Freedom's Orator

Robert Cohen teaches social studies and history at New York University and chairs the department of Teaching and Learning in NYU's Steinhardt School of Education. A Berkeley graduate, he is the author of When the Old Left Was Young and the co-editor of The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s . He lives in Greenwich Village.

Robby Cohen has written a gripping account of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement that took place in 1964, and the role of the student leader Mario Savio in that movement. Growing up in a working-class Catholic family, Savio struggled with a stammer, but he overcame his stammer to become a passionate and eloquent orator who led the Free Speech Movement in its struggle for political and academic freedom. Cohen tells the story of how Savio became a committed activist as the result of his experiences registering black voters in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964, and goes on to give a blow-by-blow account of the Free Speech Movement, its struggles and its final success. Here at Berkeley the Free Speech Movement Cafe stands as a memorial to the Movement and Savio's role in it. Cohen's book is both a biography of a remarkable individual and an account of a pivotal moment in Berkeley's history.

• Introduction ; Part I: The Education of an American Radical ; 1. Child of War ; 2. The Making of a Civil Rights Activist ; 3. Freedom Summer ; Part II: Avatar of Student Protest: Leading the Free Speech Movement ; 4. From Polite Protest to the First Sit-In ; 5. The Police Car Blockade ; 6. Organizing and Negotiating ; 7. "We Almost Lost": The FSM in Crisis ; 8. Speaking Out and Sitting In ; 9. "Free Speech at Last" ; Part III: After the Revolution: A Voice Lost and Found ; 10. Descending from Leadership ; 11. Battling Back ; 12. Dying in the Saddle ; Appendix: Speeches ; Notes ; Index