I think the Saturday before the Monday that school started, this John Kasper showed up in town, and I'm sure many have heard this in the See It Now program, but the first morning, there were five people, maybe, carrying pickets, people that John Kasper had recruited or had been successful in recruiting over the weekend. Those people were gone in five minutes, because they were embarrassed, [this was] sort of an unnatural activity, carrying pickets here in a small town like this. Nevertheless, there was a big press contingent here that morning, so, by the time the afternoon newspapers came out or the evening news came on, it was all about this great protest in Clinton, Tennessee, against desegregation.

Well hell, the great protest was five people carrying pickets for five minutes, people who then left. But, because of all that press attention that afternoon that misrepresented, in my opinion, what happened, the next morning there were 15 people carrying pickets. They stayed a little bit longer, but they left pretty soon, and the next day 50 [people cam], and, by Wednesday or Thursday, there were 500 here. Literally, that's how it went those first four days. By Wednesday or Thursday, this town was inundated with cars from Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, and North Carolina going up and down the streets and generally raising Cain.

And, I think Clinton had a two-man police force at that time; it was totally incapable of handling this sudden inflow. And, you have to remember another thing totally unrelated to desegregation. In 1956, Interstate 75 from Chicago to Detroit and through Cincinnati, Lexington, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Atlanta, and Miami was Main Street right out here in Clinton. That was the North-South route. So, here's the main North-South route going through the middle of town, and here's hundreds of cars from out of State that are milling around and generally causing trouble. So, by Thursday or Friday evening, we had a real mess on our hands.

School continued to go on inside the school without incident, but in the morning when you went to school, they [protestors] were screaming at you and hollering at you and calling names at you and spitting on you and so forth. So many of the parents kept their kids out of school ... not protesting desegregation, but they didn't want to expose their children to the mob, and, by this time, it was a mob. Simultaneously, of course, the town fathers realized that this two- or three-man police force needed some help. And, think about this in this day and time. They organized a home guard, which [consisted of] your fathers and just people that lived in town who loved their town. They armed themselves, and some of them were posted at the homes of the mayor and Mr. Brittain and other people who had been threatened. The rest were out trying to keep the traffic moving.

And, you know, every night, the mob would have a big rabble-rousing speech session in the courthouse square. Back then, the courthouse was much smaller, and there was a big yard with trees around it. Yes, a beautiful, really pretty little building, but all around there was a big, great expanse of yard with these huge oak and maple trees; it was very lovely. But at any rate, that's where they [protestors] were congregating to listen to these speeches. I don't think they actually burned a cross there in the yard, but, of course, crosses were burned at other places around town. And so, on Friday, I remember we had a big football game, and we'd heard a rumor that they were going to come down and take over the football field at half time and burn a cross and have a rally. Of course, they didn't do it, but they were really rampaging up here in the middle of town.

The football game was the big rivalry game [with] Lake City. I don't think any of the mob was at that football game. I remember, 'cause we, the football team, were hoping they would come down there. I mean we were going to have a little game ourselves. The team was really upset about the mob taking over our school, basically. You know, the outside of the school was primarily surrounded with this screaming crowd of protestors, and, obviously, it's a disruption, and we could just see our senior year flying away, and we weren't going to let that happen. At any rate, the Friday night game took place, and I don't think any of those protestors were down there. It was a full stadium, of course, with that big rivalry game.

So, nothing much happened that Friday night, but the next night, Saturday night, was when the home guard, and I'm sure many people have seen those pictures of just everyday citizens, your fathers and my father, in a line, walking across that courthouse square. And, Judge Lewellen was up in the courthouse belfry covering them. Throughout this period, they [city leaders] had stayed in constant contact with the governor's office, and, finally, that Saturday night, it was obvious that things were out of hand. That's when first the highway patrol came in. About 50 to 100 cars came across the bridge, down the middle of town here, and took over the town.

I wasn't there. We had a ballgame Friday night, and I had a date Saturday night. I can remember going through town, it was still daylight, and there used to be a drive-in theatre at the far end of Clinton. So, we went and saw a movie, and, by the time we came back, the highway patrol was everywhere, and everything was under control. I've heard a lot about it, though. The head of the highway patrol, it's funny, his name was Greg O'Rear, and he was about six foot eight inches tall ... of course, he was in that lead car, the siren blazing coming over the bridge with about 100 cars with the lights all on and the horns going, and he was in that lead car. They say he pulled in front of Hoskins there, and he opened that door and, of course, he had to get out in pieces because he was so tall. So, he finally gets out, and he stood up, all six foot eight inches of him, and he had a big ole' double-barreled shotgun, and he slings it over his shoulder. He's looking down on all this mob he's so tall, and he said, "Alright boys it's all over." And, it was.

