Opinion: If Kansas punishes schools for student walkouts, it will discourage free speech. Just as intended.

Young anti-war protestors march at in 1971 at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. (Photo from the Library of Congress)

By Max McCoy

Kansas Reflector

In February 1969, more than 400 students at two high schools in Kansas City, Kansas, walked out of their classes to protest the lack of Black history courses.

The students were from all-Black Sumner High School — the only high school in Kansas to be legally segregated — and from Wyandotte High, a school with a significant minority population, about two miles away.

Looking back now, it’s easy to see how these students contributed to the warp and weft that is the fabric of America. Like hundreds of thousands of others during the Civil Rights Movement and at other inflection points in our nation’s history, these students were driven by a thirst for justice and equality.

But they may not have felt the weight of history on their shoulders at the time. They were probably anxious and a bit afraid of bucking school discipline and asking that their voices be heard by those in power. It was an uncomfortable time in America. The Vietnam War was at its height, political assassinations had roiled the nation, and at 18 you could be drafted even though you weren’t old enough to vote. The Summer of Love had become the Season of Fear.

If you’ve been following the news lately, it’s easy to recognize some aspects of those 1960s student protests in the anti-ICE protests of today. When power seems indifferent to justice, one recourse is to take to the streets with signs and bullhorns in the hope of creating enough visual and aural noise to make a difference in the things that matter. You know, the things that are supposed to matter in a democracy — justice, equality, fairness and an end to foolish wars. It’s a lesson each generation must learn for itself, or else risk losing the freedom to speak and act.

That kind of freedom makes the would-be despots among us nervous.

Now let us to turn to the Kansas Senate, which may be free of would-be despots but has plenty of confirmed quislings among the GOP supermajority. On March 3, the Senate voted 21-18 in favor of an amendment to punish school districts for student walkouts. The amendment, tacked onto a 364-page appropriations bill, would require parental permission for students to participate in protests and would impose harsh financial penalties for school districts found to have improperly encouraged or facilitated a walkout. The fine would be equivalent of the district superintendent’s salary for each day of a walkout, which for larger districts could be more than $200,000.

The amendment was offered by Sen. Michael Murphy, a Reno County Republican who is prone to wearing an American flag lapel pin and a gaudy Stars and Stripes necktie.

By targeting school districts with potentially catastrophic fines, Murphy’s amendment would have a chilling effect on student speech by making administrators overly cautious. It also could encourage students to incorrectly believe that free speech is something that must be done on their own time, and never on school grounds.

“The bottom line is we understand we have a right to protest, a right to voice our opinion,” Murphy said. “But when we’re in high school, we’re there to learn.”

Some Senate Democrats, including Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, Lenexa, criticized the amendment because of its free speech implications. Others expressed concern that it would run afoul of the constitutional protections afforded students by Tinker, a 1969 Supreme Court decision. In 1965, Mary Beth Tinker was a 13-year-old junior high student at Des Moines when she wore a black armband to protest the Vietnam War. She and other students wearing similar armbands were suspended. Three of the students, including Mary Beth and her older brother, John, sued the school district for violating their First Amendment rights.

The Supreme Court ruled, 7-2, that such First Amendment expression was permitted as long as it wasn’t disruptive of school activities. Also, officials had to remain neutral when considering discipline.

“It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,” wrote Justice Abe Fortas for the majority.

We’ll return to Tinker presently.

Back to the Black student walkout in Kansas City in 1969.

Sumner High had been established in 1905 as an all-Black school by the state Legislature in an attempt to reduce racial tensions. It was later named for Charles Sumner, an abolitionist and U.S. senator from Massachusetts who had nearly been beaten to death in the Senate in 1856 over his fiery anti-slavery speech.

About 125 students walked from Sumner to Wyandotte High, where teachers peered from behind locked doors while a couple of uniformed police officers stood watch outside, according to a contemporary report in the Kansas City Star. The Sumner students had hoped to recruit Wyandotte pupils to accompany them to city hall, where they planned to present their grievances about the lack of recognition of Black history.

“I can sympathize with your gripes,” Tom Rhone, the Wyandotte vice principal told the student leaders, according to the Star. “You say you want an assembly in observance of Negro History Week. You say you want more Negro history taught in the schools. But how can you have Negro history taught when you are here disrupting classes now?”

Meanwhile, the Sumner principal was negotiating for three school buses to take the students to city hall. Wyandotte students eventually were allowed to join, and all 400 were taken downtown to Memorial Hall to present their demands to the mayor and other city officials, according to the Associated Press.

It was less than a year after racial tensions in Kansas City, Missouri, and urban areas across the country had boiled over following the assassination in Memphis of Martin Luther King Jr.

The Kansas City riot on April 9, 1968, had left six dead, hundreds arrested, and dozens of arson fires smoldering along Prospect Avenue. Incidents were also reported in the Country Club district and Olathe in Kansas. Both the Missouri and Kansas national guards were called up.

