Reginald E. Zelnik (1936–2004)

In 1964, I was a 17 year freshman from a farm town in the San Joaquin Valley. Insecure and painfully shy, I had managed somehow to get accepted to Berkeley. Before that Fall was over, I was about to get a first-class education in the Bill of Rights, political action, and courage, that involved crawling through a basement window to view an actual underground press at work, picketing to stop union drivers' deliveries to the University, the takeover of the UC administration building, searching for arrested roommates, and hearing Savio's astonishing body-on-the-machine speech first-hand. It changed my life, and fueled my writing career as a librarian reviewer of alternative and small press materials that were so critical during the Free Speech Movement and afterward. Suppression and censorship was the game: the Free Speech Movement its name. This book presents a kalidioscope of perspectives by participants from both sides of the barriers.… (más)