A Most Tolerant Little Town: The Explosive Beginning of School Desegregation

Historian Martin (Hot, Hot Chicken) paints a compassionate and nuanced portrait of the Black community of Freedman’s Hill in Clinton, Tenn., and its struggles to achieve equality following the passage of Brown v. Board of Education. In August 1956, “twelve Black students braved mobs and beatings” to attend Clinton High after the NAACP won a six-year court battle to desegregate the school. Previously, Martin explains, the school board had “systematically underfunded Black education,” expecting Freedman’s Hill Black high school students to travel 25 miles away to attend “failing” LaFollette Colored High. Clinton High principal D.J. Brittain Jr. hoped that keeping the races apart during after-school activities would satisfy white families, but a segregationist group called for his resignation, leading to protests and violence. In October, someone planted 100 sticks of dynamite in Clinton High and blew it up. Though the FBI suspected the Ku Kux Klan for this and subsequent arsons in town, no arrests were made. Telling the story in flashbacks and vignettes, Martin, who collected oral histories for 18 years, strikes an expert balance between the big picture and intimate profiles of the families involved. The result is a vivid snapshot of the civil rights–era South. (June)