Thirteen-year-old Mary Beth Tinker knew what awaited her when she saw her math teacher standing outside the classroom, a pink slip in his hand. Not two days before on Dec. 14, 1965, the Des Moines School District principals adopted a policy to suspend all students wearing armbands, after hearing about a plan by students to wear black armbands with peace symbols in support of a Christmas truce during the Vietnam War.

“(The girl’s adviser) said, ‘Mary Beth, I’m really surprised. I know you usually aren’t like this. You should take that armband off right now,'” Tinker recounted to the crowd inside The Robert H. Jackson Center on Monday. “So, in a great stand of courage and conviction, I took that armband and took it off. And I gave it to her. … I had that much courage, and it ran out.”

That one spark of courage, though, was all that was needed to start a blaze which would eventually define the constitutional rights of students in U.S. public schools in the 1969 United States Supreme Court case, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District. Greg Peterson, a partner at Phillips Lytle LLP, interviewed Tinker in an event hosted by the Chautauqua Region Community Foundation about her role in becoming an important figure in American history for freedom of speech.

Tinker admitted to Peterson at the beginning of the interview she was surprised when she was included in the book “101 Changemakers: Rebels and Radicals Who Changed U.S. History” along with Rosa Parks, Mark Twain, Albert Einstein and Martin Luther King Jr.

“I can’t believe it. It’s just crazy. I mean I was a very, very ordinary child, and I had been raised in a church – my father was a Methodist minister. We were raised to believe in peace and brotherhood and all of those wonderful Christian messages,” she said. “I always thought that was what you were supposed to do. I didn’t think I was like Rosa Parks – I was way shyer than she was. I was very shy as a child actually.”

Despite Tinker’s feelings of being a run-of-the-mill child, she spoke of an upbringing which would allow her to make that one simple stand at age 13 to define student rights for generations to come.

Her parents were both heavily involved in the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s – her father felt segregation wasn’t right, and their family got kicked out of two communities for standing up for that belief. Tinker learned from a young age adhering to what was right didn’t always make you popular and had consequences.

Soon after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, enacted on Aug. 10, 1964, when the U.S.S. Maddox, a U.S. destroyer, allegedly came under fire from North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats from the 135th Torpedo Squadron, the Vietnam War escalated.

“Now we had a war on TV all the time. The bombing. The napalm. Children running from their huts on fire – it looked like the whole world was on fire,” she said. By this time for Tinker it was around Christmas and she was being taught Quaker ideals – love, forgiveness and brotherhood. “… I feel like a lot of kids feel now too. It’s very bad. It’s discouraging. It’s disheartening. It’s scary. You don’t have faith in the adults and how they are handling things.”

Soon she heard about the Christmas truce called forth by New York Senator Robert Kennedy in December 1965. Among other students across the country, Tinker, her siblings John, Hope and Paul, and their friend, Christopher Eckhardt decided to each wear a black armband to support the Christmas truce. John and Mary Beth Tinker, and Eckhardt ended up suspended. Even more shocking was the hate which came toward the Tinker family because of it.

“We were really shocked when people started threatening to bomb our house, threw red paint at our house, called us communists and sent us hate mail,” Tinker said. “… But it was kind of strange – we had seen all the violence in the south, and heard about what these people in the south have been putting up with – the African Americans. So, I think we kind also felt, well at least they really aren’t bombing our house. Just threatening.”

A suit was not filed until the Iowa Civil Liberties Union approached the family and the American Civil Liberties Union agreed to help with the lawsuit. The U.S. District Court upheld the decision by the Des Moines School Board, and it failed to get overturned in the U.S. Court of Appeals. However, much to Tinker’s admitted surprise, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the students.

Since finding about how much she impacted American student rights – ironically while reading through a nursing textbook as she studied to become a clinical nurse – Tinker embraced her role as a historical figure as a gift. In fall 2013, she kicked off touring the country in her “Tinker Tour” to promote youth voices, free speech and a free press.

For more information about the Tinker Tour, visit tinkertourusa.org.