TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Julia Wilburn on Sep 23, 2025

Bobby Cain, a member of the "Clinton 12" who helped integrate Clinton High School in East Tennessee in 1956 — one of the first high schools in the South to integrate — died Monday at age 85. The Associated Press reports that Cain was a senior when he entered the formerly all-white school on a 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 not being allowed to play sports and facing protests and violence — including being attacked after graduation — Cain persevered to become the first Black student in Tennessee to graduate from an integrated state-run school. He later attended Tennessee State University, worked for the Tennessee Department of Human Services and is remembered as a “reluctant hero.”