Schupf Lecture to Feature First Amendment Advocate

(Cazenovia, NY) The Tenth Annual Paul J. Schupf Lecture at Cazenovia College features Mary Beth Tinker, an important contributor to the civil rights movements of the 1960s, and one of the most important plaintiffs in the history of the United States Supreme Court. The lecture, on Monday, Oct. 26, at 3 p.m., in McDonald Lecture Hall (located in Eckel Hall) on Lincklaen St. in Cazenovia, is free and open to the public.

Mary Beth Tinker “was a 13-year-old junior high school student in December 1965 when she and a group of other students decided to wear black armbands to school to protest the war in Vietnam.”

The subsequent ‘freedom of speech’ court case resulted in a landmark decision. “Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the students and their families embarked on a four-year court battle that culminated in the landmark Supreme Court decision: Tinker v. Des Moines. On February 24, 1969, the Court ruled 7-2 that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

“Mary Beth Tinker continues to educate young people about their rights, speaking frequently to student groups across the country. She is also active in directing the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project at American University, which mobilizes law students to teach courses on constitutional law and juvenile justice at public schools. Tinker is a registered nurse, an active leader in her union, and holds masters degrees in public health and nursing. In 2006, as a tribute to Tinker’s devotion to the rights of young people, the ACLU National Board of Directors’ Youth Affairs Committee renamed its annual youth affairs award, the “Mary Beth Tinker Youth Involvement Award.”

Now in its tenth year, the annual lecture is named for Hamilton, N.Y., businessman Paul J. Schupf, who established Cazenovia’s Endowed Chair in History and Humanities, held by Cazenovia College Professor Dr. John Robert Greene. The Tinker v. Des Moines case is the subject of John W. Johnson’s “The Struggle for Student Rights: Tinker v. Des Moines and the 1960s,” which Dr. Greene is using in his American History survey course this semester.

”MaryBeth Tinker is an icon of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It is because of her brave actions, and those of the students who joined in her protest, that students now have rights as students, and we as Americans have the right to wear and display symbols of our individual beliefs. We are proud to have her on campus speaking to our community,” said Dr. Greene.

Schupf Lecture to Feature First Amendment Advocate

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