1968: The Global Revolutions

Students in May ‘68 protested out of anger against an entrenched and exclusionary French university system. Their tactics referenced previous moments of Parisian revolt, finding symbolic power in the image of the pavé – or cobblestone – a traditional construction material for barricades during the French Revolution of 1789. News of the French protests, and the subsequent violent police repression, led college radicals in the United States to express their solidarity with the “revolutionary students of Paris.” The cartoon on the cover of L’enragé – reprinted by students in Berkeley – lampoons French President Charles De Gaulle.