Why read Freedom's Orator?

Book cover of Freedom's Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s

Book description

Here is the first biography of Mario Savio, the brilliant leader of Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, the largest and most disruptive student rebellion in American history. Savio risked his life to register black voters in Mississippi in the Freedom Summer of 1964 and did more than anyone to bring daring…

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The Civil Rights Movement

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Why read it?

1 author picked Freedom's Orator as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Jonathan Zimmerman

Author

Here’s the only full-scale biography of the most important student activist in American history. Mario Savio registered Black voters during the Freedom Rides in Mississippi and then led the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964, when the university tried to prevent civil-rights demonstrators from protesting on campus. Savio’s story is yet another reminder about the radical roots of free speech, which is too often dismissed at contemporary universities as a conservative or even reactionary impulse. It wasn’t, and it isn’t.

From Jonathan's list on student activism.