John and Mary Beth Tinker’s decision to wear black arm bands to school was the start of a landmark Supreme Court ruling which guaranteed First Amendment rights for public school students.
In 1965, John was a 10th grader at North High School in Des Moines and Mary Beth was an 8th grader at Warren Hardin Junior High School. Their parents were social activists who had been involved in the Civil Rights Movement and then got involved with the anti-war movement.
In response to the United States’ bombing campaign against North Vietnam, Operation Rolling Thunder, John and his parents traveled to Washington, D.C. for an antiwar demonstration in November 1965. Traveling back to Iowa on a charter bus, the demonstrators discussed how they would continue to bring awareness of the war in Vietnam to the general public at home, and someone suggested they wear black arm bands.
“[Students] were going to wear the armbands with us to, to protest the dying on both sides, the dust on both sides of the conflict, and also to encourage for the future, the Christmas truce that Sen. [Robert F.] Kennedy had proposed,” John said.
Mary Beth said their father was a Methodist minister who had traveled to Japan as part of a peace delegation with the church and that the Tinkers believed in advocating for nonviolence.
“The values that we grew up with were that you should speak up and you should speak up for peace and for a better way of doing things, and that people should get along with each other,” Mary Beth said.
Administrators at Des Moines Public Schools found out about the students’ plan to wear armbands from a school newspaper article written by one of the planners. They hastily created a rule that black armbands were not allowed, and if a student refused to remove them, they would be suspended.
The values that we grew up with were that you should speak up and you should speak up for peace and for a better way of doing things, and that people should get along with each other.Mary Beth Tinker
The number of students planning to participate dropped from about 50 to 10, including John and Mary Beth, their elementary school siblings, Hope and Paul, and John’s high school classmate Christopher Eckhardt.
John, Mary Beth and Eckhardt were among the group of five older students who were suspended for wearing the arm bands. First, a group of high school students tried calling the school board president to convince him they weren’t trying to be disruptive. Then, they held a meeting, with adults present, where they consulted a Drake University professor, who was also an Iowa American Civil Liberties Union lawyer.
“We described what had happened, and he said he thought that we did have a First Amendment case, but he said it would be better if we went back to school without the armbands on, so that we wouldn't be truant and introduce a complication in our case,” John said. “So that's what we did.”
John and Mary Beth wore black to symbolize the same anti-war message. They went back to the school board twice to try to negotiate the rule. Though some members did vote in favor of the students, the rule was upheld, and American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Dan Johnston took it to court. John, Mary Beth and Eckhardt were the petitioners in the case.
The Tinker family name became very public, and the student demonstrators were thrust into the public eye, where they faced harassment and threats from adults.
Mary Beth described answering the phone and the woman on the other end threatening to kill her.
“I was thirteen,” she said. “And we had been speaking up for peace at Christmas time, and so it was very confusing.”
The decision came down on Feb. 24, 1969. In a 7 to 2 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that teachers’ and students’ constitutional rights to freedom of speech are protected in schools.
“It’s a case about controversy, and the Supreme Court said that some things we hear about and talk about because of our First Amendment and because of our democracy are going to make us uncomfortable,” Mary Beth said. “But we have to be willing to pay that price to be uncomfortable sometimes, otherwise, we don't have education and we don't have democracy.”
However, there are some caveats in the ruling.
“In various cases, speech is still being suppressed, but the principle itself that speech is important to democracy, I think, is made clear by our case, by Abe Fortas,” John said. “So he really rallied all of the arguments in favor of free speech on behalf of democracy in his decision.”
The cheapness with which we're treating human life is astonishing to me, and it's been hard for me to believe that the general public can accept it, and I really want to encourage the general public to not accept it.John Tinker
The case shaped the Tinkers’ adult lives. In 2013, Mary Beth retired as a pediatric nurse to embark on her “Tinker Tour” to promote youth voices and free speech. John created the John F. Tinker Foundation to promote awareness and understanding of the First Amendment rights of students and teachers. Mary Beth said she's glad to see students and young people continuing to use their voice to protest against ICE raids, racism and to advocate for LGBTQ issues and animal rights. But she also said the same problems from her youth are still there.
“We've been in one war after another my whole life because we're the war country, and I really think we need to get to the root of that problem, which is the funding of the war industry and the corruption with our senators and our representatives. Too often they don't represent the people,” she said.
John said he sees a parallel in the Tinker’s fight for nonviolence during the Vietnam War and the protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed more than 71,800 Palestinians since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas.
“The cheapness with which we're treating human life is astonishing to me, and it's been hard for me to believe that the general public can accept it, and I really want to encourage the general public to not accept it,” John said.
He wants to encourage the youth to think about the world they want and find ways to lead in that direction.
“I've learned as a nurse working with young people that it's good for your health,” Mary Beth said. “It's good for your physical health, your mental health, your social health, all of it, when you take an issue that you care about and you speak up about it. And you can meet people, and you can have meaning in that. And it's a way of life. That's what I find. You don't always win, but it's a good way of life.”
In the Iowa Famous series, we're highlighting people with all types of connections to our state who have made an impact in arts, politics, social justice, education, sports and more. View all the Iowa Famous stories here. Have an idea of someone we should feature? Email talkofiowa@iowapublicradio.org.
