Civil Rights / Cold War
Read what the 1956 Clinton black students thought about school desegregation.
McSwann v. Anderson County Board of Education lawsuit
Alvah McSwain: (Black parents had to pay tuition before 1951 for their kids to go to the Knoxville school.) The babies of the family were triplets. My mother thought about that. By the time they got to the age to go to school, there would have been five children in school at one time. And my mother and father…wouldn’t be able to pay for five. So she (mother) filed the lawsuit against Anderson County for us to go to Clinton.
Feelings about going to Clinton
Regina Turner: I just wanted to go back to Austin High School (in Knoxville) with my friends.
William Latham: I didn’t want to go really, but they said, “it’s a chance for you, take it.” So I did.
JoAnn Crozier: It was scary (going to Clinton High School for the first time). We didn’t know how we would be treated.
Treatment at Clinton
Gail Ann Epps: All the students at Clinton High were not into the name calling, etc. Inside the classroom wasn’t so bad. Once you got out of class and into the halls it was a different story. It would be name calling, pulling my ponytail and stepping on my heels that sometimes would bleed. One day I was almost pushed out a window.
Minnie Ann Dickie: It was not easy being some place that you were not welcome. We had to endure constant name calling, and some kids throwing spit balls at us every day.
Maurice Soles: (The black Clinton students would meet and walk to school together.) The worst part was when we crossed the railroad tracks…There were people on both sides (of the road) screaming and shouting at us.
JoAnn Crozier: (On walking to school) The minute we were in sight, the name calling started. I could just see the hate in their hearts.
On the violence at Clinton
Alvah McSwain: They threw sticks of dynamite out in our neighborhood. Once it blew out the front windows of our home.
Minnie Ann Dickie: They sent word to all women and children for them to go to Mt. Sinai Baptist Church one night (as a safety precaution). The men stayed up all night guarding.
JoAnn Crozier: The Ku Klux Klan drove through the black neighborhood. That night my father was jailed, because he stood in our front yard with a gun in his hand.
Robert Thacker: We had to go out and buy guns.
Bobby Cain: (Talking about the night the Tennessee Highway Patrol was ordered into Clinton) We could hear the whooping and hollering at the town square (where the mob was). All of sudden I saw one red light, then another, and then large numbers of them. That’s one of the most beautiful sights I do remember—seeing those highway patrol cars coming into the city.
Civil Rights / Cold War >> Civil Rights Movement >> Winds of Change >> Clinton High School
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