Clinton High School

A lawsuit came first. In 1950 Black families sued because Anderson County offered their children no high school, and in 1952 Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund sat with Z. Alexander Looby, Avon Williams and Carl Cowan at the hearing; Judge Robert Taylor ruled against them. After Brown reversed the law, Taylor ordered desegregation. John Kasper and then Asa Carter drew crowds estimated at 1,500, and Taylor jailed Kasper for contempt. Governor Frank Clement sent about 600 National Guardsmen, the first such use in the civil rights movement.

What the plaque says

Clinton High School Following a court order by Federal District Judge Robert L. Taylor, on August 27, 1956, 12 black students, now known as "The Clinton 12", enrolled in Clinton High School without incident, making it one of the first desegregated public high schools in the South. On Labor Day weekend segregationists led protests and riots, prompting Governor Frank G. Clement to send 600 National Guardsmen to Clinton. Two years later, on October 5, 1958, three bombs exploded at the school, leaving it in ruins. Despite this act, Clinton and Anderson County were able to complete school desegregation without further incident.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Green McAdoo Cultural Center — 0.3 mi
  The 1935 school in Clinton that sent twelve Black students down Foley Hill to desegregate Clinton High School in August 1956, now a museum with bronze statues of the Clinton 12.
• Museum of Appalachia — 6.7 mi
  John Rice Irwin's 65-acre collection of moved log cabins and mountain objects north of Knoxville, opened in 1969, with a cabin believed to be Mark Twain's father's.
• Norris Dam and Norris Dam State Park — 8.8 mi
  TVA's first dam, finished in 1936 on the Clinch River, and the state park beside it with the 1798 Rice Grist Mill, built for a valley whose families were moved out.
• American Museum of Science and Energy — 9.0 mi
  The Oak Ridge museum that opened in 1949, when the Manhattan Project city's gates opened, in a town whose Black workers were housed in the Gamble Valley hutments.

More markers nearby

• The Rev. Paul W. Turner — steps away
• The Market Place of Pearls — 0.2 mi
• First Integrated Public Schools in the Southeast — 2.5 mi
• David Hall Cabin — 4.8 mi