Berkeley in the

1960s

By

John Belleci

December 15, 2010

1

People’s Park- Berkeley, California 1969United Press International, 1969.

Berkeley, California in the 1960s was the center of

America’s anti-war movement and across the bay from San

Francisco, where the counter culture of the Haight Ashbury

ushered the United States into perhaps its most turbulent

domestic era since the Civil War. As a young boy, I grew up in

Pittsburg, California, about thirty miles east of Berkeley. My

parents Frank and Kathy Belleci were involved in the anti-war

movement along with my aunt and uncle, Angela and Sal Tedesco.

2

The family made weekend trips to Berkeley because my father was a

high school political science and history teacher and he sought

to broaden his horizons by as my mother put it, “getting his

hands on as much information and differing viewpoints as he

could.”1 My mom and dad took me along on almost every trip to

Berkeley, including demonstrations at People’s Park and the huge

anti-war march in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in 1969. I

have been exposed to a variety of people and experiences and have

an open mind on a multitude of issues. I have to attribute that

to the way I was raised by my parents and what I was exposed to

in Berkeley.

I wanted to know more, about not only this time in American

History, but also more about my family’s history. I decided to

interview my mother, Kathy Belleci, and my aunt Angela Tedesco. I

felt they could offer valuable insight into what really happened

in Berkeley in the 1960s. As I interviewed each of them, I

started to reminisce about my father, Frank Belleci. He passed

away in 1979, when I was only sixteen years old and would have

been an amazing interview for this project. My mother and aunt

1 Kathy Belleci, Interview by author, Laguna Niguel, CA, October 28, 2010.

3

made continual references to my father and I really wanted to add

his voice into this discussion. I began to search the many boxes

of family artifacts around my home and lo and behold—I hit the

jackpot! I stumbled across my dad’s journals and they contained a

long summary of his thoughts, actions, and hopes from the 1960s.

He wrote about a variety of topics that my mother and aunt

also discussed in our interviews. The topics included growing up

in a Sicilian-American home, the anti-war movement, hippies and

counter culture, the free speech movement, the draft, the Black

Panthers, union organizing and more. An interesting side note is

my father’s observation on public education and teachers in the

1960s eerily parallels the same issues discussed today. As a

state executive board member of the student branch of the

California Teachers Association (CTA) and student member of the

National Education Association’s Advisory Committee on

Membership, I see the same issues are still prominent in

America’s public education system. My dad stated in his journal

in 1966, “Student’s in America’s public education system have

little or no say in the direction of their own education and are

4

being forced to conform to a set of standards that does little to

teach actual knowledge. If Socrates, Jesus Christ, or Buddha were

teachers in this system, I doubt they would be successful because

administrations are forcing teachers to be classic conformists.”2

This observation is just as true today as it was in the 1960s!

The students at the University of California, Berkeley

started a Free Speech Movement in 1964. While Berkeley is more

famous for the demonstrations and hippies, this movement in 1964

started the protest ball rolling. On September 14, 1964, Dean of

Students Katherine Towle, at the insistence of Vice-Chancellor

Alex Sherriffs, wrote a letter to the student political groups

telling them that they could no longer use the plaza at Bancroft

and Telegraph to solicit support for "off campus political and

social action."3 When the students appealed to the dean to

reverse the action they found out that she did not have the

authority to do so. They organized and several students led a

rally, without permission, as the “old rules” required, against

the new policies and set up a tabling operation in front of the 2 Frank Belleci, personal journal, “in author’s possession,” December 10,1966. 3 Immanuel Ness, ed., Encyclopedia of American Social Movements (NY: M.E. Sharpe,2004), 1178-82.

5

administration building facing Sproul Plaza. These students

hailed from eighteen different student groups. Five of these

students were ordered into the dean’s office and shortly

thereafter over 400 students flooded the hallways of the

administration building demanding to be disciplined as well.4 One

of these student leaders was Mario Savio, Student Body President

of UC Berkeley.

My aunt Angela Tedesco stated, “I remember going to

Berkeley and listening to Mario Savio speak, I really admired him

and what he was doing with the Free Speech Movement.”5 She also

attributed the ideology of the Free Speech Movement and the stand

the students took against the administration as “planting the

seed” for the anti-war movement. My father wrote in his journals

that the administration of UC Berkeley is mediocre as best and

their insistence on silencing the voice of the students is an

institutional based policy designed to mask the façade of their

competence.6 I believe my father supported the students and their

protest movement. He did not believe in censorship of any kind 4 Berkeley in the Sixties, Directed by Mark Kitchell, 1990.5 Angela Tedesco, Interview by author, Berkeley, California, November 15,2010.6 Frank Belleci, personal journal, Fall 1964.

