Jo Ann Boyce PHOTO COURTESY OF FACEBOOK

Jo Ann Allen Boyce, one of the original Black students who helped desegregate public schools in the American South as a member of the Clinton 12, died December 3, 2025. She was 84. She had battled pancreatic cancer for a decade and died at her home in Los Angeles, surrounded by family.

Born September 15, 1941, in Clinton, Tennessee, Boyce was just 14 when, in 1956, she and 11 other Black teenagers enrolled at Clinton High School, making them among the first to integrate a formerly allwhite public high school in the South. The move came just two years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Her first days in the newly integrated school were met with harsh hostility. Crowds gathered on the walk to school. On the second day, she recalled, there were protestors with signs, and the atmosphere grew threatening. "On Wednesday morning, I almost cried to go back home because there were so many people, and they looked so mean," she once said.

Inside the school, experiences were mixed. Some classmates treated her and her Clinton 12 peers with kindness or indifference; others left racist notes, hurled slurs, and even threw objects. Still, she was elected vice president of her homeroom.

As tensions escalated, including violent protests involving members of the Ku Klux Klan, the situation became untenable. Near the end of 1956, Boyce and her family relocated to Los Angeles. Only two members of the Clinton 12 ultimately stayed in Clinton to graduate: Bobby Cain (1939–2025) and Gail Ann Epps.

In later years, Boyce embraced roles as a pediatric nurse and a public speaker dedicated to sharing her experiences. She helped preserve the memory of those early struggles for civil rights and used her story to inspire younger generations. In 2019, she co-authored a children’s book titled "This Promise of Change," recounting her journey and the importance of love over hate.

Her legacy is commemorated at the Green McAdoo Cultural Center in Clinton, Tennessee, where life-size sculptures of her and her fellow Clinton 12 classmates stand as symbols of bravery, resilience and progress.

Boyce is survived by her sister, Mamie Hubbard, her children, and her grandchildren. Among them was her grandson, the late actor Cameron Boyce (1999–2019), who starred in Disney’s "Descendants" series.