This Promise of Change: One Girl's Story in the Fight for School Equality
Jo Ann Allen Boyce, Debbie Levy
In 1956, fourteen-year-old Jo Ann Allen is one of twelve Black students integrating Clinton High School in Tennessee. Her present-tense account combines poems in her voice with news clippings and other documents from the 1956–57 school year. The early days are tense but quiet until outsiders foster protests and violence. Jo Ann and her classmates face daily harassment, while threats spread through the wider Black community. Soldiers arrive to maintain peace, and families must weigh their safety against the struggle for equal education. An afterword follows the twelve students’ later lives.
This book appears on 5 reading lists across 2 editions from 5 organizations.