6

and that is what was so appealing to him and the others about the

Berkeley in the 1960s.

Perhaps the most volatile topic of the 1960s, not only in

Berkeley but also across America was the Vietnam War and the

draft. The majority of people drafted were from lower socio-

economic neighborhoods and mostly Black, Brown, or poor White. I

vividly remember going to Berkeley with my family and seeing the

anger of the people against the war. I also remember watching the

evening news and the anchor, so matter of factly, reporting

casualty and death totals as if he were reading off the scores of

Major League Baseball games. My Uncle Sal Tedesco received a poor

draft number. My father already felt the entire draft was unfair

and commented, “A society is free only to the extent that its

least privileged and least talented members are free.”7

Pittsburg, California was blue-collar town with a diverse

demographic, imagine a scaled down version of Long Beach or

Oakland, California and Pittsburg would be the result. Just like

in other parts of the country, the wealthy avoided the draft,

while the working class boarded buses for boot camp at the

7 Ibid., December 1966.

7

Oakland Induction Center.8 My Uncle Sal was not from a wealthy

family; my family was also working class. We were the target

group of the draft. In fact, if I was not born, it was possible

that my father would have faced the same dilemma as my uncle.

My uncle was not even a U.S. citizen and the family decided

it would be best of he avoided the draft, but fleeing to Canada

was not an option. He was born in French Algiers and was a French

citizen. My aunt articulated,

At the time we did not believe in the war, we didn’t feel, for one thing, that the way they went about picking was fair. They reinstated the draft and they did a lottery. YourUncle Sal didn’t get a very good number, the cut-off was 140something, and he was 120 something. And the reason we decided that was because, he wasn’t a citizen and we didn’t believe in the war. A lot of people went to Canada, because they didn’t want to fight in the war. So anyway, when he gotthat number, he was getting a deferment, they cut out the deferment, and if your number was like his you had to go. Wetalked it over and France had only a year’s service. We werealso worried that because he was French and spoke French he would be put in some of the most dangerous situations because of the history between France and Vietnam. It’s not like we were unpatriotic, we just made a conscientious decision for him to join the French Army for a year. It was just best for our family.9

8 Berkeley in the Sixties. 9 Tedesco interview.

8

Even though fleeing to Canada was a popular way of avoiding

conscription, I do not think many people had the same option as

my uncle. I think this situation was unique to him and maybe only

a handful of others. My father’s commentary about a society only

being as free as it’s least privileged and talented seems to

encapsulate the prevailing theme of the populace concerning the

draft.

Perhaps the 1960s and Berkeley is best known as time of

movements, organizing, and activism. Everybody seemed to

organizing or protesting about one cause or another. The Civil

Rights Act was passed in 1964. The Women’s Movement of feminism

and bra burning found support. Perhaps, each of these movements

fed off and enhanced each other. Students, Blacks, and Native

Americans all organized during this time. According to the

documentary film Berkeley in the Sixties, an alliance grew between the

student movement in Berkeley and the Black Panthers based out of

Oakland. Bobby Seale discussed how the Black Panthers raised

money for guns by selling Chairman Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book.10 I

too remember that book. My father had a copy of it. No, he had

10 Berkeley in the Sixties.

9

multiple copies of it. He told me the Panthers would buy them in

Chinatown in San Francisco for twenty cents apiece and sell them

on the Berkeley campus for a dollar. Bobby Seale reiterated the

story my father told me as a kid in the documentary.

Perhaps this gave my father the inspiration to start writing

his essay, “How to Run a Successful Revolution.” I do not know if

it was the writings of Mao or the militancy of the Black Panthers

but I have no doubt that both contributed to his work. I also

believe that besides his long hair and leftist political views,

that his activism in Berkeley and the AFT compelled others in

Pittsburg to call him a Communist. My mother commented that women

in the beauty shop would make statements to my grandmother, Rose

Aliotti, such as, “What in the hell is wrong with your son-in-

law, is he a Communist? If he doesn’t like it here, he should

just leave the country.”11 It appears as many of these types of

comments were based on what was referred to as “The Generation

Gap.” My father commented, “The recent upheaval at the Berkeley

campus again reveals significant values, attributes, and beliefs

held by today’s youth that sharply conflicts with the prevailing

11 Belleci interview.

10

understanding of the older generation.”12 I would have to connect

this split in ideology between the old and new as a symptom of

post World War II differences in political beliefs.

The “Greatest Generation” did not feel the same sense of

betrayal by their government as their children did. I would argue

that the prevailing attitude of mistrust by the American People

came after the Tet Offensive. I believe that until that time the

public never felt they had been lied to by a sitting President.

