UC Berkeley Library

Do you remember the Free Speech Movement? 🗣️📰🏛️
On this day in 1964, UC Berkeley witnessed a flashpoint in the fight for free speech.

Cal alum Jack Weinberg was distributing civil rights literature on Sproul Plaza. The problem? Political activity on campus was strictly forbidden. University officials and a police officer approached Weinberg, warning him that he was running afoul of the rules.

After refusing to identify himself, Weinberg was placed under arrest and carried to the police car parked on the plaza, which soon became flooded with hundreds of students.

For the next 32 hours, Weinberg sat in the cruiser. One by one, student activists turned the car’s roof into a makeshift soapbox, addressing the crowd from atop the vehicle.

The first person to climb onto the car was a tall man with dark slacks and a checkered sports coat.

“My name is Mario Savio,” he went on to say. “I’m one of the people who have been meeting with the deans here to see if we can have freedom of speech at the University of California.”

The struggle spilled into the months that followed and included the largest mass arrest in state history, during a sit-in at Sproul Hall. But Oct. 1 marked a turning point in the visibility and student support of the cause.

The students’ activism ultimately ended in victory: Berkeley’s Academic Senate voted to lift restrictions on the content of speech on campus. The saga at Berkeley went on to inspire students fighting for change across the country.

The memory of the movement is preserved in the Library’s collections, which include photographs, documents, and oral histories. At Moffitt Library, the Free Speech Movement Café’s walls tell the story of the struggle.

Were you on campus in 1964? Drop your memories below! ⤵️
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📸: Michael Rossman Free Speech Movement Photographs, BANC PIC 2000.067:18, The Bancroft Library

“No one is ever alone with their thoughts.”
— Rowan Ricardo Phillips

The Library’s beloved Lunch Poems series returns Oct. 1 with acclaimed poet Rowan Ricardo Phillips, author of “The Ground,” “Heaven,” “Living Weapon,” and “Silver.”

Join us in Morrison Library for the first reading of the 2026-27 season and a new year of poetry at the heart of campus.

🗓️ Thursday, Oct. 1
🕰️ 12:10 p.m.
📍 Morrison Library (inside Doe Library)

Free and open to the public.

➡️ ucberk.li/lunch-poems

“What gets remembered is determined by who is in the room doing the remembering.” 🕊️
— Betty Reid Soskin (1921-2025), the nation’s oldest park ranger

Soskin — who would have turned 105 today — brought untold Black history to light, and inspired future generations.

In 1942, she tried to join the war effort in the boilermakers’ union, which helped build ships in the port of Richmond. But the union was segregated, and she was relegated to sorting index cards.

Combining her passions for music and justice, Soskin became active in the Civil Rights Movement, writing and performing songs for the cause.

In 2000, she was invited to help plan the launch of the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond. She was the only person of color in the room, she later said.

She became a ranger in the park in 2007, at age 85, narrating guided bus tours, sharing overlooked stories, and making history accessible for everyone.

Even when off duty, Soskin was often seen wearing her ranger uniform.

“I am making every little girl of color aware of a career choice she may not have known she had,” she said.

In 2022, at age 100, she hung up her hat, retiring as a park ranger.

Soskin passed away last year, but her memory lives on at the UC Berkeley Library. In interviews with the Oral History Center, she reflects on art, life, activism, and education. (Link in comments.)

Thank you, Betty, for being in that room — and for remembering. 🫶

Do you have any memories of Betty Reid Soskin? ⤵️
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📸: Luther Bailey/National Park Service

This island nation is still reckoning with nuclear disaster — and you may not even know it. 🌏💙
A new exhibit tells a story of resilience.

During the Cold War, the United States detonated 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands, rendering atolls uninhabitable and leaving health impacts lasting generations.

In 2023, 30 international artists, writers, scientists, and filmmakers traveled 450 nautical miles across the country with members of its Indigenous communities.

That expedition was not one to witness ruin, but a return: an act of honoring ancestral lands, the struggles of those who came before, and the enduring presence of Marshallese life. 🇲🇭

Want to bear witness?

