A week of events in the Des Moines Public Schools is planned for December 14th to 18th to commemorate the 50th anniversary of events leading to the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Tinker v Des Moines Independent Community School District in 1969.

Events in Des Moines will be held at Roosevelt High School, North High School, Lincoln High School, Harding Middle School, and five elementary schools including Oak Park, Madison, Findley, Moulton, and Cattell.

On December 16 and 17, 1965, five students in Des Moines were suspended for wearing black armbands to school to mourn the dead of the Vietnam War and to support a Christmas truce called for by Senator Robert Kennedy.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa challenged the students’ suspensions in court, where they eventually won in 1969. In the famous ruling, which affirmed students’ First Amendment rights, the Supreme Court said that neither teachers or students “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

 

Read the full report here: For The Record.

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