Lindsay Earls was a sophomore at Tecumseh High School, a member of the debate team and a performer in the choir, when a mandatory drug-testing policy was instituted for anyone involved in extracurricular activities.

With the help of the ACLU, Lindsay set out to fight the order as an invasion of her privacy. She and her family faced a town full of resistance, and nine Supreme Court justices who remain elusive to most Americans. Watch her story here.


Listen to Ellery Schempp discuss his landmark 1963 Supreme Court case against his school for holding mandatory daily Bible readings.


Christopher Pyle, professor of constitutional law at Mt. Holyoke College, tells about his experinece blowing the whistle on the US Army's illegal practice of spying on anti-war and civil rights protestors during the Vietnam War. Click here to hear his story.

This is the story of Walter Kondo, one of at least 112,000 Japanese Americans taken from their homes and sent to remote internment camps during World War II. Most of these individuals lost their property and spent two or more years incarcerated behind walls and barbed wire simply for being of Japanese descent.


Click on an image to listen to Civil Rights Movement Veterans


Gene Young

Cleveland Sellers

Johnnie Carr

Hollis Watkins

Students Organize to Push through Civil Rights Legislation
by James Resnick

If we don't tackle the issue of homophobia in schools, then it will be that much harder to educate tomorrow's adults compared to today's students ...


I Could Not Sit By and Watch This Happening
by Mary Beth Tinker (pictured above)
As I learned more about the Vietnam War, I did not think that it was right to fight in another country's civil war with the aim of controlling that country ...

Hooters and Cocks in Ames, Iowa
by Nan Stein
For over a year, some boys in the middle school in Ames had worn "Hooters" t-shirts to school.  They featured owl eyes peering out from the letter "O," that fell strategically around the nipple area, with this slogan, "More than a mouthful," sometimes on the back, sometimes on front of the t-shirt ...

The Black Armband Story
by John Tinker (pictured above)
We decided to wear the armbands to school even though the school authorities had prohibited us from wearing them. Although our wearing of the armbands did not lead to any violent or disruptive situations at school, we were suspended anyway.

Student Who Stands Up For Beliefs Ends Up in Jail
by Yvonne Nicoletti
It was a day before my eighteenth birthday ... I was looking forward to getting a tattoo, going out with my friends, and performing in the school's talent show that weekend. I thought about all these things as I sat locked in a tiny jail cell that evening ...

The Day I Wore A Black Armband to school
by Christopher Eckhardt
In November 1965, I was one of the 60 people who made the trip from Iowa to Washington DC to protest – along with 20,000 other Americans – the war in Vietnam . It took us a further eight years to bring that war to an end ...