Abstract

Courage in Action: In Clinton, Tennessee

Many who still live in the Southern towns but have not forgotten, the message are discovering that it is not always effortless or peaceful to find a closer walk with their consciences, their Christianity or their citizenship. But there are those who keep walking-taking the decisive first steps, the cumulative long strides. Those who live outside the South and register only despair over its dilemma should find a measure of wonder and joy in the enormous courage these everyday citizens are displaying everyday. Such a one is the minister in Clinton, Tennessee, who recently gave new meaning to the words of that old spiritual. In November, a stalemate had been reached in the desegregation situation at Clinton High School. A small gang, estimated by teachers at between forty and fifty out of the more, than 100 white students in school, had concentrated on making life unbearable for the dozen Negro pupils.