Biography of Mary Beth Tinker

Mary Beth Tinker

Mary Beth Tinker was born in 1952 and grew up in Iowa, where her father was a Methodist minister. Her parents believed that religious ideals should be put into action and the whole family became involved in the civil rights movement in the 1960's. One of Mary Beth's early memories is of her parents going to Ruhlville, Mississippi in 1964 as part of a group of ministers helping to bring attention to the work of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Fannie Lou Hamer.

By 1965, about 170,000 U.S. soldiers were stationed in Vietnam. Graphic footage of the war was carried into households everyday in this first "televised" war. As a 13-year-old student in eighth grade, Mary Beth was strongly affected by news of the war. She and her brothers and sister, along with other students in Des Moines, decided to wear black armbands to school to mourn the dead on both sides of the Vietnam war. The armbands were also in support of a Christmas truce called by Senator Bobby Kennedy that year.

John Tinker, Mary Beth Tinker, and Christopher Eckhardt

The Des Moines school board tried to block the students from wearing the armbands, and most of the students who wore them were suspended. The case eventually went to the Supreme Court, where a landmark decision in favor of the students was made in 1969. The court ruled that students in public schools do have First Amendment rights. Justice Abe Fortas wrote in the majority opinion that students and teachers do not "shed their constitutional rights...at the schoolhouse gate."

Mary Beth Tinker moved to St. Louis in 1968 and graduated from University City High School in 1970. She works as a nurse practitioner and has remained involved in advocating for youth, particularly in the areas of education and health.

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