a new day of grace

ireporting by kate arthurphotography by sylvester jacobs

before ferguson beyond ferguson

A New Day of Grace

Joyce Elliott saw her faith tested before becoming the first female minister at Illinois'

oldest African-American church

2VoL.

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Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Chapter 1A promise never kept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter 2Finding and losing trust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Chapter 3The night that almost changed everything . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Chapter 4Called to serve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Chapter 5Dreams deferred, dreams realized . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Chapter 6Hands on the gospel plow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Chapter 7Dr. Angela Elliott . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Chapter 8“We called her Ma’am” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Chapter 9A as in A Student . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

EpilogueFreedom through forgiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Table of Contents

© Copyright 2021 Before Ferguson, Beyond Ferguson . All rights reserved . No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Book design by LaVidaCo Communications

Printed in the United States of America by Jaffe Book Solutions (St. Louis, Missouri)

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PrefaceWe have photojournalist Sylvester Jacobs to thank for

bringing the remarkable, resilient Joyce Elliott to our atten-tion. Before Ferguson Beyond Ferguson, our non-profit racial equity storytelling project, has for several years been searching for people who best exemplify how race is lived in our region family by family and across generations.

Sylvester, one of nearly two dozen journalists who have joined us in this effort, told us about Joyce and all that she had been through in raising her family in Alton, Illinois. Even better, she knew her roots and could speak eloquently about the struggles her mother and father, grandparents and great-grandparents faced dating all the way back to Recon-struction.

We asked reporter Kate Arthur to get together with Joyce and they spoke for many hours . This booklet is the result of that collab-oration. Reading time is less than an hour. We guarantee you will find it well-spent, as this tale is by turns humorous, maddening, poignant, and inspiring .

Sylvester JacobsPhotographer

Kate ArthurReporter

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We hope you will share this story with others, perhaps a classroom, a book club, a civic group, and maybe especially a faith group . Joyce, Kate, and Sylvester would love it if you would invite them to appear in person or by Zoom to share and discuss this story .

You can find other stories like this one at our website: beforefergusonbeyondferguson.org . Please share your email with us in the box at the top of the page so we can keep you informed when we have printed booklets in hand and also tell you about other stories that we are adding to our collection.

We would like to acknowledge the Pulitzer Center which has provided financial support for our work, as well as David LaGesse and Laura Stanton, who applied their superb editing and design skills. Sylvester is especial-ly appreciative to Dr. Tommy Simmons, pastor at Third Baptist Church in St. Louis for support and encouraging him to work in the community .

Thanks also to the St . Louis Post-Dispatch and editors, Roland Klose, Marcia Koenig and Gary Hairlson, who shared an excerpt of this story with their readers.

And, we thank you for your interest in our work .

Richard H. Weiss and Sally J. Altman

Co-Founders - Before Ferguson Beyond Ferguson

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Joyce Elliott shows the spot on her bedroom door from years ago where she fired a shotgun at her husband, Linwood. The two are now on good terms.Photo by Richard H. Weiss.

IntroductionThe bullet hole in her bedroom door has been there

more than 40 years, a reminder of where Joyce Elliott has been and how far she has come .

She hasn’t picked up a gun since that late August evening when she loaded three shells into her husband’s shotgun and waited for him on a church bench in the garage, believing he deserved to die . While she was home sick in bed, and their three young children were sleeping, Linwood Elliott left home, leaving the front door wide open. Joyce decided that was the last time anybody was going to make her feel vulnerable .

She moved to the garage and sat down, waiting five hours for Linwood to return home. When finally he did, she picked up the gun and warned Linwood that if he came any closer, it might be his last step .

“Babe, you don’t want to do that,” he told her, “let’s talk” as he took one step, then another, getting close enough to grab the barrel and wrest the gun away from her .

Feeling defeated, she ran inside the house and locked the door . She was determined he was going to feel some pain that day so she put a pot of water on the stove to boil, intending to send it his way . And then she heard the lock click on the bedroom door . Linwood had gone around behind the house and climbed through a window . She went out to the garage, picked up the gun . Foolish-

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ly, Linwood had left it behind. She came back inside and took aim at the bedroom door, not knowing exactly where Linwood stood and not caring all that much either . She fired.

The slug tore through her choir robe hanging on the back of the door, but it missed Linwood who then scampered back out the window .

The shot did not go unnoticed by neighbors. When a police officer arrived, he found Linwood shaking in the front yard. Joyce knew the officer and explained what had happened . He took the gun, suggested to Linwood that he leave for a while to allow Joyce to cool off, and drove away .

Now some four decades later, at age 73, Joyce Elliott is widely known more for her faith than her fiery disposition.

She is the first female licensed ordained minister at Union Baptist Church in Alton, the oldest African-American church in Illinois . But she is much more than that . Folks in Alton have encountered her as an educator, civil rights activist, community leader, social service worker, poet, and encourager . Most of her life has been spent on that last one. And a lot of times, the person she had to encourage the most was herself .

Faith has always been the toughest strand of her life, the one that pulled her through being raised without her mother, raped at 17, a suicide attempt while pregnant, and the aforementioned tumultuous marriage.

Joyce comes from a string of women who sustained themselves through faith . Visitors to her three-bedroom home where she’s lived more than 50 years can find their framed images along the walls . Most prominent is Amanda Branch Jones, Joyce’s great-grandmother. She was the first in the family on the maternal side born free, with family listing her year of birth as 1863. Amanda never learned exactly when her birthday was. She only knew it was the same month as Thanksgiving .

Joyce remembers sitting at Amanda’s feet, listening to stories about what life was like in Marvell, Ark ., under 20 U .S . presidents, from Abraham Lincoln to John F . Kennedy .

