Jo Ann Crozier Allen Boyce, one of the history‑making “Clinton 12” who helped desegregate a Southern public high school in 1956 and later became a nurse, author, and beloved matriarch to Disney star Cameron Boyce, has died at 84.
A Teenager Thrown Into the Center of History
In August 1956, 14‑year‑old Jo Ann Allen was one of
12 Black students who integrated Clinton High School in Clinton, Tennessee, the first public high school in the South to desegregate after the Supreme Court’s
Brown v. Board of Education decision.
What she walked into was not a symbolic protest—it was daily survival.
Crowds of segregationists, including members of the Ku Klux Klan, gathered outside the school, jeering and threatening the students. The tension escalated so sharply that then‑Tennessee Gov. Frank Clement deployed the
National Guard to Clinton to restore order.
Boyce later recalled that as she walked toward the school,
“They looked so mean. They looked like they just wanted to grab us and throw us out. They didn't want us at all. I could just see the hate in their hearts.”Leaving Tennessee Without Hate
Despite the troops, the hostility never really eased. After just five months, in December 1956, Boyce’s family decided they had endured enough and left Tennessee for Los Angeles.
But they refused to let hatred define them.
Before they left, a local TV crew interviewed the family. Her father, Herbert Allen, said they were
“not leaving here with hatred in our hearts against anyone”—even those who tormented them—calling the segregationists “misled” and “brought up that way.”
Boyce admitted she felt
cheated—she had wanted to stay and graduate from Clinton High to prove she could succeed despite everything. That tension between pain and principle would shape the rest of her life.
A Life of Care, Music, and Quiet Influence
In California, Jo Ann Allen reinvented herself, but never left her story behind.
- She became a
pediatric nurse, working in the field for decades and gravitating toward children and underdogs.
- She formed a vocal trio,
The Debs, with her sister and cousin, briefly singing backup for soul legend
Sam Cooke, and later performed jazz in Los Angeles clubs, including the historic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
- In 1959, she met
Victor Boyce at a dance; they married and stayed together for 64 years, raising three children and an extended family whose most famous member was their grandson,
Cameron Boyce, the Disney Channel star who died in 2019 at 20.
Cameron’s fans knew her simply as
“Nana,” a role she embraced as warmly as her civil rights legacy.
Turning Memory Into a Mission
For decades, the story of the
Clinton 12 remained far less known than the Little Rock Nine or Ruby Bridges, even though they integrated a Southern high school earlier. In her later years, Boyce made it her mission to change that.
- She
co‑authored the 2019 book “This Promise of Change: One Girl’s Story in the Fight for School Equality” with writer Debbie Levy, bringing her teenage experiences to a new generation of students and educators.
- She worked closely with the
Green McAdoo Cultural Center in Clinton, housed in her old elementary school, to preserve and share the history of the Clinton 12.
- She traveled and spoke to students across the country, using her story to explain both the brutality of racism and the power of resilience.
Adam Velk of the Green McAdoo Cultural Center called her one of the
kindest and most generous people he had met, praising how she leveraged her own trauma “to impact so many lives.”
“Racism Is a Disease of the Heart”
What people remember most about Jo Ann Boyce is not just what she endured, but how she chose to respond to it.
Her family and colleagues describe her as
relentlessly positive, even after she survived breast cancer, a major stroke, and an extraordinarily long 12‑year battle with pancreatic cancer that left doctors stunned. She would “come in and just light up the room,” her daughter‑in‑law Libby Boyce said.
Boyce liked to say that
“racism is a disease of the heart”—something to be confronted, but also something that can change. According to her family, she moved
toward people, even those with hate in their hearts, instead of away from them.
Her daughter Kamlyn Young summed it up simply:
“She was always of the mind that love will conquer all. That's what guided her through the rest of her life.”Her Final Chapter and Enduring Legacy
Jo Ann Crozier Allen Boyce died on December 3 at her home in Los Angeles, surrounded by family, from pancreatic cancer. She was 84.
Her death comes after the loss of most of the Clinton 12; at least eight of her fellow trailblazers had already passed away. Yet their collective legacy is growing more visible, not less, as schools, museums, and authors revisit the early years of school desegregation.
Boyce leaves behind:
- A
historic role in dismantling legal segregation in the South
- A body of
educational work, especially her book and speaking engagements
- A family that has carried her story into pop culture and philanthropy through Cameron Boyce’s fame and foundation work
- And a model of confronting hate without surrendering compassion
For today’s students—many of whom first met her as the soft‑spoken narrator of
This Promise of Change—Jo Ann Boyce is proof that a teenager with courage can change not just a school, but the direction of a country.
Sources
1. Jo Ann Boyce, Clinton 12 member and civil rights trailblazer, dies at 84
2. Clinton 12 member Jo Ann Crozier Allen Boyce has died at age 84
3. Jo Ann Allen Boyce, who wrote a book about her experience ...
4. Jo Ann Allen Boyce, who wrote a book about her experience ...
