On Dec. 2, following weeks of demonstrations and failed negotiations, more than 1,000 students took over the administration building in what would be the apex of the Free Speech Movement.
The sit-in ended the next day with 814 people arrested, the largest mass arrests in California history. Support from sympathetic faculty and others eventually opened the university to student activism in early 1965.
College campuses across the country would never be the same.
What sparked the sparked the free speech movement?
Political activities involving off-campus causes were prohibited at University of California campuses in 1964. At Berkeley, students and outside activists instead set up tables, handed out leaflets and did fundraising on a 26-foot-wide brick walkway at the campus’ Telegraph Avenue entrance.
That September, after Berkeley students took part in civil rights protests against Bay Area businesses and at the Republican National Convention in San Francisco, the dean of students notified student organizations that the walkway was university property and could not be used “to support or advocate off-campus political or social action.”
