Jo Ann Allen Boyce passed away from pancreatic cancer at 84 in Los Angeles. She was part of the Clinton 12, a group of Black students who integrated Clinton High School in Tennessee back when she was just 14. This all went down before the famous Little Rock situation, and she dealt with angry mobs, constant harassment, and students throwing stuff at her in the halls. Her family eventually bailed to California after things got really bad, and she ended up becoming a pediatric nurse there.
The whole Clinton integration thing was a mess. Some white supremacist dude named John Kasper showed up from New Jersey and started riling everyone up against desegregation. The school got bombed by the KKK later on, and most of the Clinton 12 never even graduated from there. Boyce spent her later years talking at schools about what happened, and she wrote a kids' book about fighting for school equality with her grandson, actor Cameron Boyce, who died young.
The whole Clinton integration thing was a mess. Some white supremacist dude named John Kasper showed up from New Jersey and started riling everyone up against desegregation. The school got bombed by the KKK later on, and most of the Clinton 12 never even graduated from there. Boyce spent her later years talking at schools about what happened, and she wrote a kids' book about fighting for school equality with her grandson, actor Cameron Boyce, who died young.
