The74:
Mary Beth Tinker was just 13 years old when she wore a black armband to school and changed America.
As the Vietnam War grew increasingly controversial in the late 1960s, she and several other students from Des Moines, Iowa, wore armbands to class in a plea for peace despite a new school policy that sought to stifle their activism. Suspended for disobeying school orders, her silent protest eventually found its way before the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices released a landmark 1969 opinion protecting the First Amendment rights of students in public schools.