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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. 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 national 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.