Mr. Bobby L. Cain

Bobby Cain became the first African American student to graduate from a
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School opened as a desegregated school, Cain did not feel heroic. The only black senior eligible to graduate, he knew segregationists meant to stop him from achieving a high school diploma.
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principal in the 1950s, recognized the danger of allowing Cain to go through the graduation ceremonies and feared for his life. To protect Cain, Brittain
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Bobby Cain graduated with his class. In 1961 Mr. Cain graduated from Tennessee State University with a bachelor's degree in social work. He later completed course work toward a master's degree. After college graduation he was employed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory before being drafted into the army. Mr. Cain served in the U.S. Army from 1963-1965. He was stationed as a recruiter in downtown Spoken Washington. He received an Honorable Discharged as Specialist Four in 1965. Bobby served in the United States Army Reserve from 1977 to 1993 wherein he retired as a Captain from the 306 Medical Clearing Company Army Reserve. Before retirement, he served in the Desert Storm Operations. Bobby is presently a Lieutenant Colonel in the Tennessee State Guards (Volunteer Service). Now after retiring in May of 2002 after 30 + years of service being employed as a Supervisor for the State of Tennessee Department of Human Services in the Family Assistance Program, Cain is more willing to talk of his experiences after years of reticence. His wife
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Bobby Cain

Bob Cain U.S. Army

Bobby Lynn Cain, once featured in the old Collier's magazine, is not widely known these days.
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Cain, however, felt relieved to be out of the glare.He went off to Tennessee State University, did a two-year, active-duty hitch in the Army, worked 34 years for the Tennessee Department of Human Services, and never sought attention for his role at Clinton High.

For a long time, he never even mentioned the event to his daughter, Yvette Cain-Frank, who is now a lawyer in Nashville.

At 65, he has only recently begun to talk about those days when he was the only black senior at a formerly white high school - a fact that drew angry protesters from other states, sparked several cross burnings, many threats and the dynamiting of a black restaurant that injured two people and blew out dozens of windows in nearby homes in his neighborhood, Foley Hill.

"Just here at this age," Cain said, "I am thinking about it a bit now.It's kind of striking me now.I'm thinking about it more and more."
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Cain had already graduated from Clinton High by the time that Nashville public schools allowed a handful of black first-graders into previously all-white schools in September 1957.
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But the low-key Cain never saw himself as a crusader to be praised, even though a large black church in New York paid for him to come talk to them.He was astonished when members of the audience pressed money into his hands after he spoke.He just saw himself as a mere kid who wanted to walk to the neighborhood high school with another 10 or so blacks, rather than get bused to a black school in another county.

As the decades passed, he found that his senior year just didn't seem so important - or as successful - as was his later service in the Army Reserves in Germany during Operation Desert Storm.

Desert Storm was part of his 19 years in the Reserves, from which he retired as a captain with good memories and service ribbons for a job well done.His single year at Clinton High, by contrast, was full of thankless troubles that ended with him getting roughed up by a couple of fellow seniors while turning in his cap and gown after graduation.

Cain also keeps that turbulent year in perspective by balancing it against a fulfilling 34-year career in the state Department of Human Services in Nashville, where he retired as a supervisor.Not to mention that he's hardly ready to sit back and be turned into a monument.He's continuing to work part time as a security officer for Metro's Juvenile Justice Center.

Viewing his long-ago senior year against the rest of his life, Cain said, "I didn't realize it would be that interesting."
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Cain also is named as the first in the South in a Tennessee Historical Quarterly article written in 1994 by June N. Adamson, emeritus professor of journalism at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.
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Nashville historian John Egerton concurs that Cain would be the first black to graduate from an integrated public high school in "the 11 former Confederate states."
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At a time when the whole region was roiled in racial issues, Cain withstood immense pressure as a 16-year-old who had no other black student to look up to as a role model.
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Cain never engaged in any of that debate.He just looked for ways to get through his senior year with prayer, parental support, aspirin for his splitting headaches and a near constant feeling of being on alert to defend himself.

