Martin’s book provided the disturbing, destabilizing experience of being thrust back into a period of intense racial hatred as if it were happening in real time. It is one thing to recall famous photographs of police dogs set loose on child marchers during the civil rights movement, or of lynch mobs picnicking around a still-hanging corpse. It is another to be confronted with a meticulous, day-by-day reconstruction of relentless bigotry in action. Nearly every page of Martin’s book brings to life the atrocities inflicted upon Black children and parents, and a handful of white allies, in the town of Clinton, Tenn., during the year after its high school desegregated under a federal court order ... Martin deserves particular credit for excavating a piece of school-desegregation history that, despite having been covered by national news outlets at the time, has since been overlooked in favor of better-known battles like those in Little Rock and Boston ... given the constant threat of racism to our democracy, including worsening school segregation in districts across the country and the bans in certain states on books about systemic inequality, who is to say that Martin is wrong to leave her readers so overwhelmed by despair?
Martin...draws on a collection of works by June Adamson. But Martin has done her own research and expanded on the existing record ... Martin interviewed many of the survivors ... Martin is a good storyteller...and Clinton is a good story.
Just how intolerant Clinton was is Martin’s carefully researched, heartfelt story, brought to dramatic life by the 67 oral history interviews conducted for the project (not all by the author). Although she asserts that the mini-war engendered by Clinton’s forced integration attracted national attention at the time, it is now largely forgotten. This important book will remedy the shocking oversight.
For decades, residents were reluctant to reminisce about these events in Clinton, where Black desegregation pioneers continued to interact daily with their former tormentors. Today, the Clinton 12 are honored with statues and a mural. But in her moving conclusion, Martin stresses that de facto segregation is surging across the U.S. and that the challenge to work together for lasting change is as great as ever.
...a compassionate and nuanced portrait ... Telling the story in flashbacks and vignettes, Martin, who collected oral histories for 18 years, strikes an expert balance between the big picture and intimate profiles of the families involved. The result is a vivid snapshot of the civil rights–era South.