By the next day, the National Guard was here. So, there was no question about the restoration of law and order by that point in time. So, everything was calm for about two or three more months. I do remember the football team had to move back upstairs to the gym, because the National Guard had taken over our field house as a barracks. We had tanks on the street corners, and there couldn't be a group of more than three congregating and so forth.

But I think it was in the November time frame [that] the local authorities made a big mistake: they decided to bring Kasper back into town and try him on some misdemeanor charges, [like] inciting to riot. Of course, when Kasper came back into town, he got smart. Before, the press had sort of misrepresented the protest. But then, when the protest got out of hand, the press started realizing and presenting the picture that here were these outsiders imposing mob rule or trying to impose mob rule on a town and disrupting all these wonderful white students that wanted to obey the law.

So, Kasper realized he had something of a PR problem here. So, when he came back in November for that misdemeanor charge, he stuck around and organized the Junior White Citizens Council. He got about eight or nine kids from inside the school to start causing trouble inside the school. Well, we got wind of it real quickly, and the teachers and the principal Mr. Brittain got together the football team, and we had it set up where there were two or three of us at every hallway intersection all over the school. So, the second day, that was all under control, but again the press made a big deal out of "TROUBLE INSIDE CLINTON HIGH SCHOOL." So again, here's this mob, in the early December time frame. And, the day before Christmas break, well it wasn't the day before Christmas break, in early December there was the municipal elections, and the White Citizens Council had run a candidate for mayor. That was the same day that Rev. Turner and Mr. Burnett walked down the hill, escorting the black students to class that day. That's when Rev. Turner, when he was walking back through town, was attacked.

Yeah, I remember it. Then, as Rev. Turner left the school to go to his office at the church, he came right by here, and that's when that mob jumped him, and, again the thing I remember most was a lady, and she's in that See It Now program, the blonde woman came to his rescue. I mean here comes a lady out of the corner flower shop, Queener's Flower Shop, and runs them off. I remember that. That just shows you what they [protestors] were like, these spineless people.

The election was that day, and it was a very heated election, with all these racial overtones and innuendoes. A lot of broadsides. The White Citizen's Council even started their own newspaper and put up posters and broadsides on all the buildings. Of course, the White Citizens Council candidate was roundly defeated, but the attack on the minister drew a lot of attention, and, again, we had a mob. This time, it was a day or two before the Christmas break; they tried to come in the school, and Mrs. Brittain, the principal's wife and Home Economics teacher, intercepted them. They shoved her aside, and another student by the name of Dennis Holland came to her help and ran them off. And, Dennis played in the band; he was the man that ran them out, you know. By that time, of course--I mean the principal Mr. Brittain, that was really hitting close to home when his wife got shoved inside the building--so he closed the school and sent all the kids home. Through the Christmas break, the Federal government sent in Federal marshals and arrested 17 people, who eventually stood trial in front of Judge Taylor, and were sent to prison, several of them anyway.

We finished the rest of that school year without incident. At graduation, I wasn't there, but I understand that the press was there trying to make a big deal out of it again, and all the seniors boys got together and sort of shielded Bobby Cain [the first Negro to graduate from Clinton High School] from the press that wanted to mob him and everything. They had the next year. Mr. Brittain resigned; he went on to work on his doctorate after that year. We had a new principal come in, and the next year, [school] finished without incident, and the beginning of the third year was when they had the bombing.

During the integration, the opinion of the majority was that they weren't going to let a bunch of outsiders mess up their senior year. Now, that may sound a little bit shallow, and, in one sense it is. But again, they had earlier talked, discussed, and written papers on what was coming. So, every one had pretty well accepted the idea that they were going to abide by the law of the land. Then, when the incidents started occurring and got out of hand, that created an even greater sense of unity: "it's us against that mob out there, and we're gonna hang tight and make this work. We're going to have a good senior year, and we're going to have a good year throughout the school." So that was the attitude, I think, that prevailed.

The overwhelming majority of the people in Clinton wanted to obey the law of the land, wanted to maintain our image as a decent, orderly, law-abiding community. That sounds sort of trite, but really that's bedrock stuff. It really is, because it's that type of commitment to community, to decency, to civility, that if you have that commitment, then that's the basis from which you can do right things.

During the school year, actually, the black students weren't harassed that much. They got to school without incident, and they came in the school from the hill, came in the back way, so to speak. The mob was mostly out here in the front; it was the white students who were hollered at and spit on as they went in the front side of the building. Once inside the school, there was no harassment, neither was there any welcoming with open arms. I don't want to give the wrong impression, but there was no harassment inside the school until that December time frame that I discussed earlier, and that was up and done in two days. They were pulling petty stuff, you know, [like] ink in lockers, tacks in seats, jostling in the hallways, and that sort of thing.