Amanda picked and chopped cotton, dragging the heavy cloth sacks through the fields and coming home to prepare meals on a wood-burning stove sitting on a dirt floor. When her family went to bed, she’d spend hours by the dim light of a kerosene lamp, piecing together “bed covers” or quilts, not as a hobby, but making them to keep her family warm in the winter .

As age stole her mobility, the matriarch of five gener-ations watched the world from her rocker on the front porch, humming and singing spirituals . She loved chicken feet, and seeing her grandchildren chase down the birds

Elliott's great grandmother, Amamda Branch Jones


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for Sunday dinner. She died in August of 1963, at the age of 99, in Holly Grove, Ark ., the community where she was born .

Amanda’s granddaughter - Joyce’s mother - Earnese Branch, was born in Holly Grove in 1915 . At 15, Earnese met Arthur Henderson at a summertime dance. Arthur was 24, and neither had more than an eighth-grade educa-tion. Earnese said yes because that was a pass to get away from her childhood . They married and moved in with his parents in Humphrey, Ark . just 40 miles to the west in east central Arkansas .

Their first child was born 10 months later and over the next 21 years, there were 10 more. One child only lived about six weeks, and another was stillborn at home. Joyce remembers her father preparing a shoebox to lay the baby in, and then burying the box by a tree in the backyard.

Joyce was the couple’s seventh child, born in the “Negro ward” in the basement of St . Joseph’s Hospital in Alton, then a community of about 30,000 residents on the Mississippi River in Madison County, Illinois, about 18 miles north of St . Louis .

The latest census count has Alton at 27,500 residents with 71 percent white and 24 percent Black. Nearly 28 percent live below the poverty line, well above the nation-al average of 11.8 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau .

Alton was an important station along the Underground Railroad, providing safe passage for slaves escaping from Missouri to the free state of Illinois. Runaways found refuge in private homes, and among a catacomb of tunnels 15 feet below the earth’s surface. On a drive through the community, Joyce points to where some of the caves were .

She knows Alton’s stories and she has become one of them . Amanda Branch Jones surrounded by her great grandchildren, from left

and going clockwise: Janice Henderson Watson, Ernest Henderson, Joyce Henderson Elliott (wearing amulet and face partially hidden).


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Growing up wanting more than what others expected of her, Joyce had to fight for everything. Her high school guidance counselor told her she wasn’t college material, and she didn’t listen . Her father told her to get a good job and a man with a paycheck . At 4’11,” she was told she was too short for a manufacturing job and the military .

Joyce was told a lot of things, but she didn’t believe any of them .

She became the first African-American to work in medical records at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville and enrolled in a couple of religion classes . It would be

Jimmy Branch, Joyce Elliott's grandfather. Photo taken at homestead in Holly Grove, Ark., approximately 1960.

nearly 30 years before she’d finish her associate’s degree but she did, walking across the stage at 49 .

All three of her children attended college with the youngest graduating from medical school at 37. Dr. Angela Elliott, the fifth generation in her family born free, is the only Black physician at the medical facility she works in near her Bettendorf, Iowa, home.

Joyce is influencing the next generation of her family now, her grandchildren, encouraging them in their faith and education. She hopes to live to be 100, a willing guide for those who come to her, and those she finds as she shares her story and her faith .

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Arthur and Earnese Henderson in Arkansas, circa 1960.

Chapter 1

A promise never kept

In the 1940s, it was difficult for Joyce’s father to find work in the south, and there were good manufacturing jobs in the middle of the country . Arthur Henderson

moved his family from Arkansas to Alton in 1942, and found a job with Laclede Steel Company . Eight years later, they moved to Michigan City, Ind., for a better job with Pullman-Standard, which made railroad cars . By then Earnese and Arthur had eight children, and over the next two years, would add two more .

Earnese disliked the brutal winters on the south side of Lake Michigan, with an average of 40 inches of snow . But what hurt more was the state of her marriage .

“I remember a lot about Indiana,” Joyce said . “Not a whole lot of pleasant things, but I remember them .”

Joyce was 6 when she saw her father knock out her mother’s tooth during an argument . She told herself no man would ever hit her and get away with it . Although her mother had been hit before, this time was enough for her to pack up the children and insist that Arthur return her to Arkansas to be near family . Back in Arkansas the children

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slept two to a twin bed in a two-bedroom house with no electricity or indoor plumbing . Earnese found work as a domestic for white families, ironing their clothes, cooking their meals and taking care of their children while her eldest daughter, Betty, cared for hers.

Joyce remembers her mother getting up at 4:30 every morning, starting a fire in the wood-burning stove, making the children’s meals, and boiling water for a bath . Some domestics went to work in head rags, but Earnese’s hair was always done nicely, and she wore pearls, a skirt and blouse . She’d catch the bus in the dark and get home in time to supervise homework and get the children ready for bed .

“I always saw her as a very tired person, but yet persistent. Here she was getting up and taking care of someone else’s family . It just did something to me .”

Two years later, it was the summer of 1956 and Joyce’s father came to visit. Betty had written to Arthur, asking him to come and take her back to Alton so she wouldn’t have to take care of her younger siblings . Joyce overheard a conversation between her parents. Earnese told Arthur, “You take one, you take all of them .”

And that’s what he did, promising to bring them back in August before school started . It was a promise never kept . Joyce was only 8 years old and remembers crying for her mother at night . It would be four years before she’d see her again, when her mother visited Alton for the funeral of her 25-year-old son, Billie, who had frozen to death in his garage after suffering a seizure. As tragic as the circum-stances were, Joyce was thrilled to see her mother .

“I remember holding onto her and not wanting to let go,” she said . “Even then I wanted to go back with her but the answer was always, ‘No .’”

