On the eve of entering Clinton High School in 1956, Jo Ann Allen tossed about her dress with the same excitement as any young ninth grader.
His grandmother had burned the dress – white with a careful color, arranged and a wide pressed collage. With her best friend Gail Ann Epps Upton, she insisted on clothes, classes and making new friends.
Always buoyant, Allen would never have guessed that his daily walk to FOOLY RILL would soon be met by a mob of gangland thugs and a bulwark of National Guardsmen. At 14, he was one of the so-called Clinton 12, the first black students to attend a public school in the south after the Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education.
“These kids have done an old job, basically facing a firing squad every day,” the daughter-in-law, Libyby Boyece, said in an interview. “Jo Ann is beautiful and strong in everything. It is a testament to her and her upbringing.”
Surrounded by her family at her Wilshire Vista home, Jo Ann Allen died Wednesday of pancreatic cancer. He was 84 years old.
Kamly Youngne who has been a KAMLYENT for years, says: “He awakened the strength and power of his daughter. “He was a person who loved people. He loved life and always wanted to see the good in people in every tragedy.”
Allen, who later married and changed his last name to Boyce, carried this spirit in the chapter of his life, “this promise of happiness:” This promise of a girl:
“We have lost a caring and humble soul. Jo Ann was generous with her story and touched everyone she met,” the Clinton 12 estate museum said in a statement.
Jo Ann Crozier Allen Boyce was born in the small town of East Tennessee in Clinton on September in September in September in September in September to Alice Josephine Hopper Allen and Herbert Allen.
He grew up in a modest house with a large kitchen and two bedrooms. Boyce shared a bedroom with his sister, Mamie, which her mother had decorated with Red-Robin Wallpaper and a small dressing table.
An active student from an early age, Boyce was already 5 years old when he entered the first grade at Green McAdoo School. He credits his parents and his first teacher, Teresa Blair, with nurturing his academic curiosity despite the school’s resources.
The life of the Allen family revolved around the church. Jo Ann will sing PEETs with mamie in the services, and looked forward to Friday night fish fries.
After graduating from Green Mcadoo, he rode the school bus with him to his class at school in Knoxville – 20 miles from home.
“There are times when we don’t make it to school because of bad weather or some other unforeseen event,” wrote the fake MCADOO Countre post.
In 1956, Judge Robert Taylor ordered high school integration following Brown v. Education decision board. Jo Ann and 11 others will be the first black students to attend.
“When we started school, there were only a few people around. And I thought maybe, ‘They’re just here to be curious,'” Boyce recalled in a 1956 television interview.
But the next day, the chance to count – beaten in a fight with Ku Klux Klan member John Kasper – filled the door of Clinton High.
At Clinton High, most people were kind and curious, Boyce said. But others abused the 12 children inside – hitting them on the ankles, stepping on their heels, leaving threatening notes and even putting water on Boyce’s chair.
“I started thinking, ‘Maybe they’re not going to accept us like I thought they would,'” Boyce recalled in an interview. “They look so kind. They look like they just want to grab us and take us out. They didn’t want to at all.”
Violence escalated in Clinton when Kasper was arrested for violating a restraining order meant to keep him away from school. His followers, enraged, sacked the small town. They threw cars with black drivers, attacked a preacher who preached against apartheid and beat Upton’s boyfriend as he returned to the city from the city from the army. Herbert Allen was arrested and later released for protecting a family home from fiery Klansmen overnight.
The uproar prompted Tennessee Gov. Frank Clement orders the national guard to restore peace.
But enough is enough. Alice Allen decided it was time for the family to leave Tennessee.
“And what my mother said, we do,” Boyce said in an interview with CBS Los Angeles in 2023.
On a winter morning in 1957, local reporters interviewed the family before they got into a car bound for Los Angeles.
“We don’t go here with hatred in our hearts for another person,” said Herbert Allen. “Even those who oppose us … we see that those people are just misguided. They were trained and raised this way.”
The camera is now on Boyce, he spoke well. He was talking about A’s and B’s and he did it himself, declaring that he “accomplished something.”
The last five months were the most painful in his life, he said later.
“He felt he was cheating,” the younger one told the Times. “He wanted to stay and get a degree to show everyone that he could do it despite everything. He always thought that love would conquer everything in his life.”
Clinton High was hard pressed to become a dump in 1958. No one has been arrested.
Only two of the 12 Clintons will graduate from the school.
The Allen family joined relatives in California. Boyce attended Dorsewy High School in Baldwin Hills and graduated in 1958. She later attended Los Angeles City College before enrolling in nursing school.
She became a pediatric nurse, and worked in the field for decades.
“He was always playing the underdog, and he loved kids,” the younger said.
Music also jumped with him. In Los Angeles, he formed a vocal trio with his sister Mamie and cousin Sandra called the debs, briefly singing backup for SAM Cooke. Later, he made jazz across town from the Cabaret stages to the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
In 1959, she met Victor Boyece at a dance, and “stole” it from her dance partner, the family recalled. The couple later married, and lived for 64 years, raising three children and generations of extended family, including actor Boyce, who died in 2019.
Many of her fans would call her “Nana,” a title given to Boyce by her grandchildren.
Even though she endured breast cancer, a massive stroke and later pancreatic cancer, her signature hope never left her.
“He’ll come in and fight the room,” said Libby Boyece. “He was as brilliant as a man’s business.”
“Whether it’s because of that deadly idea or other forces at work,” said family member Gregory Encane, he had survived pancreatic cancer for 12 years, abandoned by his doctors.
The story of Clinton 12 is not widely known as the Little Rock nine or ruby bridges, some students join schools after Boyce. He realized that and began to transform it – spending his later years speaking to students across the US
He also published the book, “This promise of change,” in 2019 with the Debbie Levy Center, based on his Green McAdoo school building, to continue the fight for awareness and equality that began when he had an awareness and equality experience that began when he had an awareness and equality experience that began when he was 14 years old.
“He always said that racism is a disease of the heart,” Kamlyn Boyece said. “He moved them to them, not far. Even people with hatred in their hearts, he loved you. That’s the only way I can put it.”
Boyce is survived by his three children – Kamlyn Jr., London Boyerce and Victor Boyece – his sister Mamie, three grandchildren, countless people who call him his Nana.
