Jo Ann Allen Boyce, who wrote a book about her experience integrating Clinton High School, has died

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Jo Ann Allen Boyce, who as part of the “Clinton 12” helped integrate one of the first public schools in the South, died on Wednesday at her Los Angeles home. She was 84.

Her death was confirmed by her daughter, Kamlyn Young, who said her mother died from pancreatic cancer after living with it for a decade.

Clinton High School in Tennessee was integrated in 1956, a couple of years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v Board of Education that separating public school children on the basis of race was unconstitutional and a year before Little Rock Central High School was desegregated by force. Unlike the Little Rock Nine, the Clinton 12 students were not picked by community leaders for the job of desegregation. They just happened to live within the Anderson County