Student opposition to North Carolina’s 1963 Speaker Ban Law will be
the subject of the annual Gladys Hall Coates University History Lecture
Thursday, April 11, at the Wilson Special Collections Library.
Former UNC student body president Robert Spearman (’65) will discuss
the controversial law that barred certain individuals from speaking on
campus. Known members of the Communist Party, those who advocated the
overthrow of the federal or state government, and those who pleaded the
Fifth Amendment when questioned about communist or subversive activities
were all prohibited from speaking at state-supported campuses.
The 5:30 p.m. lecture, sponsored by the North Carolina Collection and University Archives and Records Management Services, is free and open to the public.
The passage of the Speaker Ban Law fifty years ago drew almost
immediate reaction from students and faculty, who protested that the law
infringed on their rights to free speech. Students invited banned
speakers to address their classmates from the sidewalk on Franklin
Street and eventually initiated a lawsuit in federal court.
Spearman, now an attorney for a Raleigh law firm, testified before a
state commission tasked with revising the law, which was eventually
overturned in 1968.
Prior to the lecture, attendees can view the North Carolina Collection Gallery exhibition A Right to Speak and to Hear: Academic Freedom and Free Expression at UNC beginning at 5 p.m.
The exhibition uses original letters, documents, and photographs to
examine the University’s long history of free speech controversies from
the nineteenth century to the present.
The exhibition runs through June 2, 2013.
