MAY 17

ABOVE: Bobby Cain passes through a group of students at Clinton High School in Tennessee.

BOBBY CAIN was “the victim of some of the most angry racial vituperation in recent American history,” a Collier’s reporter wrote in a 1956 story about the 12 African American students who integrated a school in Clinton, Tennessee. The eldest of the Clinton 12, Cain survived a school year scarred by vicious slurs, hate-mongering, and physical violence to become the first black graduate of a formerly all-white public school in the South on May 17, 1957.

Even graduation day simmered with danger: Fearing for Cain’s life, the principal assigned a group of football players to look out for the seventeen year old, who was nonetheless struck in the face by an unknown aggressor when changing out of his cap and gown.

Three anti-integration protesters.

The troubles for Cain and the other 11 African-American students attempting to integrate Clinton High began after a peaceful first day of school. In the middle of that first week a pair of white supremacists stirred up an angry anti-integration mob. Arriving at school one morning, the black students saw racially insulting signs carried by screaming protesters. “Let me tell you, it definitely wasn’t a good time with all those people calling us the n-word,” Alfred Williams recalled 50 years later.

Cain was ready to call it quits but his mother told him, “You’ve got to take it.”
His make-or-break moment came one day when he found himself and another black student followed off-campus at lunchtime by 200 or so white antagonists. Pushed off a sidewalk into a street, Cain pulled out his pocketknife and confronted the mob. “After that day, I found a little courage of my own,” he told George McMillan of Collier’s. “That night I determined to stick it out for Bobby Cain, and not for anybody else.”

Cain later graduated from Tennessee State University and worked for many years for the State of Tennessee Department of Human Services. In October of 1957, Clinton High School was bombed and severely damaged by white supremacists. It was rebuilt and reopened in 1960.

ON THIS DAY: August 27

ON THIS DATE IN TEENAGE HISTORY (1956), the Clinton Twelve integrated a formerly all-white high school in east Tennessee. A pair of white supremacists stirred up an angry anti-integration mob during the first week of school at Clinton High, making the mornings difficult for the 12 African American students. “Let me tell you, it definitely wasn’t a good time with all those people calling us the n-word,” remembered Alfred Williams 50 years later. In May of 1957, Clinton 12 member Bobby Cain became the first African American to graduate from a formerly all-white public school in the South.