Jo Ann Boyce, Clinton 12 member and civil rights trailblazer, dies

The night before Jo Ann Allen walked into Clinton High School for the first time in 1956, she eyed her outfit with the excitement of any teenager entering the ninth grade.

Her grandmother had made the dress; white, carefully cut, pleated and with a wide iron-on collar. She was talking to her best friend, Gail Ann Epps Upton, about clothes, classes, and making new friends.

The ever cheerful Allen had no idea that his daily walk up Foley Hill would soon encounter a fortress of jeering segregationists and National Guardsmen. At age 14, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. She was one of the Clinton 12 who became one of the first Black students to desegregate a public school in the South following its landmark decision in the Board of Education case.

“These kids did an adult job, they faced a firing squad every day,” his daughter-in-law, Libby Boyce, said in an interview. “Jo Ann was so positive and strong despite everything. It’s a testament to her and her upbringing.”

Jo Ann Allen, who lived with her family at her home in Wilshire Vista, died Wednesday of pancreatic cancer. He was 84 years old.

“He was the embodiment of positivity and strength,” said Kamlyn Young, Allen’s daughter. “He was a lover of people. He loved life and was always trying to see the good in people despite all the difficulties.”

Allen, who later married and changed her last name to Boyce, carried that spirit into every part of her life as a pediatric nurse, a member of the family band The Debs, and co-author of “This Promise of Change: One Girl’s Story in the Fight for School Equality,” which she shared with student audiences nationwide.

“We have lost such a caring and humble soul. Jo Ann was someone who was so generous with her own story and shared it with people across the country… She inspired everyone she met,” the Green McAdoo Cultural Center, a museum preserving the legacy of the Clinton 12, said in a statement.

Jo Ann Crozier Allen Boyce was born on September 15, 1941, in the small eastern Tennessee town of Clinton. Alice was the oldest of Josephine Hopper Allen and Herbert Allen’s three children.

He grew up in a modest house with a large kitchen and two bedrooms. Boyce shared with his sister Mamie a bedroom decorated by his mother with red juniper wallpaper and a small dressing table.

An avid student from an early age, Boyce was already reading at age 5 when he entered first grade at Green McAdoo School. He relied on his parents and his first teacher, Teresa Blair, who nurtured his academic curiosity despite the school’s limited resources.

The Allen family’s life revolved around the church. Jo Ann sang duets with Mamie at functions and looked forward to the Friday night fish fry.

After graduating from McAdoo, Green took the school bus with his classmates to attend school in Knoxville, 20 miles from his home.

“There were times in those days when we could not go to school because of bad weather or other adverse events,” he wrote in a biographical essay at the McAdoo Center. website.

In 1956, Judge Robert Taylor issued the order to integrate Clinton High School following the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Jo Ann and 11 others would be the first Black students to participate.

“When we started school there were only a few people around. So I thought, ‘They’re just here to wonder,'” Boyce recalled in a 1956 television interview.

But the next day, segregationists whipped into a frenzy by Ku Klux Klan member John Kasper filled the entrance of Clinton High School.

Boyce said most people at Clinton High School are kind and curious. However, others tortured the 12 children inside; He pushed them into the hallways, stepped on their heels, left threatening notes and even put a thumbtack on Boyce’s chair.

“I started thinking, ‘Maybe they won’t accept us the way I thought they would,'” Boyce recalled in the interview. “They looked so cruel. They looked like they wanted to catch us and throw us out. They didn’t want us at all. I could see the hatred in their hearts.”

Violence escalated in Clinton when Kasper was arrested for violating a restraining order intended to keep him away from school. Enraged, his followers occupied the small town. They overturned the cars of black motorists, attacked a priest preaching against prejudice, and beat Upton’s boyfriend, who was returning to town from military duty. Herbert Allen was arrested and later released for protecting the family’s home from being burned by Klansmen one night.

The chaos led then-Tennessee Governor Frank Clement to order Clinton to send in the National Guard to restore peace.

But enough was enough. Alice Allen decided it was time for the family to leave Tennessee.

“We did what mom said,” Boyce said. an interview in 2023 with CBS Los Angeles.

On a winter morning in 1957, local journalists interviewed the family before they boarded a car for Los Angeles.

“We will not leave here with hatred for anyone in our hearts,” said Herbert Allen. “Even those who are against us… we realize that these people are just being misled. They’ve been trained and raised that way.”

With the camera now on Boyce, he spoke in a soft voice. He talked about the A and B grades he received that semester and declared that he had “achieved something.”

He later said that the previous five months had been the most painful period of his life.

“He felt betrayed,” Young told The Times. “He wanted to stay and graduate to show everyone that he could make it no matter what. He always thought that love would overcome everything. That’s what guided him for the rest of his life.”

Clinton High School was largely reduced to rubble in a bombing in 1958. No one was arrested.

Only two of the Clinton 12 would graduate from the school.

The Allen family joins relatives already living in California. Boyce attended Dorsey High School in Baldwin Hills and graduated in 1958. She then attended Los Angeles City College before enrolling in nursing school.

She became a pediatric nurse and worked in the field for decades.

“He always played the underdog and loved kids,” Young said.

Music also attracted him. In Los Angeles, she formed a vocal trio called The Debs with her sister Mamie and cousin Sandra, and briefly sang backup for Sam Cooke. He later performed jazz sets all over the city, from cabaret stages to the historic Hollywood Roosevelt hotel.

The family recalled that she met Victor Boyce at a dance in 1959 and that he “stole” her from his dancing partner. The couple later married and remained that way for 64 years, raising three children and having an extended family across generations, including actor Cameron Boyce, who died in 2019.

Many fans would call her “Nana”, the name her grandchildren gave Boyce.

Even as she endured breast cancer, a massive stroke, and later pancreatic cancer, her trademark optimism never left her.

“He would come in and light up the room,” Libby Boyce said. “She had a sparkle that was nobody’s business.”

“Whether it was through that striking optimism or some higher power at work,” family member Gregory Small said, he survived pancreatic cancer for 12 years, a feat that stunned his doctors.

The story of the Clinton 12 is not as widely known as the Little Rock Nine or Ruby Bridges, other students who combined schools after Boyce. He realized this and decided to change this; He spent his later years speaking to students in the United States.

In 2019, she wrote the book “This Promise of Change” with Debbie Levy and worked with the Green McAdoo Cultural Center, located in the primary school building where she spent her childhood, to continue the struggle for awareness and equality that started when she was 14 years old.

“He used to say racism was a heart disease,” Kamlyn Boyce said. “He moved towards them, not away from them. He loved even people who had hatred in their hearts. That’s the only way I can express it.”

Boyce is survived by her three children (Kamlyn Young, London Boyce, and Victor Boyce), her sister Mamie, three grandchildren, and countless people who affectionately call her Nana.