The night before she first walked into Clinton High School in 1956, Jo Ann Allen beamed over her outfit with the excitement of any teenager starting ninth grade. <\/p>\n
Her grandmother had sewn the dress \u2014 white with a careful trim, pleats and a wide-pressed collar. With her best friend Gail Ann Epps Upton, she buzzed about clothes, classes and making new friends.<\/p>\n
Always buoyant, Allen would not have guessed that her daily walk down Foley Hill would soon be met with crowds of jeering segregationists and a bulwark of National Guardsmen. At 14, she was one of the so-called Clinton 12, the first Black students to desegregate a Southern public school following the Supreme Court\u2019s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education. <\/p>\n
\u201cThese kids did an adult job, basically facing a firing squad every day,\u201d her daughter-in-law, Libby Boyce, said in an interview. \u201cJo Ann was so positive and strong through it all. It\u2019s a testament to her and her upbringing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Surrounded by family at her Wilshire Vista home, Jo Ann died Wednesday from pancreatic cancer. She was 84. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe embodied positivity and strength,\u201d said Kamlyn Young, Allen\u2019s daughter. \u201cShe was a lover of people. She loved life and always sought to see the good in people through all the adversity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Allen, who later married and changed her last name to Boyce, carried that spirit into every chapter of her life \u2014 as a pediatric nurse, a member of the family music group The Debs and co-author of, \u201cThis Promise of Change: One Girl\u2019s Story in the Fight for School Equality,\u201d which she shared with student audiences across the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve lost such a caring and humble soul. Jo Ann was someone who was so generous with her own story and shared it with people across the country \u2026 She inspired everyone she met,\u201d the Green McAdoo Cultural Center, a museum that preserves the legacy of the Clinton 12, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Jo Ann Crozier Allen Boyce was born in the small eastern Tennessee town of Clinton on Sept. 15, 1941. She was the eldest of three children born to Alice Josephine Hopper Allen and Herbert Allen.<\/p>\n
She grew up in a modest house with a large kitchen and two bedrooms. Boyce shared a bedroom with her sister, Mamie, that was decorated by their mother with red-robin wallpaper and a small dressing table.<\/p>\n
An avid learner from an early age, Boyce was already reading by age 5 when she entered first grade at Green McAdoo School. She credited her parents and her first teacher, Teresa Blair, with nurturing her academic curiosity despite the school\u2019s limited resources.<\/p>\n
The Allen family\u2019s life revolved around church. Jo Ann would sing duets with Mamie at services, and looked forward to Friday night fish fries.<\/p>\n
After graduating from Green McAdoo, she rode the school bus with her classmates to a school in Knoxville \u2014 20 miles from home.<\/p>\n