Regional Oral History Office University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California Bernard “Buddy” Stein Free Speech Movement Oral History Project Interviews conducted by Lisa Rubens in 1999 Copyright © 2014 by The Regents of the University of California Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral History is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is bound with photographs and illustrative materials and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. **************************************** All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and Bernard “Buddy” Stein dated October 1, 2002. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Excerpts up to 1000 words from this interview may be quoted for publication without seeking permission as long as the use is non-commercial and properly cited. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to The Bancroft Library, Head of Public Services, Mail Code 6000, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000, and should follow instructions available online at http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/collections/cite.html It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Bernard “Buddy” Stein “Free Speech Movement Oral History Project: Bernard “Buddy” Stein” conducted by Lisa Rubens in 1999, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2014. Table of Contents – Bernard “Buddy” Stein Tape 1 1 Coming to the Bay Area from New York, 1963 — finding a job as an editor for the Continuing Education of the Bar — early interest in civil rights — sitting in at the Sheraton Palace Hotel, picketing at Auto Row — participating in social activism with then-wife, Susie — Look magazine’s coverage of the FSM, dissatisfaction with press coverage of the FSM — family background, father’s founding the Riverdale Press — the GCC organizes to strike — graduate student culture, social activism around the time of the Free Speech Movement — on being forcibly taken out of Sproul Hall by the police — approaches to the FSM trial divide the defendants — perception of liberals around the time of the FSM Tape 2 19 Emergence of the New Left sensibility — Stein’s leaflet on the FSM trial — attending the trial — on Judge Rupert Crittenden and Ed Meese — shifting attitudes post-FSM, influence of New Left sensibilities — interest in education reform — emergence and decline of the Free Speech Union, Stein chairs the first meeting — meeting with Earl Cheit as part of the FSU — staying in Berkeley, working for the university — continued activism with Vietnam Day, SDS, Third World Strike — returns to Riverdale, takes over the Riverdale Press — winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for editorials in the Riverdale Press — on leaving Berkeley in the late seventies, changes in political activism — the Press office is firebombed in 1989 following Stein’s editorial on Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses 1 INTERVIEW WITH BERNARD “BUDDY” STEIN [Interview 1: October, 1999] [Tape 1] Rubens: I’m in Bernard Stein’s office at the Riverdale Press. What is your official title? Stein: I’m the editor and co-publisher of the Riverdale Press. My brother, Richard, and I publish the paper together. Rubens: Was he at Berkeley? Stein: No. Rubens: Older brother, or younger? Stein: Younger brother. He was at Cornell. Rubens: How much younger? Stein: Six years. He was active in the anti-war movement. My dear friend, Bob Starobin, who went to teach at Cornell--or at Binghamton, I guess, but related to Cornell--knew Richard. [Starobin was on the faculty at SUNY Binghamton but took part in Cornell’s anti-war movement.]1 Rubens: Well, hopefully, we’ll get into the anti-war period and next cohort of activists. Let’s begin with when you came to Berkeley. Why and how first. Stein: I came to Berkeley to get away from this newspaper. Actually, I came to San Francisco in 1963. Rubens: Had you just graduated? Stein: I just graduated from college, just gotten married, and didn’t have a special reason for San Francisco, except that it was far away from here, and Susie had a dear college friend who lived there. Rubens: And where had you gone to college? Stein: I went to Columbia; she went to Antioch. Rubens: Did you major in journalism? 1 Additions made after the interview are indicated by brackets. 2 Stein: No, no. I majored in literature, and I was going to be an academic. Went out with no particular plans. I went out and started looking for work, and then the draft started, so I quickly enrolled in San Francisco State. And the day I enrolled, Kennedy signed an order exempting married men. I was so happy I walked into a glass door and took a couple of stitches. [chuckles] So then I just looked for work. I had a lot of trouble finding work. Eventually, we moved over to Berkeley from San Francisco. I started working at something called Continuing Education for the Bar as an editor. Rubens: I have just interviewed Siegfried Hesse. Stein: Yes, and Manny [Manuel] Nestle? Rubens: No, I don’t know who that is. Ann Fagin Ginger, has also contributed her complete files to the Bancroft. Stein: Oh, that’s great. That’s great. Rubens: What year was it that you started working as an editor with the Continuing Ed for the Bar? Stein: By now it’s probably the summer of ‘63. And then, I enrolled in the English department as a graduate student. Rubens: First-year grad? Stein: Yes. Rubens: Were you studying with anyone in particular? Stein: No. Rubens: Was it going to be English literature or British literature? Stein: It was probably going to be Renaissance literature. Rubens: Had you decided at some point you would be an academic? Stein: Yes. Rubens: Were you always known as “Buddy?” Stein: Yes. Rubens: And Susie was known as “Susie?” 3 Stein: Yes, “Susie.” Rubens: Okay. And she enrolled as well? Stein: Yes. She was in comparative literature. Rubens: Did you both begin at the same time? Stein: Yes. Rubens: And where did you live at the time, do you remember? Stein: 2210 Cedar Street. Rubens: That was an apartment? Stein: Yes. Cedar--just toward the hills from Spruce. Rubens: You used to walk to campus? Stein: Yes. I came out in the summer of ‘63, and for me, that’s really when the story starts. I don’t know if you want to start there. Rubens: Start it there. Stein: Unlike my friend Davy Wellman and other people you’ve interviewed, I had no left ties at all, no family ties to the Left. I had been briefly interested in the Civil Rights movement and civil liberties issues in college. Operation Abolition had really grabbed me. We had one of those traveling road shows, and I don’t remember who the debaters were, but they showed the film; and there was a right-winger and a left-winger debating. I had, just on my own, walked to Harlem one day and gone into the CORE office and volunteered to go on a ride to sit in down in Maryland. The sit-in never came off, and they weren’t especially interested in me. There was no real follow-up. Rubens: That’s great. What motivated you? Stein: I honestly don’t know where it came from. One day I just did it. And I’d gone on a few peace marches in Washington. But fundamentally, I was really, really cynical. I believed that these things were right, but I didn’t believe that change was possible. And when we got to San Francisco, we got a call one day from an Antioch classmate of Susie’s. He’d been sitting in at the Sheraton Palace Hotel. Rubens: Do you remember his name? 4 Stein: The name was Mike Folsom. And he said, “Look, we’re really tired. We’re dirty. Absolutely, there aren’t going to be any arrests in the next several hours. We all are calling someone to just come down and be a body--take our place while we go home and shower and change clothes and stuff. Please.” He had put it on the basis of friendship, and on the basis of friendship, I said, “Yes, let’s go.” But I remember saying to Susie, “But nothing’s going to come of this.” We got to the hotel, and we’re sitting in the lobby for a very brief period of time, and suddenly, this absolutely gorgeous woman, Tracy Sims, came running through the lobby of this posh hotel, yelling, “Victory! Victory! Victory!” with a piece of paper in her hand. I’ll never forget it. And she proceeded to read off the agreement that had been reached to integrate the work staff at the hotel for the first time--all the hotels in San Francisco, for the first time.