The two exchanged letters, and a heart-shaped cake

arrived on Joyce’s birthday every year . The cakes stopped coming when she turned 16.

“I guess she thought I was too grown up for that cake,” she said . “But I wasn’t .”

It would be more than 20 years before she’d ask her mother the question she always wanted answered – why didn’t she come back and get them?

“That made my mom cry,” she said . “I’d never seen her shed a tear, even in the death of my brother, the baby that she lost in Indiana, my sister Dorothy who died at 33, or my grandparents . I never remember her crying, even when my dad hit her in the mouth and knocked her tooth out . This was the first and only time.”

Her mother’s answer was that she loved them all, that she knew their father loved them too, and that he could give them a better life than she could.

“I took that as a satisfactory answer but I told her about my hatred and my bitterness toward the white people that she worked for,” Joyce said . “They hadn’t done anything to me but I resented their children calling my mother by her first name and I felt that was disrespectful to her. I wasn’t allowed to call any adult by their first name. That was forbidden in our culture, so that was very offensive to me.”

In later years, Joyce saw what the three families her mother worked for had done for her . They paid into social security so she would have a retirement income. As she grew older, their children sent money on special occasions and visited the woman they too loved and respected . Joyce moved past the resentment she’d felt in her younger years .

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Arthur and Earnese Henderson, and her children, the eldest Betty, (now Betty Henderson Holloway) and Dorothy Henderson. At the time of the photo in 1948, Earnese is pregnant with Joyce.

Chapter 2

Finding and losing trust

Life was a lot different for Joyce and her siblings in Alton . They were the third African-American family to move into a new segregated housing project, the John

J . Sullivan Homes, built in 1954-1955 . Spread out in a four-bedroom apartment, they thought they had it made .

“We thought we were in hog heaven because we had all this space,” Joyce recalled. “But me being who I was, I still wanted my momma .”

Every parent was a parent to every child in Sullivan homes, and that made a difference to Joyce. She also found women at Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church who were more than willing to mentor her .

One of those was Josephine Marley Wilson Beckwith, a civil rights activist who hosted Thurgood Marshall as he was preparing for the Brown v. Board of Education landmark desegregation case in 1954. As general counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Marshall, grandson of a slave, successfully argued that school segregation was a violation of individual rights

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under the 14th Amendment. In 1967, he became the first African-American Supreme Court Justice.

Beckwith, a cousin to Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr . Ralph Bunche, pushed for Alton school desegregation and was credited with creating Alton’s first kindergarten for African-American children, who weren’t allowed to attend white kindergartens. She and her husband at the time, Tillman Wilson, also headed the effort to desegregate Alton’s St . Joseph’s Hospital, refusing to deliver their baby in the Negro ward . She threatened to give birth in the lobby instead, becoming the first black woman to deliver a child in the white’s-only maternity ward, according to her obituary in the Alton Telegraph .

“She always had me doing things that I would never have attempted to do,” Joyce said. “She was the force that pulled it all out . She and Mrs . Hazel Killion made me do speeches . They groomed me for public speaking .”

Joyce started Central School in Alton as a third grader, and had a Black teacher, Edith Brewer. That was in 1956 and Alton schools wouldn’t be desegregated for another three years . Joyce appreciated being taught by women who looked like her .

“Black teachers do teach Black children better than white teachers for the simple reason they live the life,” she said . “They know the values that we need to learn, and they can instill them in us in a way that will last a lifetime.”

Joyce walked to school on the right side of a brick street and always noticed a white girl walking on the left, going to all-white Washington Elementary School. One day when the girl dropped her books, Joyce crossed over to help . They introduced themselves and from then on, Joyce and Sheila Curran Darr became friends. Fifty-five years later, they still meet for lunch every month.

“It’s been a beautiful friendship,” Sheila said. “Every time we see each other, we hug. We were just two little girls who loved to talk . That’s what made us click .”

Joyce also still stays in touch with her eighth-grade English teacher at West Junior High School . Donna Petro, 82, remembers Joyce as a good student who was lively and talkative.

Joyce was the type of student who threw herself into everything, she said .

“She said she saw me as a role model and now she’s turned around and is the role model. At the time, I thought I was only teaching her English . I didn’t know that what I was really teaching her was life .”

An A student, Joyce loved math, English and socializing . Everything interested her, and that included the children in her housing project .

“I’d wipe their little noses, comb their hair,” she said. “Everybody else was out playing . I was always looking for something to do and I really didn’t have to look too hard . Something was always in front of me . If kids fell down, I’d pick them up, clean them up, and walk them home .”

Joyce wanted to be a teacher, but she also wanted to live far away from Alton .

“I thought it would bring me everything I ever wanted or needed in life if I could finish school and leave town. I always wanted to be an educator, but I didn’t want to be an ordinary teacher .”

Those closest to her tried to poke holes in that dream .

“My mother, my dad, never, ever talked to us about what we could be,” she said . “Dad told me to graduate from high school and get a good husband . Nobody was

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guiding me, not even my counselor in school . I fought for everything. I had to. I’m still fighting.”

During her senior year in high school, Joyce moved in with her older sister, Betty, and her family and took an after-school job as an elevator operator for Young’s Dry Goods, making $55 a week, and paying her sister $30 .

Boys interested her, but not all that much . She dated a little and trusted too much. That’s how she ended up getting in the car one day with her best friend’s brother, a young man she knew who had moved from Mississippi to Alton and was fresh out of the military . They knew each other’s families and as he was headed to a family gather-ing, he asked if she would like to ride along to his uncle’s house . She agreed, although something told her not to .

