Mary Beth Tinker - United States
Change Through Courts
Background: On Feb. 24, 1969, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Tinker v. Des Moines that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."
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I had thought that we weren’t
going to win the whole time.
Because I had thought there was no way that kids could win over the
principals and the school board and the courts and the judges and, you know,
all of these powerful people, because I felt like kids don’t have much power,
which is the experience of most young people growing up. And so, I felt that we were going to
lose the whole thing, but- so I wasn’t really surprised when we lost at the
district level and we lost at the appeals level. I was surprised when the Supreme Court decided to take our
case, because they felt that it was an important case about the rights of kids,
and there hadn’t been that many cases through history having to do specifically
with the rights of young people in the public space. So I was really happy when they took our case, and then when we
won, of course, I was really happy.
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