President Lyndon Johnson changed the culture of American when he

completely distorted the truth about what was really happening on

the ground in Vietnam. This fostered the new ideology of the

American public, particularly the young, to no longer take what

the government and the President told them as gospel. The era of

questioning began! The resulting movements changed the course of

American History.

“Most of our contemporary institutions, values, and

ideologies were fashioned in an earlier era.”13The new generation

and counter culture movement began to challenge these

institutions. This was also true in the field of education. My 12 Belleci, personal journals, December 11, 1966. 13 Ibid.

11

family, led of course by my father, was instrumental in starting

the AFT chapter in Pittsburg. It began in my living room with my

father and four other teachers at Hillview Junior High School,

Bill Gray, Tony Gallo, Mary Bergen, and Bob Novo. I was only

elementary school but I will never forget those teachers. The AFT

was a challenge to the status quo. CTA was an association and did

not really engage in the same type of union activities as it does

today. Initially, I thought that possibly it would be

disappointing to my father, that I am so heavily involved in the

student arm of CTA. However, AFT does not have a student program

and CTA has now become a union, rather than an association. With

that said, this new breed of teachers in Pittsburg, inspired by

the groundswell of activism with Berkeley as the hearth, started

to rock the boat.

My father stated, “The Berkeley upheaval of December 1966,

underlines the fact once again, that our generation says No!! No,

to contemporary institutions and values…We seek to create new

values and build new institutions that will be fundamentally

satisfying to humans.”14 This new ideology of the new teachers

14 Belleci, personal journals, December 10, 1966.

12

was rooted in the counter culture movement that grew in the Bay

Area. It started with small steps, such as refusing to wear ties

and letting their hair grow longer. It challenged the status quo

and power of the public education system, administrators, and

school boards just as Mario Salvo and the student groups such as

SLATE at UC Berkeley started in 1964.15 CTA was the old and AFT

was the new, at least as far as this group of teachers were

concerned at this time.

My mother was concerned that my father’s union activities

and political rhetoric would have consequences. She felt those

consequences would be taken out on me at school by CTA teachers.

She stated, “When the PEA (Pittsburg Education Association, part

of CTA) went out on strike, the meetings went twenty four hours a

day until it got settled. I remember feeling the teachers were

going to take it out on you, because of your father, because many

of those members were CTA and not AFT. And, I remember me telling

them exactly what I thought and that they better not do anything,

or there would be consequences.”16 Perhaps she was justified; my

15 Jo Freeman, At Berkeley in the ‘60s (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,2004), 14-17.16 Belleci interview.

13

father published a newsletter for the AFT named The Green Banana

that was highly critical of the CTA. I hope to track down some of

these old newsletters but only one of the original five members

is still alive. Additionally, before the strike, he did not hide

his feelings about CTA; he summed up his reasoning for the

decision as follows:

I am on the verge of resigning from the CTA and joining the American Federation of Teachers for the following reasons:

1. The AFT’s attitude toward administration correspondswith my own.

2. The caliber of men seems to be much higher than in CTA.

3. The AFT’s commitment to social issues is admirable and necessary.17

Both my mother and my aunt also worked in the school district. My

aunt was a secretary at Village Elementary School and my mother

an instructional aide at my old school, Highlands Elementary.

They both participated and aided my father with his union

activism by either typing and distributing The Green Banana or

other clerical and footwork. To summarize the feelings of my

father and the AFT during the mid to late 1960s, he stated,

17 Belleci, personal journal, December 15, 1966.

14

The authoritarian structure of the schools is frankly admitted, but those who hold this notion are lagging to realize the implications of this system… I dissent and refuse to be coerced into accepting the status quo. I will smash this system, if necessary, to accomplish this goal of democratic schools!18

This attitude and vigor in challenging the Pittsburg Schools and

the American institution of public education, can no doubt be

traced to my father’s and the AFT’s connection with Berkeley and

the ant-war movement.

Protests and demonstrations were also a part of Berkeley in

the 1960s. I remember going to quite a few of them. We attended

the big Peace Rally and March in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park

in 1969. There were trips to the Cow Palace and to Sacramento,

where the AFT held demonstrations against the war. I asked my

mother and aunt if they were hippies and they both said the same

thing, “Not really.” They called themselves “fringe hippies,”

never quite fully immersing themselves into the counter culture

revolution. They all vehemently deny ever using marijuana or

psychedelics, which in my eyes would keep them from truly being

hippies. I asked my mother about my father and drugs, she stated,

18 Ibid., December, 20, 1966.

15

“He refused to ever try drugs because he said he always wanted

his mind to be clear.”19 My aunt told me a story about the four

of them attending a concert. She thought it might have been

Cheech & Chong, and when the house lights dimmed, everybody “lit

up joints and passed them up and down the aisles.” She said years

later that my uncle told her he “took a puff.” That was the

extent of any drug use by my family in the 1960s. I am a bit

surprised considering the amount of time we spent in Berkeley!