“I had a thing about guys and protecting myself,” she said . “I did not want my father’s words to come true . He’d always say to me, ‘You’re gonna do just like your sister, get out and get your belly full of babies .’”

Not long into the ride, she realized he was not headed in the right direction. After pulling into a secluded area, he got out of the car and exposed himself. She demanded he take her home, but that’s all she could do . If she screamed, no one would hear her .

“He said, ‘I’m not taking you home . You gonna give it up today’ and he raped me .”

After the assault, he apologized, pleading with her not to tell anyone . Joyce knew if she told her father, without question, he would have killed him. She asked to be dropped off a few blocks from her sister’s home. She walked in, went straight to take a bath, went to bed, and prayed for the next month that she wouldn’t be pregnant.

About six months later, the man died of injuries from a car accident . Because she knew the family, she felt she had to attend his funeral. She learned that while he was in the

emergency room, he repeatedly called out her name . She stood by his casket and forgave him, hugged his family and left. They would never know what happened.

“I had no choice but to forgive him,” she said .

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Chapter 3

The night that almost

changed everything

The spring before she graduated from high school,

Joyce met Linwood Rayford Elliott, who was five

years older and the best friend of the man who

raped her . He was interested in Joyce, and persuaded

a friend to arrange a date . They went out a couple of

times, but after she graduated, she went to Michigan City,

Indiana, to spend the summer with a cousin . Linwood kept

calling and writing, asking when she’d be returning to

Alton .

She returned to Alton in September, and he wanted

them to move away together, but she suspected he was

the father of a child born that month .

“I said, ‘Excuse me, are you trying to run from the

responsibilities of parenting?’ He said he didn’t even know

if it was his baby . I said, ‘If you were out there dipping and

dabbling, it could very likely be yours .’”

Although he refused to take a blood test, Joyce told him

if he was a man, he would give this child his last name . He

Joyce Elliott in the 1980s.

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went to the hospital and signed the birth certificate.

Joyce moved to St . Louis to work for Blue Cross/Blue Shield, but eight months later, returned to Alton to work on the production line at Owens-Illinois Glass Bottle Works. Getting hired was another fight. She was told she was too short . A girlfriend who applied with her was told her bust was too large, that she would knock the bottles off the conveyor belt. After threatening a discrimination suit, Joyce was hired and worked nine months until she was moved to the box-making room and glue fumes made her ill .

Linwood was still around, although he was just someone to socialize with, not the type of man she saw herself ending up with. He wasn’t a romantic like the guys she read about in her sister’s True Story magazines that she hid under the mattress at 15. For months she turned him down for a date, but he persisted . She remembered her father’s words -- he had a good job at the foundry, and a brand new car, a 1966 candy apple red Ford Galaxy.

A few months into the relationship, and in spite of using birth control, she became pregnant, which she didn’t realize until she miscarried. The doctor told her it was unlikely she would ever get pregnant again . But less than a year later, she was . She and Linwood were living in an apartment . He begged her to marry him, but she turned him down because she was still in love with her high school sweetheart, who was in the military . She didn’t know if he would ever return, but she wrote to tell him about the pregnancy, saying she made a mistake . He said that didn’t change anything for him . But it did for her .

Life became more complicated for Linwood too . A woman in East St . Louis was also pregnant with his child and early one morning he left the apartment and secret-ly married her, returning to Joyce two hours later . Joyce found out about the marriage a month later when a

woman she didn’t know called and asked what it was like to be sleeping with a married man .

Alton is a small town and the public humiliation was devastating. On the day she found out Linwood was married, and at five months pregnant, she stuffed their apartment windows with rags, blew out the stove’s pilot light, turned on the gas, and crawled into bed .

Joyce refused to answer the telephone as it constantly rang. The apartment was filling with the smell of gas. She heard banging on the front door . It was Linwood’s brother, James, who was able to break in . He pulled her out of her home, telling her to live for her unborn child and herself . He also told her that his brother was not worth dying for .

And that’s when her faith reappeared .

“I always cried out to God, asking, ‘Why am I going through this? I’m a good person .’ As I got older, I saw why,” she said. “All these years later, I see how the puzzle fits together . I see why all these people were in my life .”

Hearing what happened, Linwood returned a few days later, assuring Joyce that he didn’t love the other woman and was determined to be with Joyce only . Although confused, Joyce stayed in the relationship. Three months later, when she was eight months pregnant, they were in a car accident and she went into premature labor, delivering their son, Anthony, on October 6, 1968.

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Joyce Elliott (bottom center) with her family in a photo from the 1980s. Starting clockwise from Elliott's left, are her daughters, Angela, Alison Joelle, and stepdaughter Tambela; husband, Linwood Elliott; son, Anthony, and father, Arthur.

Chapter 4

Called to serve

Joyce was working in health services at SIU-Edwards-ville in 1969. She was the first African-American in the medical records department . The university also hired

Virginia Armstead as its first African-American head nurse, and the two of them became friends . And then came the university’s first African-American track coach, John Flamer, who also became their friend and remains a good friend .

“There were a lot of firsts,” Joyce said. “It was a real good experience. And I decided to go back to school.”

The job gave her the stability she needed to buy her first home for $15,000. The realtor asked for a $200 down payment and when she got that together, he asked for more . Her uncle gave her a loan and the house at 938 Riley Avenue, the one she’d admired since she was 15, became hers . It is just a few blocks from the housing project where she grew up .

“I’m really proud of my house, I really am,” she said . “It’s never been exactly what I wanted it to be but it was good enough . All the kids were raised here and other kids lived here .”