When the year ended, he was glad to put it all behind and head off to TSU, where he met his wife, Margo.She recently retired as an assistant principal of Whites Creek High School.

Looking back, Cain said that while the majority of Clinton students did not engage in racial taunts, he never felt at home and often felt shunned.He was not allowed to take part in sports or several other activities.

"I had a lot of resentments," Cain said.
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Bobby Lynn Cain, front, walks up the steps to Clinton High School on the first day of school in 1956.

Bobby Cain, a senior that year, was out to protect himself.He decided to take on anybody who wanted to harass him, he said.

"I was definitely afraid the whole time," he said."There was no more passivity.The fight was on."

Cain finished the school year without incident, and when he graduated as a member of the 88-student class of 1957, he became not only the school's first black graduate but also the first black graduate of an integrated public school in the South.

Theresser Caswell entered Clinton High School as a freshman in 1956.The harassment from within and outside the school interfered with learning, she said.It also disrupted the black students' social lives.

"We couldn't go to (school) ball games because the principal told us he couldn't protect us," she said.
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The traumatic experience from decades ago has not tainted life, said Cain, now 64.

"When I left Clinton High School, I was very bitter.But as the years have passed, I quelled my resentment," said Cain, a retired Army Reserve captain and state employee who now lives in Nashville.

"You learn to deal with your biases," he said."I've done well."

Bobby Cain
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Bobby Cain

Bobby L. Cain, son of the late Robert and Margaret Beatrice Cain, resides with his wife, Margo in Nashville, Tennessee.
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In May of 1961, Bobby graduated from Tennessee State wherein he received a Bachelor of Science Degree in the field of Sociology. Bobby served in the U.S. Army from 1963-1965. He was stationed as a recruiter in downtown Spoken Washington. He received an Honorable Discharged as Specialist Four in 1965. Bobby served in the United States Army Reserve from 1977 to 1993 wherein he retired as a Captain from the 306 Medical Clearing Company Army Reserve. Before retirement, he served in the Desert Storm Operations. Bobby is presently a Lieutenant Colonel in the Tennessee State Guards (Volunteer Service).

Bobby was employed as a Supervisor for the State of Tennessee Department of Human Services in the Family Assistance Program. He retired in May of 2002 after 30 + years of service. Bobby continues to be recognized for his steadfast actions displayed during the 1956-57 desegregation of Clinton High School.

In the late spring of 1957, Bobby Cain, the oldest of the Clinton 12, was the first Black student to graduate from an integrated public high school in the South.
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Bobby Cain Attention is often focused on Bobby Cain , a senior, who would be the first African American graduate of a white public high school in the South since Jim Crow.
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David J. Brittain, Clinton High School principal, knew the danger of allowing young Cain to go through the graduation ceremonies.
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To protect Bobby during graduation, Principal Brittain organized a protective student patrol comprised mostly of the football team, who were among some of the best students in the class.
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After the ceremony, when it came time for the graduates to go into the basement to change out of their caps and gowns, Bobby had to go it alone. While he was in the basement, the lights went off and someone hit Bobby in the face. Bobby's mother, the late Beatrice Cain, was afraid someone had put dynamite in their car when she saw someone walking away from it. Bobby considered his graduation "a great honor - a great achievement. But as a 16-year-old in 1956, he felt more scared than heroic. Bobby withstood immense pressure and had no other black student to look up to as a role model.
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On May 17, 1957, exactly three years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Bobby Cain graduated from Clinton High School and became the first African American graduate of a state supported public integrated high school in the south.

Bobby Cain remembers being the first black kid -- ever In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education ordered public schools across the United States to desegregate, leaving the specific timetable for this to lower federal courts. In the fall of 1956 Clinton High School became the first high school in the South to integrate. One of the 12 black students to attend Clinton that year was Bobby Cain, who recalled the experience when interviewed as a part of the Nashville Public Library's Oral History Project.
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Bobby Cain (left) with U.S. Rep.
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(Bobby Cain is retired from the Tennessee Department of Health and Human Services, and lives in Nashville.