The Rev. Paul W. Turner

Turner did not walk alone. On December 4, 1956, the day of Clinton's municipal elections, he, Sidney Davis and Leo Burnett met the Black students at Green McAdoo School and escorted them down Foley Hill, after the students' parents had decided they could no longer send them to the high school. Historians describe the three white men as a human shield. Segregationists beat Turner on his way back. Bobby Cain, the only Black senior, graduated in May 1957, with a student patrol organized by the principal to protect him at the ceremony.

What the plaque says

The Rev. Paul W. Turner 1923-1980 Upset by segregationists who intimidated 12 African American pupils at Clinton High School who refused to return to classes, the Reverend Paul Turner, pastor of Clinton's First Baptist Church, met with the pupils on December 4. 1956, when he and two other men from Clinton, escorted six African American students to Clinton High School. Segregationists beat Turner as he walked away. In August, Clinton became the first Tennessee state-funded public school to desegregate. Rev. Turner's courageous walk enabled Bobby Cain, one of the "Clinton 12", to become the first African American to graduate from Clinton High School on May 17, 1957.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Green McAdoo Cultural Center — 0.4 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 — 6.6 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 — 9.1 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

• Clinton High School — steps away
• The Market Place of Pearls — steps away
• First Integrated Public Schools in the Southeast — 2.6 mi
• David Hall Cabin — 4.9 mi