During the 1960s, Gainesville became a center for college activism, and was described by then-professor Marshall Jones as "The Berkeley of the South". The city was the center of the Gainesville Eight case in the 1970s, in which eight activists were accused of conspiracy to violently disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach. After their acquittal, activism declined, but rose again during the mid-1980s, as the University of Florida became the state's focal point for anti-apartheid activism.