“Tinker Tour” campaigners Mary Beth Tinker and Frank LaMonte, accompanied by civil rights activist Karen Korematsu, addressed civil and constitutional rights in a school-wide assembly today.

Karen Korematsu spoke of her father’s case Fred Korematsu and his appeal to the Supreme Court after refusing to report to an internment camp.

“This could be you guys living behind barbed wire in a prison when you’ve done nothing wrong,” she said. “We have to fight for our Civil Rights. [My father] thought he had civil rights, and then the government says no you don’t. Is that right?”

Korematsu described her father’s story and how she learned about the case – through a classmate. The conviction was later overturned, and Fred Korematsu was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

“Stand up for what is right, and when you see something wrong, don’t be afraid to speak up,” she said in closing her presentation.

Frank LoMonte, Executive Director of the Student Press Law Center (SPLC), joined Tinker in the Tinker Tour presentation. His words argued that students should not lose their first amendment rights just because they are children.

“History isn’t always made by giants, sometimes it’s made by 13 year-olds,” he said. “Because small moments add up to amazing breakthroughs in history, we should treat everyone around us like a hero.”

Tinker spoke about the first amendment in its relation to students, and how students should speak up for what they believe in.

“Standing up for what is right is something that ordinary people do,” she said. “So many of them have been young people and still are today. You look at the world and say we can do better.”

As a thirteen year old, Tinker, her older brother, and a friend were suspended from school for wearing a black armband protesting the Vietnam War. Her case eventually escalated to the US Supreme Court, which ruled that “[neither] students [nor] teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

She also gave examples of teenage girls such as Claudette Colvin, a 15 year old African American who refused to leave her seat on a bus even before Rosa Parks and Sadako Sasaki, who attempted to fold one thousand cranes after becoming sick due to the bombing of Hiroshima, who had tried to change the world

Tinker also explained how students need to have courage to stand up for what they believe.

“When you’re standing up for something to believe in it’s not always popular, people threatened to bomb our house,” she said. “[Our parents] stood by us we were lucky for them.”

After the presentations, the speakers participated in a question and answer session.

Click here for the full presentation: http://youtu.be/fm-x6DsAaE4