NASHVILLE, TN– Jo Ann Allen Boyce, who as part of the “Clinton 12” helped integrate one of the South’s first public schools, died Wednesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 84 years old.
Her death was confirmed by her daughter, Camlyn Young, who said that her mother died of pancreatic cancer after living with it for ten years.
Clinton High School was integrated into Tennessee in 1956, two years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregating public school children on the basis of race was unconstitutional, and a year before Little Rock Central High School was forcibly desegregated. Unlike the Little Rock Nine, the 12 Clinton students were not selected by community leaders for the desegregation mission. They happened to be living within the Anderson County School District at the time.
As a 14-year-old sophomore, Boyce was excited about the opportunity to attend the previously all-white high school. She previously had to pass by him to catch the bus that took her and other black teens to a segregated high school in Knoxville, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) away.
“She was thinking, ‘What clothes am I going to wear? How am I going to do my hair? Who are my friends going to be?'” her daughter-in-law, Libby Boyce, said in a phone interview Thursday.
Although state and local authorities accepted the court order to desegregate Clinton, many in the local white community opposed it. They were soon joined by members of the Ku Klux Klan and segregationists from outside the community in a series of violent protests that led to the National Guard being called in to restore order.
In a television interview at the time, Boyce recounted that her first day of school, Monday, was fairly quiet, with only a few onlookers who she thought might just be curious. The next day, more people gathered to watch the group of black children march to school, including a boy carrying a protest sign.
“On Wednesday morning, I almost cried to go home, because there were so many people, and they seemed so mean,” she said. “It seemed like they just wanted to catch us and kick us out. They didn’t want us at all. I could only see the hatred in their hearts.”
Many of the children inside the school were nice or at least neutral. Boyce was even elected vice president of her house chamber. But there were also kids who left signs on black students’ lockers, called them names and threw things at them. “It made me feel bad, and I couldn’t concentrate at all on my lessons,” she said.
After high school, Boyce went on to have a brief career in a women’s singing group and a long career as a pediatric nurse. Outside of work, she often spoke at schools about her Clinton integration experience.
“She wanted to make sure young people knew that,” Libby Boyce said. “Her important message was not to hate, but to bring love instead.” In 2019, she co-authored an autobiographical children’s book, This Promise of Change.
Although the Boyce family was initially optimistic about integration, as her grandmother had made them many new clothes, the violence became too much for them, said Adam Felke, executive director of the Green McAdoo Cultural Center, which promotes the Clinton legacy 12. In December 1956, they left Clinton for Los Angeles. Only two of the original Clinton 12 ended up staying to graduate from the school.
Despite everything, Boyce later told interviewers that she did not want to leave Clinton. Her home and friends were there, and she also believed that what she was doing was important.
“She wanted to be in the fight,” Young said. “She was an incredibly strong person. She didn’t want to hold back. She wanted to contribute.”
Young added that optimism was her “secret strength.” “Even in adversity, she would choose to look for the positives.”
Boyce told Felke that in the years after she left Clinton, “the people who were so mean to her, who abused her in high school, a number of them reached out to offer apologies. She told me she always tried to find forgiveness in her heart for them.”
In a short biography for the center, she wrote about her childhood in Clinton, where she attended a black elementary school and participated in “plays, competitions, rallies, and talent shows.” She was also very involved in her church, where her father directed the choir and her mother played the piano. She and her sister sang duets for church services. Later in California, they briefly formed a music group with their cousin in which they put out two singles.
Boyce is survived by his sister, Mamie Hubbard, three children and three grandchildren. Her grandson, Cameron Boyce, was a well-known actor, and died suddenly in 2019 at the age of 20 due to an epileptic seizure.