Another interesting aspect from my interviews with my mother

and aunt concerned race relations. Despite the family’s old

fashion Sicilian values, we have been fairly progressive in

regards to interracial relationships. My aunt spoke of “getting

in trouble” with her father, Nick Aliotti, because she danced a

“fast song” with a Black male student at a school dance. She

said, “My cousin Carol Lee told my Uncle Phil and he told my

mother and she told my dad.”20 I remember years later my

grandfather really giving me a hard time about dating a Black

girl in high school. However, the family has really changed and

19 Belleci interview. 20 Tedesco interview.

16

embraced all ethnicities and lifestyles. My aunt attributes this

turn of events back to the 1960s and Berkeley.

She reflected on that time as being the start of tolerance

and open-mindedness. I would have to agree especially in regards

to our family. We have basically become a scaled down version of

the Rainbow Coalition. In our interview, she articulated, “It

started in the 60s, by us taking you to Berkeley. You saw so many

things that you did not see in Pittsburg and I think it had a

profound effect on how you viewed the world. I mean you were the

first one in the family to openly date outside of our race.”21 My

mother agreed in my aunt’s assessment with my outlook on life, “I

think (taking me with them during the 1960s), it was a good

thing, you got a wider horizon, you got to go to Berkeley. You

got to see a lot of different kinds of people; you just saw a lot

of different aspects.”22 I would agree with my mother and aunt

that spending so much time as a young boy in Berkeley definitely

helped shape my worldview. I have always embraced diversity and

currently I am on the Student CTA Social Justice Committee

working on expanding the parameters of minority representation to21 Ibid. 22 Belleci interview.

17

be more inclusive and less exclusionary. I truly believe that

this aspect of my personality is firmly rooted in me because of

the time I spent on Telegraph Avenue and the UC Berkeley campus

with my family.

How do these interviews and my father’s journals fit into

the history of Berkeley in the 1960s? I believe that my family’s

time in Berkeley greatly contributed to our outlook on life and

the world in general. We are open-minded, tolerant, embracing of

diversity, and non-judgmental. This stems from the counter

culture of Berkeley in the 1960s.

When I asked both my mother and aunt if they considered

themselves activists that both balked at that label. They did

conclude that my father was an activist and they just followed

him. Reading his journals and interviewing my family members has

been an emotional experience for me. Actually, reading my dad’s

words years after he passes has elicited emotions in me that I

have long since thought that I buried. It has also given me a

purpose and a mission. He never got to attend Grad School because

he had to support my mother and I. Since I have now been accepted

into the Masters Program here at California State University,

18

Fullerton, I feel I will be obtaining that degree for the two of

us.

I have a new found respect for activism and grassroots

political movements and will dedicate some of my energy to

pursing causes I feel are necessary. My aunt stated, “What is

wrong with college students in America today? I don’t think they

have the same passion and drive that we had in the 60s. In Europe

they are taking to the streets over tuition hikes and the kids

here are just taking it lying down.”23 I agree with her

assertion. Between the new Early Start Remediation Program being

implemented by the California State University System and yet

another fee increase for the spring semester, I am ready to take

to the streets. These interviews and readings have taught me that

others have fought for what we have and we owe it to our children

to do the same! The total lack of apathy by this generation of

college students in regards to their own education is quite

appalling. What will it take to light a fire under the asses of

these students? How far will they let the state board of regents

kick them around until they react? Have they been coddled to the

23 Tedesco interview.

19

put of complete blindness to the world around them? My aunt would

say so, and y reading my father’s journals, I know he would

agree. Therefore, I believe that I owe it to them to either start

or become involved in a student movement that challenges the

status quo. Why should I pay more for my education as course

offerings and student services decline? Where is the Mario Savio

of this generation?

In conclusion, I learned a lot about Berkeley and the 1960s,

but more importantly, I learned more about my family and myself.

These interviews gave me an insight into my childhood and with

the aid of my father’s journals gave me an insight into myself.

My views on political activism and grassroots politics underwent

a metamorphosis. I respect political activists and grassroots

movements. I will become involved and active in making the public

education system of this nation better for my grandchildren. I

will take on this task in tribute to my father and as a result of

his writings and the interviews with my mother and aunt.

20

Sources

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21

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