’t want to conform to the ideals of their elders created their own culture, and where average Americans began standing up against what they believed was an immoral war. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the assassination of MLK, Jr., the Vietnam War, and the Kent State massacre are often discussed events from the 1960s and early 1970s. However, one area of American freedom and
Many live attempting to decipher the riddle of life. What is life? What is the purpose? What makes? Even though we only seek happiness why can’t we ever seem to achieve it? When we do reach happiness why can’t we seem to grasp it and hold it for more than the few short hours that pass like seconds? The question we must answer first is “What makes happiness, true?”
The release of Gordon Hollingshead and Alan Crosland’s The Jazz Singer in 1927 marked the new age of synchronised sound in cinema. The feature film was a huge success at the box office and it ushered in the era David Bordwell describes as ‘Classical Hollywood Cinema’; Bordwell and two other film theorists (Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson) conducted a formalist analysis of 100 randomly selected Hollywood films from the years 1917 to 1960 in order to fully define this movement. Their results yielded that most Hollywood made films during that era were centred on, or followed, specific blueprints that formed the finished product. Through this analysis of Hollywood films the theorists were able to establish stylised conventions and modes of