I was at Brownies when a mother came to the door of the room, her daughter in front of her, a son peeking from behind her. The woman had on a car coat and hat, the girl was in a lovely dress, its full skirt puffed out with petticoats. It was perhaps 1962, or 1961. The girl was introduced as a new member of the troop. She shyly came into the room, her mother closing the door with a concerned look.

I do remember that a week or two later, the girl was missing.

Before she came, the troop leader had passed out paper booklets to read. The booklet told a story about three bunnies: a white one, a yellow one, and a black one. It was my first encounter with the idea of racism. For that little girl was African American. I didn’t understand it at the time, but that mother had to be courageous, to send her girl into a white school and a white troop, to integrate it.

Over the years, I wondered and worried about what had kept that girl from returning.

A Most Tolerant Little Town is the story of the first school to be integrated after Brown vs Board. It is not a pretty story. In 1956, ten African American high school students enrolled at Clinton High, a top high school in Tennessee, looking for a better education than was available at the black schools. The principal was a segregationist, but believed in following the law of the land. The pastor of the largest church in town was a segregationist, yet when they were being harassed, he offered to walk the students into school. Later the pastor was beaten by segregationists. The principal and his family were threatened. These men were traumatized by what went on, and ended up committing suicide.

And they were the white victims of the segregationists. The students suffered much worse, the onslaught affecting them both short term and long term. The harassment and threats of violence escalated. Not just teen boys pushing them around, not just girls sporting racist club badges, and Klanners patrolling the black neighborhood. Dynamite was set off near houses, businesses, and finally the school.

Several of the black students managed to graduate from Clinton High. One girl was unsure it was worth it, although she knew it would help those who came after her. And I did have to question if the Federal government’s mandating integration was helpful. These white and black kids had gotten along before integration of the school, their families were friendly with each other. But the fear of miscegenation arising from schooling black and white together, the belief that God had mandated a racial hierarchy, was entrenched, spurring fear, and then violence.

And yet, what was the alternative? Black schools were underfunded and couldn’t provide the same quality of education. The families could leave for another state, and several did; one of the original ten graduated from Madison Heights in Michigan, a few miles away from where I live. (That would be an interesting story to read, considering that Metro Detroit is and has been one of the most segregated areas in the country.) These families were only asking for what was lawful. An equal opportunity.

“We choose what we want to remember, and we also choose what we will forget,” Martin writes in the Prologue. Martin went to Clinton to launch an oral history initiative, collecting stories of the school’s desegregation. At the time, 1956-58, the news was filled with the story. Newspaper columnist Drew Pearson was instrumental in raising money to rebuild the high school, and Evangelist Billy Graham went to Clinton and preached a God of love and peace, calling for repentance and forgiveness.

The sacrifice and heroism of the students who took on the burden of being first is impressive. One girl was bodily picked up, struggling against being thrown into the school auditorium. How do you forget, having read this? And to know, it’s not in the past, this hate and violence, it is experienced today. Martin warns that we have more segregation in 2019 than we did in 1990. The Supreme Court has ruled that “race was no longer a valid criterion for determining school assignments,” setting off resegregation of schools.

With excellent story telling, engrossingly presented, Martin has resurrected a forgotten history that focuses on the people involved, and their choices and convictions.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book. ( )

A Most Tolerant Little Town by Rachel Louise Martin is a detailed and very well-researched account of the first desegregation attempt in the south after Brown v Board of Education. It will, or at least should, move every reader.

There are a lot of books about many places and events of the Civil Rights movement. Oddly, the story of Clinton High School is mostly forgotten, in spite of predating the more well-known instances and getting national attention at the time. Martin rectifies that oversight with this volume and does so with an account rich in both historical human detail.

Most accounts that do address the human elements, that discuss feelings both at the time and since, center on known figures. These accounts are compelling, but they can only offer so much of the story. What we get here is the big picture, where Clinton High School stood in the movement of the day, as well as the personal accounts of those involved. These people come across as people we would have known as a neighbor or at least another person in our community. Yet the contradictions within the hearts and minds of many of the whites boggles the mind, and very much reflects the same contradictions present today, well over half a century later. The accounts of the Blacks illustrate what they went through and the degree to which domestic terrorism can hurt so many people. Again, just like the domestic terrorism of today that includes militias as well as governors more concerned with their careers than with governing for all citizens.

This book should make you angry at the same time it breaks your heart. It should be both a history lesson and a call to action to turn back the latest advances of racist and hateful attacks on citizens. It should be read by anyone interested in trying to make this country what it has always claimed, in its founding documents, to be but has yet to actually be.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )