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Follow Your Heart
Clinton 12
CLINTON, TENNESSEE
It was 1956 when 12 courageous Black students integrated an all-white high school in the small east Tennessee town of Clinton, making history as the first desegregated public high school in the South. Before the monumental event, Black students weren’t allowed to attend school in the county and had to travel over 40 miles to Knoxville. They’d registered successfully to enroll in the school, but their actual journey inside the walls of Clinton High School didn’t come as quickly, and just a few days later, things worsened.
Trace the Paths They Walked
From the Emmett Till story that began at Bryant’s Grocery to the “Black Power” speech made by Stokely Carmichael at Broad Street Park, Greenwood witnessed firsthand a slow, but certain shift in the winds of justice. It was a gathering spirit of hope, promise and determination that awakened the nation and mobilized the American Civil Rights Movement
We welcome group tours and invite you to learn more about our ties to this monumental movement.
Find your beat from the Heart of the Delta: Greenwood, Mississippi.
John Kasper, a known Ku Klux Klan member, caught wind of the integration news and came to town and went door-to-door to stir up outrage in the Clinton white community. Just days after, the Clinton 12 stood atop the hill, prayed for their safety and made their way to the front doors.
Joann Boyce, a then-junior, recalls that morning: “We were on pins and needles. How are we going to be accepted when we go down the hill? How will we be accepted when we go inside the school?
“The pledge we made was that we’re going to walk down the hill. We’re going to walk with our heads held high, and we are going to show bravery, and that’s exactly what we did.”
In the face of their bravery, the Clinton 12 were met with progressively worse aggression from white adult protestors, who harassed and assaulted them outside of school and students who taunted them inside the school. But they kept going in pursuit of equal education.
The Clinton 12 integration is often overlooked throughout similar historical events like Arkansas’ Little Rock Nine, which happened a year later. Still, Clinton is crucial to Tennessee and U.S. history, too.
Travelers can visit the Green McAdoo Cultural Center in Clinton, where 12 life-size bronze statues commemorate the Clinton 12. Inside the center is a museum full of exhibitions that re-create what it would have been like to attend high school during that period. There are replica classrooms, an exhibit on the school’s bombing and a documentary from the civil rights era.
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