"appeal of the Goldwater campaign and conservative principles to young people in 1964 was rooted in the idealism of youth and the natural youthful antipathy toward the establishment"
LOL; the Goldwater convention led directly to the Free Speech Movement which gave us the anti-war movement, a most un- Goldwater response. At the SF convention, a lot of Cal students were working for Rockefeller and Scranton.. AuH2O's Cal. campaign director was the highly connected former senator and owner of the Oakland Trip, Bill Knowland....
Thank God for Bill Knowland :>)
the Republican National Convention in San Francisco in July, party moderates desperately turned to Berkeley "to recruit an army of demonstrators" (Worst 284). Despite marches through San Francisco, Goldwater won, and the conservatives took power. The conservatives had always eyed Berkeley with suspicion, now after the anti-Goldwater protests, they were determined to do something about the campus.
The civil rights issue had not been dormant over the summer. The courts were still jammed with cases from the previous school year, and in June campus CORE sponsored a sit-in at the U.S. District Attorney’s office to protest inaction on the Mississippi murders. The demonstrators were removed by force. Bay Area CORE even began organizing against the Bank of America. It was during this time that the Direct Action Committee launched a picket line against Knowland’s Oakland Tribune. The timing could have been better. With the rising tide of conservatism, Knowland was not about to roll over and let the students win.
Knowland found his solution to the students. His reporters discovered that the Bancroft Strip (also known as Sproul Plaza) on which the civil rights groups did most of their recruiting, was technically on university property and therefor violated the campus-wide ban on political activity. "It was universally assumed, even by the U.C. administration, that Sproul Plaza was city property. … In fact this was not so. Sproul Plaza was university property. … But for reasons lost as irretrievably as Leviticus’s pork taboo, the university administration never interfered with political activity there" (Conlin 117).
The Oakland Tribune called for an end to political activity on Bancroft Strip. Under pressure from Knowland and the Oakland Tribune, as well as from the Bank of America, the Berkeley administration announced that the Bancroft Strip could no longer be used for political recruiting.
papersiwrote.blogspot.com
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The Role of the Student Conservatives
The Goldwater and Republican groups remained solidly with the FSM free speech goals throughout the controversy. As a rule, however, they disassociated themselves from, and sometimes criticized, the tactics of direct action. Some Goldwater supporters pulled out of the United Front on October 2nd. A member of the (moderate) California College Republicans served on the Steering Committee after October 10. The Vice-president of the University Society of Individualists, who is also a member of the Cal students for Goldwater and the Young Republicans, summed up widespread conservative sentiment during the October 2 demonstration: "The conservative groups fully agree with the purpose of the sit-ins in Sproul Hall," she stated on October 1. "Individual members of our organizations have expressed their sympathy by joining in the picketing on the steps of the Hall and will continue to do so. However, our belief in lawful redress of grievances prevents us from joining the sit-ins. But let no one mistake our intent. The United Front still stands."
While the negotiations in the CCPA were under way, many students returned to their books. At this time, the conservatives failed to show up at FSM meetings. But they returned on the eve of the setting up of tables on November 9. The conservative student quoted above was added to the Steering Committee the following weekend. The Executive Committee meeting of December 6, for instance, was attended by members of Young Americans for Freedom, the Young Republicans, and the University Society of Individualists.
fsm-a.org |