Reluctantly, she allowed Linwood to move into her home, and there were some good years, but there were

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some hard ones too . When their son was only 20 months old, she got pregnant again . The morning she went into labor, Linwood wasn’t there . He’d been out all night . She called a neighbor to watch their son and called a taxi to take her to the hospital. He arrived after the baby was born and was angry because she had a girl, Alison Joelle . Joyce told the nurse to get him out of her room .

“He was a good father,” she said . “He just didn’t know how to appreciate and love their mom .”

Because of her faith, Joyce honored the man who was less than she wanted, and less than she felt she deserved . He brought home a paycheck, mowed the lawn, and worked in their vegetable garden . Along with that Linwood and her father were close . That was enough, she told herself, and the edges of their relationship softened. A few months before their third child was born, in 1972, she agreed to marry him .

“I didn’t want to marry him,” she said. “I wanted my first love to come back and sweep me off my feet, but he never came . I had always promised myself if I had children they all would have the same father and they do .”

Linwood objected to her working and going to school . He said he could take care of her and that should be enough .

“He wanted me to stay home and have as many babies as his momma did,” Joyce said . Linwood was the youngest of 11 . “That wasn’t happening . I was determined to be my own person at all costs . I was able to get myself the things I needed, refusing to depend on a man . He resented it .”

But because she wanted her marriage to work, Joyce left her job at the university and became the apartment manager of Sullivan Homes . She set up a playpen by her desk, and took the baby to work .

Joyce always had a job . Even in later years when she stayed home raising her children, she taught herself to be

a seamstress . When her youngest, Angela, started school, she began working for the Alton school district as a certi-fied licensed substitute teacher.

But Joyce always had to do more than one thing .

Joining the NAACP, she was elected advisor to the NAACP Youth Council, and organized the NAACP Back to School/Stay in School Program. She became first vice president of NAACP’s Alton branch, receiving state and regional awards as the NAACP Outstanding Youth Advisor. Among stacks of newspaper clippings, she found her “gold mine” photo where she’s standing next to civil rights leader Dr. Benjamin Hooks, executive director of the NAACP from 1977 to 1992 . She sat in a hotel room with Hooks and his wife, Frances, one night, where he talked about his fight for civil rights and to “not fight with your hands but to fight with your brain, your integrity, your heart, and to do it with all the might you have,” Joyce recalled .

Teaching children about Black history is one of her passions, and she’s done it in unusual ways, from character impersonations to rapping with elementary students. In the 1990s, she approached a radio station manager about creating a program on Black history, with children reading scripts about prominent African-Americans. Others told her the WBGZ white-owned radio station would never allow that. She presented the idea to station manager Sam Stem and he welcomed the idea . She wrote the scripts, reached out to elementary schools, and “Dream Team Moments in Black History” aired for five years.

Joyce became known as the person to call if you needed someone to serve . She was an Alton human relations commissioner, a precinct committeeman, an election judge and an inaugural board member of the Concerned Citizens of Alton. She was appointed to the first Black Student Association Advisory Board of Lewis and Clark Community College in nearby Godfrey . And she founded Alton’s Juneteenth celebration in 1991, leading it

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for 22 years . She also served on the board of directors for Piasa Habitat for Humanity, and coordinated KIDS, Inc ., a drug and alcohol prevention program for youth. She has been an adult education tutor, volunteer for the Head Start program, and special education teaching assistant.

And none of it has been for the money .

“I’ve never made more than $15,000 a year, but I’m happy, yes I am,” she said .

Vernetta Caffey, who taught for 45 years in Alton schools, met Joyce through the NAACP youth program . When they were working together in the ‘70s and ‘80s, there were not a lot of opportunities for Black students, Vernetta said.

“I can recall some of the difficult moments during that time. We had a lot of fights in school and the community, people just not being able to accept each other . Some people dealt negatively with the injustices they felt they faced . It took a lot of people like Joyce to work for those hard-won changes and victories .”

Vernetta remembers Joyce traveling extensively to do oral presentations for Black History Month, taking on the roles of Harriett Tubman and Rosa Parks. While present-ing a Black history program at the mall, a young woman approached Joyce and asked if she could read an original poem . Joyce encouraged her to take center stage, and became a mentor to the woman who grew up with the memory of seeing her father kill her mother . The friend-ship deepened and the woman’s education continued. She developed serious health issues and Joyce drove her to her treatments . The woman died while working on her doctor-ate in African-American studies .

“That was just one person of many she helped,” Vernet-ta said . “I refer to Joyce as the trailblazer because she leaves a trail .”

Joyce is also a popular substitute teacher.

“She knows how to make connections with students,” Vernetta said. “Her main purpose is to move students forward and upwards . That’s her whole mission . There are too many adults who have not passed the baton . Joyce is trying to do that . She is a treasure in the Alton school district and in the Alton community .”

While holding others up, Joyce worked even harder to keep her own family together . People used to call them the Cleaver family from Leave it to Beaver, but it didn’t feel that way to her. In addition to taking care of their three children, she also helped raise Tambla, the child Linwood once doubted as his own . When he couldn’t pay child support, Joyce did to keep him out of jail .

After 24 years of marriage, she did something she hoped she’d never have to do -- file for divorce. She’d saved the money, tucking a roll of bills away in a sock over the years .

“I never was dependent on him and he told me in a counseling session that that was one of the things that upset him, that I didn’t let him take care of me,” Joyce said . “I didn’t trust him to take care of me .”

For his part, Linwood Elliott said that he and Joyce never stopped loving each other .

“We still cared for each other, there wasn’t nothing we couldn’t sit down and talk about,” Linwood said . “But we decided we were better apart.”

What pushed Joyce to that end was a New Year’s Eve when Linwood wasn’t home in time for an evening church service with the family . While on the way to the church, she noticed his car parked at his brother’s home, but he wasn’t in the house . She turned the car around, drove home, stuffed his clothes in trash bags and left them in his car with a note that he wasn’t to return . And then she continued onto the church service with their three children .

