Alliance for Social Justice

On Thursday, November 19, Mary Beth Tinker will speak to an audience of law school students and faculty as well as community members in the Barbieri Courtroom. Her speech will address themes concerning student free speech and social justice. Ms. Tinker was a 13-year-old plaintiff in the seminal case of Tinker v. Des Moines (1969) after she and a group of students were suspended for wearing black armbands to school in protest of the war in Vietnam. She and four other students were told they could not return to school until they agreed to remove their armbands. A four-year legal battle culminated in a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

In the forty years since the Supreme Court protected Ms. Tinker’s symbolic speech, she has become a strong advocate for student free speech. She continues to educate young people by speaking to student groups across the county. Ms. Tinker is the former director of the Marshal-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project at American University, which mobilizes law students to teach courses on constitutional law and juvenile justice at public schools. In 2006, the ACLU National Board of Directors renamed its youth affairs award the “Mary Beth Tinker Youth Involvement Award.”

As part of her visit to Spokane, Gonzaga Law School is sponsoring her visit to local area high school students at Lewis and Clark High School and Rogers High School. Her visit to the Spokane community is made possible by a coalition of sponsoring organizations including the Gonzaga Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (via a generous donation from the ACLU of Washington), the William O. Douglas Committee, the Thomas More Program, and the Alliance for Social Justice. Her discussion will take place at 5:00pm on November 19 in the Barbieri Courtroom and is open to the public. [EDITED: Please note time change from 4:00pm to 5:00pm]