Jo Ann Boyce, the social justice champion who was among the first students to desegregate a public high school in the South, has died at age 84. The Green McAdoo Cultural Center announced the news of Boyce’s death on Thursday, saying she was an inspiring woman who uplifted everybody she met.

“We’ve 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. I spent some time with her a few years back in Wisconsin, where she told her story to student bodies and every day citizens,” the center wrote, per WATE. “The people who met her were in awe and entirely grateful for her kindness. A student was so inspired by her story that they wept when they met her, and Jo Ann was quick to offer them a warm hug.”

What happened at Clinton High School in Tennessee in the 1950s?

Boyce and 11 of her classmates made history after the landmark Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, forced the desegregation of public high schools in the South, The Los Angeles Times reported. The historic moment happened on Aug. 27, 1956, as Boyce and her peers, who became known as the Clinton 12, walked into Clinton High School in Clinton, Tennessee, becoming the first Black students to attend an all-white school in the South.

When she later told her story, however, Boyce said she had to leave the school after five months because of all the hate she and her friends were facing.

“For me, it would become an unfinished journey. After five months of attending a school that was reasonably calm on the inside but a sea of turmoil and bigotry on the outside and unlike anything any of us had ever experienced, I left the school and Clinton,” Boyce said when she wrote about her story, per WATE. “The hate we, as a group, faced daily when walking to school, while climbing the stairs to enter and on a too frequent basis in the school’s hallways, is much to much to address in this document. I will only say that it was the first most excruciatingly painful event ever to happen to me.”

What happened to Jo Ann Boyce after she left Clinton High School?

Boyce moved to California after she left Clinton High School. That’s where she attended Dorsey High School and went to study nursing in college. In 1959, she married her husband Victor E. Boyce and became a mother of three.

Boyce returned to Clinton in 2019 and attended a special ceremony with her Clinton 12 members on the 63rd anniversary of the day they integrated Clinton High School. The group walked into Clinton High School as part of a ceremonial walk and shared their story with the young generation. Boyce encouraged students to make friends at the school and follow their dreams.

Her grandson was the late actor Cameron Boyce, known for his work on Disney Channel. Cameron died in 2019 after a seizure due to epilepsy.

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