Remembering the Tinkers' protest, 50 years later

I don’t recall what I was thinking about when I headed off to school on the morning of Dec. 16, 1965, but I am reasonably certain it wasn’t Sen. Robert Kennedy’s call for a Christmas truce in the Vietnam War. More likely, I was enthralled with the plan for the Gemini 6 manned space capsule to rendezvous with Gemini 7 and its crew in Earth’s orbit later that day.

I was into the space program. The unprecedented maneuver was a sneak peek at NASA’s plan for safely returning our Apollo astronauts after they later robbed the moon of its mystery. Someone would remain aloft in lunar orbit driving the getaway car. The great Frank Miller’s front-page cartoon in the Register that day depicted a couple of idling space capsules, one “driver” challenging the other to a drag race.

I was an 11-year-old sixth grader. Mary Beth Tinker was 13 and in junior high, the youngest among a group of students — including her big brother John, a student at North High — who decided to wear black armbands to school in support of Kennedy and in mourning for the lives lost in the war. The school district had gotten wind of the plan and invoked a pre-emptive ban on the armbands, according to a small front-page story in the Register on Dec. 15.

Lorena Tinker, the mother of Mary Beth and John, took notes during a private meeting on the evening of Dec. 16 — one of many such meetings. She wrote:

“Chris Eckhardt reported that he had worn a band today, and was suspended by the vice-principal, Mr. Blackman, when he refused to remove his armband, at Roosevelt High School. Mary Beth Tinker, 13, eigth (sic) grade student at Harding Junior High School, reported that she had been suspended to the girls' advisor, Mrs. Tarman. She had attended four classes, had been allowed to continue through lunch hour, but her math teacher had sent her to the office by issuing a pass to her without a word. In the office, when asked to remove her armband, she had. Then Mrs. Tarman talked with her, told her she would have to suspend her. She told her she respected her ideas, but had to suspend her because school board had had a meeting and had decided that anyone who wore an armband had to be suspended because, probably, if a lot of smart-alecky kids wore them, just to show off, it would lose its meaning.”

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Forget armbands, female students couldn’t wear pants to school in 1965. Skirts and dresses were the order of the day. Who knows what I wore to school that day. I know what I would have liked to have worn: a pair of burnt ivory penny loafers from Reichardt’s in the Roosevelt Shopping Center a block from the high school. Everybody was wearing them — except me.

Kathy Collins Reilly was a sophomore at Roosevelt in 1965. She went on to teach high school English before becoming a lawyer specializing in education. Reilly also is a member of Roosevelt’s Hall of Fame and will participate on the panel at a Dec. 15 event marking the protests and their legacy. She knew Chris Eckhardt but doesn’t remember his or anyone else’s armband being disruptive.

“I would say nobody aside from the … wearers knew this was going on. And by nobody, I mean very few students,” she said recently. “I went through the remainder of high school and didn't find out about the Tinker case until I was a senior in college, an education major who was required to read a ‘significant court case’ that had come out three years earlier, in 1969. I freaked out when I saw Des Moines Independent Community School District.”

But others were aware as it was happening.

A Register article on Dec. 17 reported the suspensions of Tinker and Eckhardt, noting that neither had caused a disturbance. Another story on Dec. 20 reported that a “Beat the Viet Cong” chant erupted during PE calisthenics at Roosevelt as a counter to the war protesters. Football coach Don Prior and basketball coach Al Comito, each of whom had taken Roughrider teams to state titles, were quoted as saying the chant was spontaneous, and neither of them saw any reason to stop it.

The Des Moines school board’s Dec. 21, 1965, meeting was greeted by protesters outside.

Inside, a two-hour debate was waged in an overflowed meeting room, where some in attendance threatened court action to seek reversal of the no-armband policy. Student leaders spoke in support of the popular Roosevelt coaches.