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Joyce Elliott is the first female licensed ordained minister at Union Baptist Church in Alton, the oldest African-American church in Illinois. Photo by Sylvester Jacobs.

Chapter 5

Dreams deferred, dreams realized

In 1996, Joyce’s life changed again. She doesn’t know whether it was due to ending her marriage or something else, but it opened wider . Her youngest child, Angela,

graduated from Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans, the only historically Black Roman Catholic university in the nation. After the ceremony, she told her 48-year-old mother that it was time for her to go back to school .

Joyce encouraged all of her children to go to college, although their father did not want them to go far away . At one point, all three were enrolled at the same time, the eldest two in community college . Although they did not finish, and they’re in their 50s now, she’s still hoping they will . Anthony graduated from barber school and Alison works with the Madison County State's Attorney’s Office.

Angela started working in admissions at Lewis and Clark Community College in Godfrey, Illinois, only a few minutes from Alton. She filled out an application for admission for

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her mother, put it in front of her, and told her to sign it . Joyce did, and her daughter has a photo of her on her first day of school, holding her books and wearing a big smile .

Lewis and Clark is where Joyce’s life intersected with Linda Chapman’s for the second time. Linda was vice presi-dent of academic affairs, and her spouse, Dale Chapman, was president . The Harvard University graduates moved to the community college from Suomi College in Michigan because they wanted to work together in higher education administration. They brought along a Black student they were mentoring, an 18-year-old who was disowned by her adoptive parents after becoming pregnant. She and her infant lived with the Chapmans, along with the couple’s 2-year-old daughter and 5-year-old adopted Korean son . The young woman enrolled at Lewis and Clark .

Joyce first met the Chapmans while working as a parent education counselor. Having received a referral to meet with the young woman who was applying for public assis-tance, she knocked on their door. That started a relation-ship with the family that’s still going three decades later.

“I felt that I’ve always known Joyce,” Linda said . “It was the settling in things that Joyce helped me do. She came into my house as the expert that I needed. I told her, ‘What do I know about raising a teenage African-American woman? I don’t even know where to send her to get her hair done.’ It was an invaluable relationship for both of us.”

The young woman earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees and is in her 50s now, working as an alcohol and drug counselor .

Linda knew Joyce wanted to finish her associate’s degree and encouraged her . In May 1997, the two met on the commencement stage with a hug and a diploma .

“It’s just a wonderful life story about dreams deferred, dreams realized,” Linda said . “She was going to accomplish

what she had in mind to accomplish . As much as she strug-gled and had to do multiple tasks, she was going to get this done, there was no doubt about it .”

Angela drove to Arkansas to pick up her grandmother so she could watch Joyce cross the stage .

“That was something that her mother got to see one of her children graduate from college,” Angela said . “I think that was one of mom’s proudest moments .”

Joyce never doubted her mother was proud of her, even all those years they were apart .

“She never understood how I could persevere and do the things I did,” she said . “But I know I gained a lot of strength from her .”

Linda knew Joyce well enough to know that there was something else she had to pursue after graduation.

“In all those years of going to school and working at the same time, she wanted to be a minister.”

For 30 years, Joyce attended Morningstar Missionary Baptist Church, and when she told her pastor she had been called to the ministry, he laughed .

“He said, ‘God don’t call no women to the ministry,’” Joyce recalled .

But she knew what she heard, and she’d clearly heard the call . She told the pastor she wasn’t upset with him, that the Lord had spoken to her and she was moving forward . God told her to leave that church, and she did . One Sunday morning she got up and was inspired to find a new church. She drove to four churches and each time, discovered she couldn’t get out of the car .

But it was different when she parked in front of Union Baptist Church. The Sunday service was about to begin so she walked up the steps and pulled on the door . It was locked . She got back in the car, drove a block, and turned

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around and went back. This time there was a woman walking up the steps who invited her in . The church was dark and cold . Joyce wanted to leave, but she stayed . About a dozen members arrived and she sang and prayed with them .

That was 20 years ago, and she’s been there ever since . In 2001, she was licensed, becoming the first female minister in the church’s 184-year history, furthering the church’s mission of faith, education and activism. Pastor Kelvin Ellison appointed her to preside over the women’s ministry and prison ministry . A year later she was ordained to perform all ministerial duties.

About Union Baptist ChurchUnion Baptist Church was founded in 1837 by Rev.

John Livingston . Members were freed people, and others who escaped via the Underground Railroad. Members initially met in homes and later built a two-story frame building in 1854, with Alton’s first African-American school on the lower level. But the church fell on hard times and was forced to sell the property in 1876, returning to meeting in homes.

In 1902, the mayor gave the church land across the street on Seventh and George, and for $8,000, members built a brick church with stained glass windows to honor pioneer members . Membership dropped to as few as 10 members in 2000, but has increased to about 60 since.

Joyce Elliott pins a floral ribbon of her own making on Mattie Buford to recognize her for her contributions at the Sullivan Homes public housing project in Alton . Joyce grew up there with her father and siblings . The housing development has since been razed . Photo by Sylvester Jacobs .

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26Joyce Elliott with her sister Betty Holloway. (Photo provided by Joyce Elliott)

Chapter 6

Hands on the gospel plow

Joyce never forgot about her mother, never stopped longing for her, and their relationship continued over the 400-mile distance between Alton and Earnese’s

most recent home in Helena, Ark ., about 50 miles east of her birthplace in Holly Grove. When her mother was 84 and developed congestive heart failure, Joyce moved her to Alton . It had been 50 years since they lived in the same town . Joyce’s mother and father never divorced, primarily out of stubbornness, she said . Her father always said if she wanted a divorce, she’d have to pay for it because he paid for the license .

