ACLU: Banning of “Free the Jena Six” T-Shirt in TN School Not Censorship
By Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 10/5/2007 7:58:00 AM
When a Smyrna High School official in Tennessee prohibited student Dani Super from wearing a "Free the Jena Six" T-shirt to school on September 20, the move may have seemed like a case of outright censorship.
But it wasn’t.
Rutherford County school administrators were following the constitutional criteria laid down by the U.S. Supreme Court in Tinker v. Des Moines, its definitive student free speech ruling of 1969, says Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the American Civil Rights Union (ACLU) of Tennessee.
Those criteria permit the censorship of student speech when—and only when—officials have reasonable cause to fear a "disruption" of educational activities.
That’s how Smyrna High School officials reached their decision to ban Super from wearing a black protest T-shirt during "National Day of Action.”
“The school—before this girl had shown up with this shirt—had already had to break up stuff happening in the hallways because of the Jena Six stuff going on,” says James Evans, a spokesman for the Rutherford County Schools, adding that racial slurs were exchanged.
The “Jena Six” refers to six black students in Jena, LA, who were initially charged attempted murder after the beating of a white student. The national day of action on September 20 included a march in Jena with national civil rights figures and local rallies protesting the charges against the six black students.
Prior to the alleged assault, the students found three nooses hanging from a tree on the school grounds. .
Smryna officials and Super’s mother Norma could not be reached for comment, but Evans released the text of his school system's dress code. It says: "When a student is attired in a manner which is likely to cause disruption or interference with the operation of the school, the principal shall administer appropriate punishment, which may include suspension and/or expulsion."
The ACLU’s Weinberg agrees with the action taken by Smryna High School officials. "We were very concerned, as you might imagine, because we certainly believe in the students' right to protest and express themselves; and we understand that the Tinker case allows for that freedom of expression,” she says, adding that other students in Nashville had also been prohibited from wearing the “Free the Jena Six” T-shirts to school.
Informed of the racial slurs heard in Smyrna High's hallways, Weinberg, who is not an attorney, said that as she understood Tinker, the administrators acted correctly to head off further disruption at the school, which is 76 percent white and 12 percent black.
The Supreme Court's 1969 Tinker case was decided after two students wore armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War.
