Cain is one of only two of the original Clinton 12 to graduate from Clinton High School. The rest dropped out or moved out of Tenneseee.

White supremacists rioted, threatened the students and vandalized the school in 1957 after Black students started attending Clinton High School, about 30 minutes outside Knoxville.

Cain called his senior year at Clinton rough, saying whites beat him on his third day of classes, his graduation day and several days in between.

Though angry about how he was treated at Clinton High School for most of his life, Cain went back to the East Tennessee town several times over the years for tributes to the Clinton 12.

Bobby Cain, one of the first Black students to integrate public schools in the South in 1956, died Sept. 22 in Nashville, where he had lived for d

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