Landmark Supreme Court case granted First Amendment rights to students
High school journalism students filled the Russell House Ballroom for the South Carolina Scholastic Press Association conference Monday, and journalism and law professor Jay Bender posed them a question.
“What were you doing at 13 to demonstrate social conscience or social awareness?” Bender asked. “Or have you been too glued to your iPhone?”
There was one person in the ballroom who had taken a risk for what she believed was right. Her actions as a 13-year-old took place in 1965. More than 55 years ago, Mary Beth Tinker had no idea what would happen when she put on a black armband and wore it to school in protest of the Vietnam War.
“I had seen so many brave, strong people stand up like that, but I’d never done that,” Tinker said. “I thought, ‘Maybe I could.’”
Tinker’s older brother suggested wearing the armbands, even though they had been banned by school administrators. When she showed up to algebra class with the black fabric around her arm, she was sent to the office. Before the day was over, she had been suspended from school.
“If there’s something you really believe in your conscience … you have to be willing to accept the consequences,” Tinker said.
And she did. Tinker apologized for breaking the rules and thought the ordeal was over. That is, until members of the American Civil Liberties Union contacted her family, saying Tinker’s First Amendment rights had been violated.
The ACLU and Tinker went to court, twice losing. But when Tinker was in the 11th grade, the Supreme Court decided to take up her case, eventually deciding in a 7-2 ruling that her right to free speech had been violated by the Des Moines Independent Community School District.
But even after the nation’s highest court ruled on her armband, Tinker didn’t think her case was a big deal. She didn’t fully grasp the gravity of the case until she read about herself in a textbook, she said.
But now, she’s taken her experiences on the road, speaking to students and student journalists across the country about their First Amendment rights. Along with Mike Hiestand, special projects attorney for the Student Press Law Center, Tinker is touring the country in a bus, telling her story and relating it to the free speech barriers students face from school administrators now.
“There have been generations of school administrators and judges who think that your First Amendment right is to be seen and not heard,” Bender said.
Monday’s speech was the Tinker Tour’s only stop in South Carolina, though students from across the state were in attendance. Schools including Mount Pleasant’s Wando High School and Spartanburg’s Dorman High School were represented at the conference.