Ultimately, the board tabled formal action on the armband rule that had been hastily contrived a week earlier. The school board met again on Jan. 3, 1966, and a motion to reverse the policy and allow armbands to be worn was defeated 5-2.

The next day’s Register ran a large story about the board’s official prohibition of armbands.

Sometimes my father would say, “I don’t give a Tinker’s damn,” an idiomatic way not heard much anymore of dismissing whatever case I might have been pleading with him. That expression came to mind in anticipation of the upcoming event at Roosevelt.

The Tinkers gave a damn, and it cost them. They were threatened. Their property was vandalized. But they took a stand.

On Feb. 24, 1969, they were vindicated by a resounding 7-2 margin in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that has become a cornerstone of student rights. By then Mary Beth Tinker was a high school junior in St. Louis.

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“I remember celebrating with ice cream and soda because those important judges said that students did have rights,” Tinker said recently. “But I was sad, too, because the war continued.”

That year, 11,616 more American soldiers were killed in action in Vietnam. In July, we landed and walked on the moon. I started high school that fall at Roosevelt and on Moratorium Day, Oct. 15, remember a football teammate being sent back to the locker room to remove the armband he’d worn onto the practice field. I don’t recall that we did anything but count in unison while warming up with calisthenics.

There’s a tall, long-standing cottonwood tree next door to the house where Coach Prior’s widow still lives, right around the corner from the one where I grew up on Kingman Boulevard. Its time has come. The city has marked it for toppling. But some things from that era still stand.

"It can hardly be argued," Justice Abe Fortas wrote in that landmark majority opinion, "that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

“Being raised in the faith community had a huge impact, and still does,” Tinker said. “A favorite prayer of our family was the prayer of St. Francis: ‘Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.  Where there is hatred, let me sow love ... .’

"That is still my motivation. I am very gratified when I meet, traveling the country, so many students who are using their rights to make a more loving, just and peaceful world. Many students in Des Moines are doing just that, and using their rights to speak up about so many things.”

Last December, students at Central Campus in Des Moines staged a “die-in” there to protest police treatment of African-Americans in other cities. A month later, a “love rally” sprawled across the front lawn at East High to head off haters from Westboro Baptist Church who were in town opposing gay rights. In both cases, participants were commended by school administrators for their orderly, principled conduct.

Those students are descendants and heirs of the Tinkers and the others. No wonder Mary Beth’s locker at Harding was formally retired when she and John stopped there a couple years ago on one of their “Tinker Tours” in support of student rights.

What a difference a half-century and a few committed students can make.

Event marks anniversary

To mark the 50th anniversary of the events that led to the historic U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the Roosevelt High School Alumni Foundation is hosting the first in a series called “Teddy Talks” on Dec. 15 at 7 p.m. in the school auditorium.

Mary Beth and John Tinker will speak and take part in a panel discussion on students’ rights.

The famous case, which is still used by courts today to determine whether a school's disciplinary actions violate students' First Amendment rights, took place in December 1965. A small group of students, including the Tinkers, decided to wear black armbands to school in protest of the Vietnam War and in support of the Christmas truce called for by Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. The principal of the Des Moines school learned of the plan and created a policy that any student wearing an armband would be asked to remove it, with refusal to do so resulting in suspension.

On Dec. 16, 1965, Mary Beth Tinker and Christopher Eckhardt wore their armbands to school and were sent home. The following day, John Tinker did the same and was also sent home. Through their parents, the students sued the school district for violating their right of expression. The case was eventually argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1968, which decided 7-2 that the First Amendment applied to public schools, and administrators have to demonstrate constitutionally valid reasons for regulating speech in the classroom.

Admission to the event is free, and it is open to the public.    

Michael Wellman is a local author. His first book, "Far From the Trees," is a memoir of growing up in Des Moines during the 1960s. He also works as the staff writer in the Office of Communications and Public Affairs for Des Moines Public Schools and is a frequent contributor to the Register. Contact him at wellmanami54@gmail.com.