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| Graduate students and other demonstrators picketing outside Sproul 1964 |
Twenty years after the Free Speech Movement rocked Berkeley, the University of California, and eventually the culture, UC Berkeley exploded in passionate activism. Students and faculty joined the wave of campus anti-apartheid movements calling for divestment of university pension funds and endowments from South Africa. In 1986, the UC regents' vote to divest $13 billion from companies doing business in South Africa represented the largest single divestiture and may have helped to speed the end of the apartheid regime. This accomplishment was recognized by Nelson Mandela, during his 1990 speech in Oakland.
How did that student movement emerge, mobilize and achieve this historic victory? How was the Berkeley anti-apartheid movement influenced by the Free Speech Movement two decades earlier, and the women's movement which came between?
On a special Women's Magazine on the first day of our Refresh KPFA pledge drive, I explore those questions with then-student leaders Andrea Pritchett and Rita Himes and faculty activist Ruth Rosen, who was also involved in the Berkeley movements in the 1960s, especially the anti-war and feminist movements. We'll also listen to excerpts of the film, SOWETO TO BERKELEY, which tells the story of this extraordinary time on the Berkeley campus.
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We'll be offering SOWETO TO BERKELEY as a thank you gift for your pledge to KPFA during this hour. I hope many of you will donate to show your support for feminist programming and progressive, community-controlled radio. But whether you can give or not, please don't miss this hour of great conversation and stirring footage.
Listen to entire show. 59:50 min.
