The school was built in 1935 on School Street in Clinton for the town's Black children, designed by the Knoxville architect Frank O. Barber. In 1947 and 1948 it was enlarged and named for Green L. McAdoo, a Black Army veteran who served in the 24th Infantry in the West, came home to Clinton in 1896 and worked 25 years as custodian of the Anderson County courthouse. It stayed an all-Black school until 1965.
In August 1950 four Black young people were turned away from Clinton High School. That December a suit, McSwain v. County Board of Education, was filed, with Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP among the attorneys. Judge Robert L. Taylor ruled for the school board in 1952, the Sixth Circuit sent the case back after Brown v. Board of Education, and in January 1956 Taylor ordered desegregation by fall. On August 26 twelve students walked down Foley Hill from this school to Clinton High, the first state-supported high school in Tennessee to desegregate.
White resistance followed. John Kasper of the Seaboard White Citizens Council drew crowds of as many as 1,500 and was jailed for contempt, and a Labor Day weekend riot brought about 600 National Guardsmen into town. On December 4 a mob beat the white Baptist pastor Paul Turner for walking the students to school. Bobby Cain graduated in May 1957, and in October 1958 a bomb destroyed much of the high school. Twelve bronze statues of the students stand outside, and the museum opened in 2006.
The closest stops worth working into your route
Roadside plaques and monuments within a short detour