Tinker at 50: Historic Student Rights Case
Check out our resources to mark the 1969 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of Mary Beth Tinker and two other Iowa students who had been punished for protesting the war in Vietnam.
Mary Beth Tinker stands in front of an exhibit in the Newseum's First Amendment Gallery that features the landmark Supreme Court ruling involving her.
Little did the three Des Moines students know that their decision to wear black armbands to school in December 1965 would lead to a Supreme Court ruling on student rights that still reverberates today. The case involving Mary Beth Tinker, her brother John, and Christopher Eckhardt "remains the leading K-12 First Amendment decision – the baseline for which the vast majority of public student free-expression cases are examined," writes David L. Hudson Jr. with the Freedom Forum Institute.
The court's ruling in 50 years ago in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District is the foundation for two of our student classes, and we’ve worked with free speech activist Mary Beth Tinker numerous times over the years. Here are several NewseumED resources you can use to mark the Feb. 24 anniversary of the ruling:
- Free classes: Sign up for “You Can’t Say That in School?!” and “First Amendment and Tinker” that explore how far First Amendment protections extend in public school, and why limits may be necessary. The classes are taught virtually around your bell schedule.
- Webcast: Watch an hour-long webcast we did with Tinker in March 2018 as student activism swelled following a deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Students in the audience, as well as watching the live-stream, asked her questions.
- Video: Members of NewseumED's Student Advisory Team interview Tinker as part of a project with the Constitutional Rights Foundation of Orange County, California.
- Column: David L. Hudson provides background on the students' protest, notes the importance of the Supreme Court decision then and now, and looks at other post-Tinker court decisions on student expression.
- Podcast: Listen to what Tinker has to say about First Amendment freedoms in a six-minute podcast.
