HIS CHIN DIMPLED ENOUGH to insert a bullhorn, his brow furrowed enough to seat two co-eds, Mario Savio was just a Berkeley sophomore when he gave life to the Free Speech Movement by shouting from the roof of a police car in Sproul Plaza in 1964. Conducting the original sit-in and protesting the banishment of political activities from campus, he raged against the university machine. It “makes you sick at heart,” he cried. “You’ve got to put your body upon the gears . . . and you’ve got to make it stop.”
They put Savio’s body in the ground when that same heart stopped on November 6. Some say fibrillation got him, while others claim his heart was broken by the victory of the California Civil Rights Initiative.
Recommended Stories
Print subscriber? Click here to login/register your account
Digital subscriber? Click here to login/register your account.