Berkeley’s ’60s radical roots show in major UK exhibit

A magical mystery tour of 1960s youth rebellion, which launches this month at London's Victoria and Albert Museum, has to include a stop at UC Berkeley. Students here birthed the Free Speech Movement, led anti-Vietnam-war protests and occupied People's Park. The campus is where anti-establishment gurus like Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Timothy Leary, who urged a generation to 'turn on, tune in, drop out,' cut their counterculture teeth. Berkeley's rich history of radicalism has thus earned it a place at the much-heralded V&A exhibit, 'You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966-70,' which runs through Feb. The wildly eclectic retrospective features some 350 iconic artifacts, including a moon rock from NASA, shards of Jimi Hendrix's smashed guitars, the first computer mouse and a kaftan worn by Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick at Woodstock. Though Berkeley's 1964 Free Speech Movement came before the 1966-70 period highlighted in the exhibit, it's well known for sparking many of the U.S. movements featured in the show, says exhibit co-curator Victoria Broackes, who stopped at UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement Café in July as part of a press tour of the San Francisco Bay Area's counterculture landmarks. "Through the activities of its young people, Berkeley became the epicenter of various protest movements, including the anti-Vietnam-War movement, which unified nearly all protest groups of the time,' she adds.