Rachel Louise Martin in conversation with Chuck Reece - A Most Tolerant Little Town

Rachel Louise Martin in conversation with Chuck Reece - A Most Tolerant Little Town

Thursday, Jun 29, 2023 7:00 PM

Location:
The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library
441 John Lewis Freedom Parkway, NE
Atlanta, Georgia 30307

An intimate portrait of a small town living through tumultuous times, this propulsive piece of forgotten civil rights history—about the first school to attempt court-ordered desegregation in the wake of Brown v. Board—will forever change how you think of the end of racial segregation in America.

The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and A Cappella Books welcome author Rachel Louise Martin to discuss her new book, "A Most Tolerant Little Town: The Explosive Beginning of School Desegregation." The author will appear in conversation with Chuck Reece, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Salvation South.

This event is free and open to the public. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the venue. Masks are optional.

About the Book

In graduate school, Rachel Martin volunteered with a Southern oral history project. One day, she was sent to a small town in Tennessee, in the foothills of the Appalachians, where locals wanted to build a museum to commemorate the events of September 1956, when Clinton High School became the first school in the former Confederacy to undergo court-mandated desegregation.

But not everyone wanted to talk. As one founder of the Tennessee White Youth told her, "Honey, there was a lot of ugliness down at the school that year; best we just move on and forget it."

For years, Martin wondered what it was some white residents of Clinton didn't want remembered. So she went back, eventually interviewing over sixty townsfolk—including nearly a dozen of the first students to desegregate Clinton High—to piece together what happened back in 1956: the death threats and beatings, picket lines and cross burnings, neighbors turned on neighbors and preachers for the first time at a loss for words. The national guard rushed to town, along with journalists like Edward Morrow and even evangelist Billy Graham. But that wasn't the most explosive secret Martin learned…

In "A Most Tolerant Little Town," Rachel Martin weaves together over a dozen perspectives in a kaleidoscopic portrait of a small town living through a tumultuous turning point for America. The result is a spellbinding mystery, a riveting piece of forgotten civil rights history, and a poignant reminder of the toll on those who stand on the frontlines of social change.

You may never before have heard of Clinton, Tennessee—but you won't be forgetting the town anytime soon.

About the Author

Rachel Louise Martin, Ph.D., is a historian and writer whose work has appeared in outlets like The Atlantic and Oxford American. The author of "Hot, Hot Chicken, a Cultural History of Nashville Hot Chicken" and "A Most Tolerant Little Town," the forgotten story of the first school to attempt court-mandated desegregation in the wake of Brown v. Board, she is especially interested in the politics of memory and by the power of stories to illuminate why injustice persists in America today. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

About the Conversation Partner

Chuck Reece is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Salvation South, and was the founding editor of The Bitter Southerner. He grew up in the north Georgia mountains in a little town called Ellijay.