Red scare caused cops to douse free speech
The previous Portals described how scores of demonstrators, mostly students from UC Berkeley, came to San Francisco City Hall on May 13, 1960, to protest hearings being held by the House Un-American Activities Committee. When the panel’s chairman denied entry to most of the students and packed the room with members of conservative organizations, the protesters vowed they would be back.
The next day, more than 300 showed up. As Seth Rosenfeld writes in “Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power,” police had strung a rope barricade 15 feet from the hearing-room door. Once again, most of the students were prevented from entering.
The locked-out students began to chant, the sound audible in the chamber. At the lunch recess, they sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Meanwhile, almost 400 police officers in riot gear arrived at City Hall, accompanied by wagons and ambulances.
When recess ended, police Inspector Mike Maguire opened the makeshift barricade and admitted HUACfriendly spectators who had been issued white passes. An angry roar went up from the crowd, and people in the rear began pushing forward, until those in front yelled, “Stop pushing!”
With that, the protesters sat
down. Some began to sing again. Fred Haines, a reporter from KPFAFM who was present, thought things had calmed down.
At that moment, famed radical lawyer Vincent Hallinan, who was representing two witnesses called by the committee, observed officers unrolling fire hoses. Grasping what was about to happen, he begged Maguire to stop. The officer ignored him.
Rosenfeld describes what came next. “The students were singing louder than ever, a hymn favored by civil rights protesters: ‘We shall not be moved, we shall not be moved. Like a tree standing by the water, we shall not be moved.’ Maguire pointed a big brass nozzle at them. ‘You want some water?’ he shouted. ‘Well, you’re going to get it.’ ”
A blast of water shot out of the hose, smashing into the seated demonstrators. “The rotunda seemed to erupt,” Haines recounted. “The singing broke up into one gigantic, horrified scream. People fled past me as I ran forward, trying to see what was going on. A huge sheet of spray, glancing off one granite pillar, flashed through the air in front of me, and I retreated. Those who stood up within 10 feet or so of the hose were simply knocked down by the force of the water, tumbling head over heels on their still-seated friends.”
When the police finally turned off the hoses, about 150 students were still sitting on the floor outside the chamber. One sodden student began to sing, “We shall not be moved,” then another, until the whole group was singing.
Out of the corner of his eye, Haines saw Maguire at the head of a line of motorcycle police. With a shout of “Let’s go!” the police waded into the crowd of seated demonstrators, swinging their clubs.
They beat and kicked the students off the second floor and onto a landing. Most fled, but about 60 remained. When seized by police, they went limp in passive resistance. Police hauled them roughly down the stairs and herded them into vans.
Sixty-four protesters were arrested, 31 of them UC Berkeley students. All were charged with misdemeanors except Robert Meisenbach, a 22-year-old Marine veteran and UC Berkeley English major, who was charged with felony assault. Police accused him of starting the riot by seizing a billy club from Officer Ralph Schaumleffel and hitting him with it.
The best-known newspaperman in the city, Ed Montgomery of the Examiner, published a story that corroborated the police account. Montgomery wrote that after the doors were closed, “the mob then climbed over the barricades and stormed the door, knocking Schaumleffel down,” after which Meisenbach grabbed the officer’s nightstick and hit him over the head with it. At that point, Montgomery reported, Maguire ordered the fire hoses turned on.
Montgomery’s account, it would come out later in court, was completely false.
The next day, a Saturday, was the final day of hearings. About 250 demonstrators marched around City Hall, while 1,500 more gathered in Civic Center Plaza to listen to the committee proceedings on loudspeakers.
The Chronicle reported that the crowd in Civic Center Plaza sang “God Bless America” and taunted the committee, chanting, “Where are your water hoses?” Even in 1960, a Monty Python quality clung to San Francisco protests: A British gentleman carried a sign that read, “Abolish baseball! Support cricket. Attend your British Activities Committee Hearings.”
When officials appeared at the City Hall doorways, the crowd yelled “Sieg Heil!” and rushed toward the building. At the end of the day there were shouts of “Washington beatniks go home!” The committee members were quickly taken out a rear exit.
In all, 68 protesters were arrested during the committee’s hearings. Radical lawyer Charles Garry bailed out 50 of them with $2,000 of his own money. All of those arrested, except Meisenbach, appeared before Judge Albert Axelrod on June 1. Calling them “clean-cut American students,” the judge dismissed all charges.
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called the protest “the most successful communist coup to occur in the San Francisco area in 25 years.” HUAC’s chairman, Democratic Rep. Edwin Willis of Louisiana, called the protests “probably the worst incident in the history of the committee.”
But for HUAC, and J. Edgar Hoover, much worse was yet to come. That story will be the subject of the next Portals.
Gary Kamiya is the author of the best-selling book “Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco,” awarded the Northern California Book Award in creative nonfiction. All the material in Portals of the