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

Organizing the Coalition

Along with a sense of responsibility across different spatial scales, interviewees speak to the logistics of gathering a coalition of the student body together in opposition against the Speaker Ban and of gathering plaintiffs for the lawsuit. In these clips, I find the most practice-oriented messages of the interviews: details about laying the groundwork and canvassing students in their dorms, the challenges of balancing coursework and organizing, and meticulous explanations of how each of the eight student organizations communicated with each other, the litigators, and the University’s administration. Jerry Carr explains how SDS facilitated grassroots organizing among students: “I started with going with Gary, doing the grunt work. We would go out to the dormitories, we would have announced a meeting and they would come down and hear about the Speaker Ban. So we started educating the students.”[1] Carr’s explanation of how SDS worked on consciousness-raising among students, while less radical organizations passed resolutions in their groups in order to give some legitimacy to the action, parallels John Greenbacker’s account. “They had to figure out a strategy, and their strategy was to get a broad representation of the student body to come in and to invite various speakers that fell within the ambit of the ban,” he recalls of being asked to bring the Dialectic and Philanthropic societies into the action.[2] Though some of the modes of communication they describe are now passe, they offer strategies for how to bring students and groups with differing political goals, social networks, and professional responsibilities to organize together.
[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 John E. Greenbacker Jr. by Charlotte Fryar and Alexa Lytle, March 2, 2013, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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