In the fall of 1964, some students at all-Black Booker T. Washington High School in Philadelphia, Mississippi, began to sport “freedom buttons”— one-and-a-half-inch pins reading “One Man One Vote.” Within days, the principal quickly announced that students who wore “freedom buttons” inside the school building would be subject to discipline, arguing that the pins would distract from students’ education and “cause commotion.
But the ban backfired. Just three days later, more than 30 students came to school with “freedom buttons.” While most of them were sent home and suspended for a week, three parents, led by Margaret Burnside, fought back. They sued the school, alleging that preventing students from wearing “freedom buttons” was an abridgment of their children’s First Amendment right to free speech.
would affirm their assessment and declare that students have free-speech rights, even in the classroom.case was playing out in federal courts, a similar situation unfolded 800 miles north in Des Moines. When 13-year-old Mary Beth Tinker, her brother, John, and friend, Christopher Eckhardt wore black armbands to protest the Vietnam War, they were
. They sued, but the district and circuit courts ultimately sided with Des Moines’s school district officials.that, at the time, “It was pretty well understood that administrators, school boards, and, to a limited degree, teachers, were the ones who could decide what was discussed in public school. Not the students.
“Figuring out how to tweak the nose of authority is what you're supposed to be doing as an adolescent,” he continued. “And the idea that just because speech is raunchy or silly or weird it's less deserving of protection is honestly I think wrongheaded. I think it's upside down.”case threatens to hinder student voices even further, extending the reach of school administrators to off-campus activities and outlets, including social media.
Did they?
ZachariahSippy TeenVoguesRacism does this woman still work here