The exhibit — “Kōmij Mour Ijin / Our Life Is Here” — chronicles the voyage and a legacy still unfolding.

Share this with someone who should know this story. 💙

📍 Brown Gallery, Doe Library
🗓️ Through March 2, 2027
🎟️ Free
🔗 ucberk.li/our-life-is-here
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📸 Clockwise from top: Jami Smith/UC Berkeley Library; film stills from “Kōmij Mour Ijin / Our Life Is Here” by David Buckland, 2025

This Latinx Heritage Month, celebrate artists who have used printmaking to tell stories of Mexican and Mexican American life — and see how their creative legacy continues today. ✨🎨

The exhibit “De y para el pueblo / By and for the People: Revolutionary Mexican Prints” brings together the bold work of José Guadalupe Posada, the Taller de Gráfica Popular art collective, and contemporary artists on both sides of the border. 💀🖌️

From iconic calaveras (skeleton figures) to powerful prints exploring migration, workers’ rights, community, and identity, there’s so much to discover.

👀 Experience this living artistic tradition in The Bancroft Library Gallery, on display through June 2027.

🔗 ucberk.li/mexican-prints

These works of art weren’t made to hang quietly on walls. 🖌️💀🔥

They rallied workers, challenged power, and brought art into the lives of ordinary people. 🎨

Now see them up close in “De y para el pueblo / By and for the People,” a new exhibit tracing revolutionary Mexican printmaking from José Guadalupe Posada and the Taller de Gráfica Popular to contemporary artists confronting the issues of our day.

👀 Experience the prints — and their power — right now in The Bancroft Library Gallery.

🔗 ucberk.li/mexican-prints
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🎨: Alberto Beltrán, Exigimos un pacto de paz / We Demand a Peace Treaty, BANC PIC 1999.039:0769--F (folder 7), The Bancroft Library

They didn’t want a revolution. But that’s what it took. 🕊️
This fall marks the 50th anniversary of UC Berkeley’s Women’s Studies Program.

The program was born from a student-led movement calling for a more inclusive curriculum and faculty roster.

In 1970, only 2 percent of UC Berkeley’s professors were women. In the comparative literature curriculum, women authors were woefully underrepresented.

“Something has to change,” Gloria Bowles Ph.D. ’76 recalled.

Learn more about the origins of the program — and the sisterhood at the heart of it. ⤵️
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📸 from Gloria Bowles

The Free Speech Movement Café is back! ☕️🥪🥐

Starting today, swing by for coffee, sandwiches, and sweet treats (chocolate banana bundt cake, anyone?) — and feast your eyes on the newly expanded space.

Plus: Browse photos on the walls documenting the Free Speech Movement, hand-selected by people who were there.

🗓️ Soft opening today, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.
📍 Just inside Floor 3, Moffitt Library
🔗 lib.berkeley.edu/about/fsm-cafe

Raise your paw if you have back-to-school nerves. 🐶🫶🐾

Today: Start the school year on a paws-itive note by petting a cuddly canine!

The Pet Hugs program brings delightful therapy dogs to campus to help students connect and de-stress.

Tag someone who needs a fluffy friend (like Remi, below) in their life! ⤵️

🕰️ 12-1 p.m.
📍 Outside Moffitt Library (near Press cafe)
🔗 uhs.berkeley.edu/pethugs

North Reading Room, Doe Memorial Library, University of California Berkeley, CA
📐: John Galen Howard, 1910
🏛: With its striking Beaux-Arts Classical features, the Doe Library sits at the core of the UC Berkeley historic campus. Following the “Athens of the West” campus master plan drafted by Émile Bénard, architecture professor and university architect John Galen Howard designed over twenty buildings over the course of his career.
The immense North reading room takes up the entire height of the Doe library’s monumental facade, which at the time of construction was immediately facing the campus main entrance. It recently underwent a careful restoration bringing it back to its 1910 state, complete with historic furniture and facsimile original table lamps.
📷: Fuji X-T20 + XF14mm f/2.8 R