Tag: Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Convocation

Cain and Upton will also be awarded Berea College President’s Medallion

Bobby Cain and Gail Epps Upton were among a group of 12 black teenagers who in the fall of 1956 integrated the first public high school in the South, in Clinton, Tennessee, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown vs. Board of Education that effectively ended legal racial segregation in the nation’s public schools. Cain and Upton will talk about the experience in conjunction with the showing of “The Clinton 12,” an award-winning documentary produced in 2007 about this dramatic and historic event that remained untold for 50 years. In 1957, Bobby Cain became the first African American male to graduate from an integrated public high school in the South, and a year later, Upton became the first female graduate of an integrated high school in Tennessee. In addition to their reflections on a segregated past, the two will also share their hopes for a reconciled future. Continue reading Story of “The Clinton 12,” black teens who were first to integrate a public school in the South in 1956, told by members Bobby Cain and Gail Epps Upton and in award-winning documentary, at Berea College Jan. 18 →