It is understandable how high tensions were at the time the Sumner students walked over to Wyandotte High. You can almost feel it in the Star’s account, which quotes an unnamed student shouting at the Black vice principal who cautioned against disrupting classes: “There are many Negroes around who look Black — you can have Black features but still be white on the inside.”

Despite such inflammatory language, the story notes the protest was peaceful. In the end, officials promised to offer the Black history courses and observances the students demanded.

The students may have felt a historical connection to King, the assassinated Civil Rights activist who advocated change through peaceful protest. In 1958, King had spoken to about 1,000 people in the Sumner school auditorium at the invitation of the local NAACP. As reported in the Kansas City Times, King cited the 1954 Supreme Court decision striking down segregation in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka as creating new opportunities — and responsibilities — for Black individuals.

The 1969 Sumner walkout is just one story from the fabric of the Civil Rights Movement, one thread from the garment that is American democracy, and it is remarkable for its civility and its quick resolution. But it is illustrative, perhaps, of the political and cultural awareness high school students are capable of, then and now.

And it is just that capability that may have scared Murphy, the flag-wearing state senator, into shoving the amendment into the appropriations bill. He probably didn’t come up with the idea for the amendment on his own, because other red states are seeking to punish schools, teachers and students for walkouts. But the amendment Murphy offered is notable for its clumsy language and the hefty financial penalty for schools judged complicit.

The amendment doesn’t specify the nature of the walkouts that would be deemed inappropriate, and Murphy didn’t mention ICE protests in his floor speech. He didn’t need to. The vast number of student walkouts now are driven by concern over current immigration policy.

But as objectionable as Murphy’s law would be, it may not conflict with Tinker, at least not in the letter of the law. The Supreme Court was concerned that teachers and students not surrender their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate. The amendment, however, is concerned with activities beyond that threshold.

The Supreme Court has ruled, in a case that is best recalled as “Bong Hits 4 Jesus,” that officials can control student speech, in some cases, during activities that take place away from school.

In 2002, a high school student at Juneau, Alaska, was suspended after unfurling a sign that proclaimed “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” at a school-sanctioned event for the Winter Olympics torch relay. The student, Joseph Frederick, said the banner was a joke, and felt he did not deserve the 10-day suspension for violating the school’s policy about illegal drug use.

In a 5-4 decision in 2007, the Supreme Court said school officials hadn’t violated Frederick’s free speech rights because administrators had a legitimate interest in enforcing policies in connection to drugs, even though the banner did not cause a disruption.

There is more to the “Bong Hits” ruling, of course, but the Supreme Court has been disturbingly open to officials limiting some student speech, even away from school grounds.

To become law, the amended bill would have to be passed by the House as well. Also, to be fair, nine Republicans voted against the amendment in the Senate.

Beyond the outrageous fine for school districts and the attempt to micromanage unexcused absences, what the amendment represents is an attempt to make secondary education a product that is to be approved by legislators and administered by school officials as if it were a block of government cheese. Every block of cheese is essentially the same as every other. Same color, same smell, same taste. But anybody who has ever been in a classroom knows that education is a dialogue between teachers and students. The flavor of that communication varies, according to the needs of the students.

The world is a wild and dangerous place, and we cannot expect students to don blinders when they enter the schoolhouse door. The school administrators who arranged for buses to city hall in 1969 were meeting the needs of their students. But that kind of action — facilitating a walkout — is exactly what Murphy’s amendment would punish.

We cannot think for our students, nor should we try.

Sumner High was eventually desegregated, in 1978, by federal court order.

It then became the Sumner Academy of Arts and Science, a magnet school for academically talented students that remains a part of the Kansas City, Kansas, public school system. When King spoke there 68 years ago, he was an hour late because he had missed a plane connection in Omaha. But his message of peaceful protest was right on time, for generations.

“Dr. King said Negroes must hate segregation and injustice,” the Kansas City Times reported, “but that this hate must not include the segregationists. He said segregation is doomed and only ‘the date of its burial is to be determined.’ ”

The challenge has always been to fight for justice without succumbing to hate, to thirst for knowledge without embracing falsehood, to act on behalf of others without patronizing or dehumanizing them.

Murphy is right about the purpose of high school being learning.

The authentic lessons that await are not found in the syllabi of even the best teachers, but in the hearts and minds of students who will someday assume the burden of leadership. If we are fortunate, they will be like the students from Sumner and Wyandotte highs all those decades ago, who instinctively knew that authentic history — and the promise of a future that was fuller in opportunity and justice — awaited.

Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

This article was republished with permission from the Kansas Reflector. The Kansas Reflector is a non-profit online news organization serving Kansas. For more information on the organization, go to its website at www.kansasreflector.com.