Two years after moving to Alton, Earnese was critically injured in a car accident . Joyce stood over her in intensive care, pulling pieces of glass the nurses had missed from the back of her head . She prayed and sang to her . When Earnese regained consciousness but couldn’t speak, Joyce held up a white board for her to use . When she began physical therapy, Joyce did the movements alongside her .

She had her mother back, and she wasn’t about to let her go .

Joyce Elliott with her parents

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Earnese learned to walk again, leaning on her strengths of independence and stubbornness, Joyce said, knowing those are her strengths too .

“I knew Mom was strong by how she treated people . She was good to people who were not necessarily good to her . I learned how to love and forgive people because of my mother. My mom had to have had this extreme faith in God to be able to survive what she went through .”

Throughout all those years without her children, Earnese “kept her hands on the gospel plow,” Joyce wrote in a tribute to her mother after her death in 2008, at the age of 92. Over the years she learned that her mother’s life in Arkansas was not unlike her own . Earnese was active in the church, choir and missionary work, serving in leadership roles. She worked voter registration drives for the NAACP . When informed, Earnese wouldn’t miss a birth or a graduation, boarding a Greyhound bus for the trip to Alton and as far as California .

“Her love for people was genuine. Once she met anyone, they became a new chapter in her life story,” Joyce said .

When Earnese died, she left something to every one of her six surviving children, two stepchildren, 32 grandchil-dren, 70 great-grandchildren, and 22 great-great grandchil-dren. Each received a monetary gift as designated in her will .

Looking at her mother’s photo on her dining room wall, Joyce said the men in her family weren’t as determined as the women and she didn’t understand why .

“My son often looks at the picture of us living sisters, and says, ‘I don’t understand it . Where does all that strength come from?’ He said he wished his dad had that . I told him, “You just grab what you can from me .’”

Joyce said her father was short and strong, well respect-

ed, who learned from his mistakes and taught her to stand up for herself .

“It made a difference,” she said. “I fought for every-thing .”

And what she has always turned to was the one thing that never left her.

“Faith,” she said . “Faith in God . Faith, faith, faith .”

Her heart has changed from the day she picked up that gun, she said . She can no longer hate, if she ever really could . Linwood lives within walking distance and stops by almost every day . When he was recovering from surgery two years ago, she took him in and cared for him .

“I don’t think anyone could anger me to the point of me wanting to hurt them in return,” she said. “I don’t think I’m there anymore . All those chains that were in my life, they’re broken. I am free and it makes a big difference in my life. I learned I can still love people, but not be bound by them .”

As for how her ex-husband feels decades after he faced that shotgun, it’s less important now .

“I didn’t figure she’d do nothing really bad,” Linwood said. “We were young and other than that we had a pretty good life . We were always close . If she needs me for something, I’ll be there for her . If I need her, she’ll be there for me .”

If it wasn’t for education, and the hope it gave her, Joyce believes her life would have turned out much differ-ently .

“I would have had no life at all,” she said . “I would proba-bly have been in a mental institution, seriously, or incar-cerated . Life would have been harder . I had my moments when I wanted to take my own life, but I thank God I rose above those circumstances .”

She’s never had all the answers, she said, “but God does .”

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Angela Elliott works as a physician in Bettendorf, Iowa.Photo by Sylvester Jacobs.

Chapter 7

Dr. Angela Elliott

When Dr. Angela Elliott’s only child, Ayana, was in fourth grade at her school in Bettendorf, Iowa, the teacher read a story to the class about Ruby

Nell Bridges, who as a nine-year-old in 1960 was the first to desegregate an all-white elementary school in New Orleans. It changed everything for Ayana, who was then nine years old as well .

As Angela recalled: “My daughter realized, ‘I’m the only Black student in the classroom . No one looks like me .’

“I don't know how it was read, or what was emphasized, but from that point on, a very noticeable change happened in her .”

Angela still doesn’t know what prompted it but one day her daughter got in trouble at school for writing a note with the words, “This is racist .” Ayana didn’t even have a clear understanding of what racism was, her mother said . Angela didn’t feel the teacher was being as supportive as she could have been . Things just didn't feel right, she said, so she started dropping into the classroom to observe, which was frowned upon .

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When Angela asked if Ayana could be transferred to another class, her request was denied . The principal said she'd never in her career transferred a student in the middle of a semester .

Ayana’s problems grew . She was bullied, and an Asian girl threatened her life . That’s when Angela went to see the principal again, who told her they were just being kids, and the other girl “came from a really good family .”

“She didn’t say anything about the kind of family Ayana came from but she was very protective of this other girl.”

That was enough . She transferred her daughter to another school district and things have been much better.

Angela is a family practice doctor at an urgent care center an hour away from her home in Bettendorf, Iowa, where patients have refused to be seen by her because of her race. Patients have said, ‘I don’t want to be seen by that (n-word) doctor,’ in her presence.

“When I first encountered that, it really hurt my feelings but then I developed a thicker skin,” Angela said . “Now I say, ‘OK,’ and ask another provider to see the patient and just move on to the next patient. I try to treat everybody with respect and kindness even if they don’t deserve it . I have had patients try and use intimidation, bullying. I’ve been cussed out . You want to say something back but at the risk of losing your job, you can’t . Do I feel I have protection? I don’t feel I do so that’s why a lot of things go untold .”

She’s also experienced microaggressions by staff, subtle racist behavior that she feels she has to ignore as the only full-time Black physician in the office.

“I’ll hear my counterparts joking about something I don’t think is appropriate . But who do I go tell, or is it even worth telling? So I just go about my job .”

