Speaking Back to the Speaker Ban: Oral History Practice And Free Speech Activism

A Network of Places

Despite their now holding the power of retrospection, the interviewees understood even then, albeit in small ways, that they were not just invested in this struggle to regain their protected right to free speech in one place. Activists understood that their work also involved a shifting political climate in the South, the University’s and the state’s historical legacy as a liberal institution, and a national student power movement that they could now claim a part in. The conviction that students felt designated a responsibility to act ethically on behalf of North Carolina, their home state, and as part of a national movement of student action. Most interviewees recollect watching the Free Speech Movement transpire at the University of California at Berkeley in the school year before the protests on UNC’s campus. "We were part of a huge national movement. This country in the 1960s, the youth, the campus youth in particular, was in motion, I’ll put it that way. It was in a state of mobilization that occurs rarely in time,” Jerry Carr recounts about the UNC chapter of Students for Democratic Society.[1] The interviewees’ understanding that action occurred at different spatial scales permeates each individual interview. After Jim Medford recounts a summer visit to Berkeley, he answers why it was important for him to be involved in the actions at UNC: “So, I felt, but by becoming involved, it seemed like that’s what it was, it was important that as citizens, we—and, I didn’t think of it as students so much—but as citizens, this was our little home. We tried to make it right. ‘This’ being Chapel Hill at the time."[2]
[1] Interview with Jerry Carr by Blanche Brown, March 1, 2013 in the Southern Oral History Program #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
[2] Interview with Jim Medford by Anna Faison, February 28, 2013, in the Southern Oral History Program #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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