That freedom stems from the ruling in a 1969 case in which a group of students wore black armbands to school in order to protest U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Their Des Moines high school ...

In the 1960s and 1970s, high school student-led activism successfully reshaped school districts across the country.

The dispute was the latest in a line of cases that began with Tinker v. Des Moines, the Vietnam-era case of a high school in Des Moines, Iowa, that suspended armband-wearing students. In a ...

The first blow came with Tinker v. Des Moines (1969). The Court declared that only a student’s speech or behavior that materially and substantially disrupts school activities may be controlled.