Events

On August 27, 1956 in Clinton, Tennessee, twelve African American students made history when they were the first to walk through the doors of a legally desegregated high school. On that day, integration in the South formally moved from the courtroom to the classroom. Author Doug Davis was a frontline witness to history. His mother was an English teacher at the high school, and his father was a lawyer in the initial court case. Although school opened with minimal disruption, the first week ended with tanks rolling into town to keep order. Later, when the parents of the black students were reluctant to send their children to school, the author's father was one of three who escorted the students through a gauntlet of angry racists that had gathered in protest. Davis was just eight when this happened, and the memories of those tense days were the inspiration for this story. Doug Davis graduated summa cum laude and Phi Kappa Phi from the University of Tennessee before earning his PhD from Harvard University. He is an internationally respected musician and composer, as well as a music professor at California State University Bakersfield and the director of the Bakersfield Jazz Festival, Legends of Jazz series, and the CSUB Guest Composers series.