While we were used to segregation, it wasn't strictly enforced, it just was. I mean, you had separate drinking fountains, separate restrooms at the Ritz Theatre where everybody went, and the Negroes went up to the balcony. That door on the right where you go up to the balcony, that's where the Negroes went in. It wasn't something anybody enforced; it just was. It was conditioned, it was accepted, it was automatic, it was wrong, but it was just the way people had grown up.

I can remember weekends and summers having two-hand touch football games out in the front of the school with the black kids. I mean, we got along, we didn't have fights, and we didn't have any problems, but it was just segregated. I know that's hard to believe and hard to accept, but that sense of decency that I talked about had never really focused on that issue. But, when the Supreme Court made that decision, then that sense of decency did have to focus on the issue, and the reason, I think, that there was that basic decency was the fact that when they focused on the issue, they realized that, whether they personally liked it or not, it was the right thing to do.

Horace Wells, newspaper owner and an influential person, had grown up in the Nashville, middle-Tennessee area, and was a southerner through and through. But, you know his sense of decency had to address the issue, and it did, and he took a very constructive position editorially with the local newspaper, the Clinton Courier. Back then, the Courier was probably more influential than it is now, because so many people depended on it for local news. Absolutely, without a doubt, he influenced the people of Clinton in a very positive way. Any award that he received during that time frame, he definitely deserved. I think his editorial stance was very crucial in the overall outcome.

Another outstanding person in this controversy is Governor Clement, who seemed to hesitate about sending in the highway patrol. Some say he may have tried to be unreachable that weekend. I don't know. I would doubt that he tried to stay unreachable, because Judge Lewellen was the man in direct contact with the Governor during this time. I don't think he was unreachable. I think it was a very tough decision for him. Of course, no one likes calling the National Guard on his own citizens.

It's funny, I went to college the next year and my freshman year in college, Clement came up there to speak. He gave a speech, and he was a great orator, by the way. In that speech, he made a remark that the hardest thing he had ever had to do was sending the National Guard into Clinton. I'm a freshman in college, so it's only the year after it happened, and I went up to him and introduced myself and said, "Governor, I was there. I want you to know that at least one person appreciated what you did." And, a big old tear started rolling down his face. I think he was sincere in that.

Although Clinton's integration did not go as smoothly as we had planned, we didn't receive the notoriety that Little Rock, Arkansas, did ... in '58. And, you know the reason that I think we don't hear about Clinton? The people here made it happen. The Federal government didn't make it happen, the NAACP didn't make it happen, you know. The Federal government and the civil rights groups did not make it happen. Now, granted the Federal government came in December and arrested 16 people; but, as far as making it successful, the people in Clinton themselves made it happen. And, that doesn't sell. You know, John Kasper, he got the story. The NAACP was, of course, providing the funding for the legal moves that came in the Brown v. Board and McSwain v. Anderson County cases. So, the NAACP was instrumental in making desegregation [happen], in setting a legal precedent in the Brown v. Board of Education and the other suits. So, yes, they made it happen. But, in terms of the actual events, there was a dichotomy between the Clinton story and the other stories that were much more prominent.

The issue of states' rights was as strong in Clinton as in Little Rock. I mean, Governor Clement, when it came time for State action, he did the work. I'm not saying the people of Clinton only made it happen. The NAACP got it started, but the people of Clinton did the right thing. They needed help from the State, and they got it, and, later on in December, they needed help from the Federal marshals, and they got it.

But, nowhere else, in my opinion, did the people themselves show by their actions what their will was. Their will was not a commitment to integration. Their will was a commitment to "this is my decent little civilized town and I'm not going to let it be messed up" ... sort of like the Confederate troops in the Civil War. How many of them really had any interest in slavery? None. They all came off of hard rock farms and sharecroppers. Imagine those soldiers fighting the battles they fought bare-footed without food and adequate clothing. I'm convinced that they were just convinced that the Yankees weren't going to mess with us. So, I think the people of Clinton and their commitment to what they perceived their community to be, they weren't going to let that be tarnished by that mob. I mean, stop and think about it: forming a home guard?

Aftermath, I don't know, probably the success of the aftermath was, I'm sure many people today wonder what was all the fuss about. That probably is the best windup of the aftermath. The fact that people have accepted it now, and it seems to be working well. What problems there are, are typical problems that all teenagers have. I don't know that it matters being black or being white. So, it has been a success; but [you should also] realize that today's generation takes it for granted. Why all the fuss? Even the current generation is going to confront things, and I think that the thing to remember is you know what the right thing is ... just do the right thing.

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