Bobby Cain Clinton 12 integration schools.

Bobby Cain, a member of the Clinton 12 who helped integrate Tennessee high schools in 1956, has died

Bobby Cain, who helped integrate one of the first high schools in the South in 1956 as one of the Clinton 12, has died in Nashville. He was 85. Cain was a senior when he entered the formerly all-white Clinton High School in Tennessee under court order. He had previously attended a Black high school about 20 miles away in Knoxville and was not happy about leaving his friends to spend his senior year at a new school in a hostile environment. Despite threats and violence, he stuck it out. In 1957 Cain became the first Black student in Tennessee to graduate from a state-run integrated school.

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