24 Facts About Mario Savio

Mario Savio was an American activist and a key member of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.

Mario Savio is most famous for his passionate speeches, especially the "Bodies Upon the Gears" address given at Sproul Hall, University of California, Berkeley on December 2,1964.

Mario Savio was born in New York City to a Sicilian-born Italian-American father who designed and manufactured restaurant equipment.

Mario Savio's mother was from Veneto, born in the US, and worked in retail sales.

Mario Savio graduated from Martin Van Buren High School in Queens at the top of his class in 1960.

Mario Savio went to Manhattan College on a full scholarship, and to Queens College.

Mario Savio's parents had moved to Los Angeles and in late 1963, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley.

Mario Savio was charged with trespassing, along with 167 other protesters.

Mario Savio taught at a freedom school for black children in McComb, Mississippi.

Mario Savio came to see the violence and racism of the American South as the visible facet of an overall structure of nationwide socioeconomic hegemony.

When Mario Savio returned to Berkeley after his time in Mississippi, he intended to raise money for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, but found that the university had banned all political activity and fundraising.

Mario Savio told Karlyn Barker in 1964 that it was a question as to whose side one was on.

Mario Savio spoke on the steps of Sproul Hall, on December 2,1964:.

In 1999, the media revealed that Mario Savio had been tailed by the FBI from the moment that he had climbed onto the police car in which Jack Weinberg was detained.

Mario Savio was followed for more than a decade because he had emerged as the nation's most prominent student leader.

Mario Savio's ex-wife, Suzanne Goldberg, said that the "FBI's investigation of her and Mario Savio [was] a waste of money and an invasion of privacy".

Between 1965 and his death, Mario Savio held a variety of jobs, including as a salesclerk in Berkeley and instructor at Sonoma State University.

Two months after their wedding, they moved to England because Mario Savio won a scholarship to the University of Oxford.

Mario Savio did not complete his degree at Oxford, and they moved back to California in February 1966.

Mario Savio returned to study at San Francisco State University soon thereafter.

Mario Savio was a good student and had a theorem named after him by a professor.

Mario Savio had a history of heart problems and the day following a bitter and extended public debate with Sonoma State University's then-president, Ruben Arminana, Mario Savio had a heart attack.

Mario Savio was admitted to Columbia-Palm Drive Hospital in Sebastopol, California, on November 2,1996.

On March 12,2011, at the end of an announcement by hacktivist group Anonymous of an attack, called the Empire State Rebellion, on the Federal Reserve, the International Monetary Fund, the Bank of International Settlements and the World Bank, an excerpt of Mario Savio's speech was included.