(1) The formerly segregated all-black Green McAdoo School and all-white Clinton High School, both located in Clinton, Tennessee, played a vital role in the school desegregation crisis that preceded and followed the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
(2) Green McAdoo School opened as the Clinton Colored School in 1935 and was renamed in 1947 to honor Green McAdoo, a buffalo soldier who once owned the land upon which it was built.
(3) In 1950, the parents of 5 Clinton, Tennessee, children filed a lawsuit to gain entrance into Clinton High School. At the time, Tennessee and Anderson County law required the segregation of secondary schools. The case became known as McSwain v. Anderson County.
(4) The case was dismissed by the Federal District Court under the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine; the case was appealed by the parents, but suspended pending a Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.
(5) Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education which abolished the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine, the Federal District Court in Tennessee issued an order on January 4, 1956, requiring desegregation of Anderson County schools no later than the fall term, 1956.
(6) On August 25, 1956, 12 students from Green McAdoo School met at the school before walking together to the all-white Clinton High School to become the first African-American students to effect the integration of a southern, state operated school.
(7) On September 1, 1956, Clinton, Tennessee became the first southern town to be occupied by National Guard troops in an effort to quell violence sparked by protestors from all over the United States who were opposed to school integration.
(8) In 1957, Bobby Cain, a former Green McAdoo student, became the first African-American to earn a diploma from an integrated school following the Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
(9) In 1958, the newly integrated Clinton High School was destroyed by dynamite that most assumed was placed by segregationists. The community had the students back in school in four days at an abandoned elementary school in neighboring Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Anderson County rebuilt Clinton High School and it and Green McAdoo School are the only remaining schools associated with the Clinton desegregation crisis.