Desegregation of East Tennessee State College (University) 1956 and 1958

The five students are now bronze. In October 2025 the university unveiled The Path, five sculptures by Detroit artist Austen Brantley showing Eugene Caruthers, Elizabeth Watkins Crawford, Clarence McKinney, George L. Nichols and Mary Luellen Owens Wagner stepping forward together, on the plaza outside the Sherrod Library. The memorial fountain beside them is dedicated to the same five. Nichols helped choose the design and went on to become the first Black Army officer commissioned through the university's ROTC program.

What the plaque says

Desegregation of East Tennessee State College (University) 1956 and 1958 In January 1956, Eugene Caruthers, a teacher a Langston High School in Johnson City, became the first black student enrolled in East Tennessee State College's graduate program. In August 1958, Elizabeth Watkins Crawford, Clarence McKinney, George L. Nichols, and Mary Luellen Owens Wagner enrolled as the college's first black undergraduates. All were graduates of Langston High School. ETSC's undergraduate program was one of the state's first public institutions of higher education to desegregate, notably without incident.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Jonesborough Historic District — 5.8 mi
  Tennessee's oldest town, chartered in 1779, where Elihu Embree printed The Emancipator in 1820 and a hay wagon by the courthouse started the National Storytelling Festival in 1973.
• Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park — 6.9 mi
  A shoal on the Watauga River where the Transylvania Company bought about 20 million acres from the Cherokee in March 1775, Dragging Canoe refused, and the Overmountain Men mustered in 1780.
• Rocky Mount Museum — 7.3 mi
  William Cobb's log house at Piney Flats, where Governor William Blount ran the Southwest Territory from 1790 to 1792, now a living-history museum set in 1791 with a reconstructed cabin for the enslaved.
• Unicoi County Heritage Museum and the Erwin Rail Yard — 9.6 mi
  A museum in the old fish hatchery superintendent's house in Erwin, a Clinchfield railroad town where the elephant Mary was hanged in 1916 and Black residents were driven out in 1918.

More markers nearby

• Johnson City Home of Mountain Dew — 0.5 mi
• State Flag — 1.0 mi
• Colored Christian Church and Colored School — 1.1 mi
• Dr. Hezekiah B. Hankal — 1.1 mi