The District Goes Radical in the 1960s
Mario Savio and the Free Speech Movement (a)
FSM leader Mario Savio is dragged away from the podium at the Greek Theater after attempting to address a campus convocation in 1964 (Photo: UPI File folder, 1964)
Mario Savio emerged only gradually as one of the leaders of the FSM. He participated only peripherally in the fall of 1963 (the year he entered Cal as a junior majoring in philosophy) in Friends of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a group founded by former SLATE chairman Mike Miller. In the spring of 1964 he started joining the civil rights movement by picketing in San Francisco at Mel's drive-in and getting arrested at the Sheraton Palace protests.
But it was Mario Savio's time with the Freedom Summer project in the summer of 1964 in Mississippi that converted him into a committed political activist; he lost his stutter and became a powerful orator.