By Anthony Ratnaraj
Murphy News Service
Mary Beth Tinker, the litigant in one of the country’s most cited free speech cases, spoke to a group at the University of Minnesota Law School Friday, discussing the importance of a society to allow young people to voice their opinions.
Tinker, sporting a likeness of late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall on a pin attached to her lapel said, “Young people are standing up for democratic ideals that we stand for.”
Tinker stopped by the U with Mike Hiestand, an attorney interested in students’ right to speak in schools, as a part of the Tinker Tour USA. The tour started last fall to raise awareness about the right of young people to make their voices heard in the society. The Student Press Law Center is sponsoring the project.
Tinker, in her 60s, said young people have imagination and ‘fresher eyes’ on political and social issues. She said today’s youth are fighting for justice and rights for themselves and others.
“Young people, standing up for Trayvon Martin,” Tinker said.
She recalled that during the Cold War she “started to worry about adults” because they had to futilely hide under the desks to protect themselves for nuclear bombs.
Tinker said she was part of a high school group of student that opposed the Vietnam War, and planned to register their feelings by wearing black armbands. Her school principal in Des Moines, Iowa, heard about the plan and passed a rule that prohibited armbands.
But Tinker wore an armband to school anyway. A teacher gave her a pink slip and sent her to the principal’s office. She said she removed the armband for fear of punishment.
But, Tinker along with her friend Christopher Eckhardt was sent home for wearing the armbands on Dec. 16, 1965. Her brother John Tinker was sent home the next day for wearing an armband.
Tinker and her brother John visited Des Moines public schools last year. There is a locker in Harding High School dedicated them both.
Tinkers’ parents decided to fight the school with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union. Her family received threats from some in the community and they were called ‘communists.’
Tinker’s parents were political activists. Her parents participated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project to help African Americans to register to vote.
Leonard Tinker, a Methodist pastor and Tinker’s father, taught her to stand up for justice.
She told a story when her father fought against segregation at a local swimming pool. He was fired from his job as the minister in the Methodist church.
When her father was fired from several Methodist churches, she realized that standing up for unpopular is the right thing to do even if the consequences can be painful.
“It’s a good way of life. It’s well worth it,” she said,
Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent Community School District made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where in 1969 the court ruled in a 7-2 decision that students have the right to express their opinions in schools.
Associate Justice Abe Fortas said in the decision students and teachers don’t “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
The Tinker decision is still stands.
“Her [Tinker] case changed everything” and cited more than 6,000 times in free speech cases, Hiestand said.
He said the most pressing issue in the society is the regulation of students’ off-campusmbehavior.
Mary Beth Tinker said others do not manipulate children.
“I argue children have their own ideas,” she said.
Anthony Ratnaraj is studying journalism at the University of Minnesota.
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WANT TO KNOW MORE?
To learn more about the Tinker Tour USA visit: http://tinkertourusa.org