When she goes home to Ayana, now 16, she has those discussions with her .

“I tell her no matter where you go, there are the same instances, but it’s all in the way you handle it . Pick your battles. Is it really worth it? Do you want to go down the road with this or not?”

Angela went to desegregated schools in Alton but never had a teacher of color . She had a diverse group of friends and neighbors, but doesn’t remember anyone treating anyone differently because of race. By middle school, she knew she wanted to become a doctor after watch-ing paramedics work on her mother who had a seizure at home . Joyce encouraged her daughter to pursue college, while her father did not . He wanted her to get a good job in Alton .

“I knew I had to get away,” Angela said. “I had to find my way . I felt I needed to grow up and handle things myself .”

She enrolled at Southern Illinois University-Edwards-ville on a scholarship, but followed her dream of attend-ing one of the historically Black colleges and universities. She transferred to Xavier University of Louisiana, earning her bachelor’s in chemistry/pre-med . Angela’s two older siblings, Joelle and Anthony, sent her money whenever they could .

Angela went on to earn her master’s degree in public health at Tulane University in New Orleans. Joyce loaned her daughter her car for two years while she walked or took a bus to work and church . Angela couldn’t get into the medical schools on her list, so she returned to Alton and took a position with Lewis and Clark Commu-nity College . As a counselor/advisor in Student Support Services, she helped students find a path to graduation, giving them the help she never had, teaching study skills and time management, and science. She took students on


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college visits as well . At night, she took classes to sharpen her skills as she reapplied to medical schools .

At 31, she was accepted into Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine in Pennsylvania, where she hoped to specialize in neonatology. But an experience with a 23-week premature infant changed her mind . And then, she had her own experience.

While in medical school, she became pregnant . She wasn’t sure she was going to have the baby . When she visited her family at Christmas, she hid her pregnancy, but the baby’s father told Joyce . Joyce in turn asked her what she was going to do . Angela said she didn’t know because she didn’t want to leave school . Joyce had something to say about that .

“I told her, ‘We don’t do abortions in this family, and you’re going to finish school. Your dad and I have invested everything that we have in you and you’re going to finish,’” Joyce said .

“I contemplated the abortion issue because she wasn’t a 'love child,'” Angela said . “I had to come to grips with that and my daughter knows that she was not planned .”

Angela decided this might be her only chance to have a child, although she had no idea how she was going to handle medical school and single parenting. Ayana was born two months later, at 23 weeks, weighing 1 pound, 4 ounces .

“It was very stressful,” Angela said . “She was a very sickly baby . I didn’t know if Ayana was going to live or die .”

Her mother told her she was going to need to figure this out on her own, but ended up flying to Pennsylva-nia to help care for the baby. After a few months, she brought Ayana home to live with her, while Angela was on rotations, helping raise her until she was 7.

Angela also had support from one of her professors who arranged for her to have extra time to complete her classes. More than a decade later, Dr. Silvia Ferretti remembers Angela as a hard-working student determined to finish.

“Many students would have given up, but Dr. Elliott persevered . Even with those stressors, she remained friendly and positive about her journey to be a physician. She did not use excuses, but just continued to work hard.”

At age 37, Angela earned her doctorate in osteopathic medicine .

“I remember seeing her beautiful daughter at gradua-tion, and thinking what a miracle that she was a healthy, normal child after such a tough beginning,” Ferretti said. “We were very proud to watch Dr. Elliott walk across the stage and be hooded as a D.O. culminating so many years of hard work .”

What happened next was another difficult chapter. Angela started a residency in Indianapolis, but it wasn’t a good fit. One of the physicians she worked for threatened to end her career. The conflict was racially motivated, Angela believes. She finished her residency in Bettendorf, Iowa, and started practicing.

Angela says Ayana is a very involved junior at Betten-dorf High School, an athlete, violinist, active in theater and the community, involved with two churches and perfectly OK with being an “average” student.

“I don’t think she values education as much as we all have,” Angela said . “I hope it comes soon .”

Ninety-five percent of students at Ayana’s high school are white . Among faculty, the number is even higher, Angela said . She’s not aware of any teachers of color in the district . She’s brought the issue forward, speaking with the principal .


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“We’ve had discussions about that, why there aren't many people of color in positions of authority, namely teachers .”

She’s also had discussions with her daughter about college, and hopes she’ll choose a historically Black college or university . Ayana has her heart set on Howard Universi-ty in Washington, D .C ., but her mother tells her she’s going to have to work harder .

“I’ve been speaking to her since she was young about college, and I’ve always been an advocate for HBCU universities. There’s not the haves and have-nots. You’re pretty much on a level playing field.”

Joyce has been taking Ayana to visit universities over summer breaks since she was 9, including Virginia Union University, a private historically Black university in Richmond, Virginia. Angela has enrolled her daughter in summer camps on college campuses, from engineering and robotics to leadership, economics, and writing camps.

For now, Ayana is interested in criminology and sociol-ogy. She wants to do something different than her mother, but has questions and fears common among those her age.

“I’ve been thinking,” Ayana said . ‘What if I change what I want to do? What if I don’t know? What if I don’t figure it out before the end of high school?’”

And that was before a global pandemic changed every-thing . When schools closed in the spring of 2020 because of COVID-19, her mother sent her back to Alton to live with her grandmother, feeling for a number of reasons it was the safest place for her .

“Being exposed to COVID-positive patients at work and possibly bringing it home, I had to face the reality,” Angela said. “What if I died during this time? What would happen? I knew my mother and sister would take care of her in a way I would want them to if something happened to me .”

At first, there wasn’t enough personal protective equip-ment at work, and Angela had to keep wearing the same mask longer than she was taught in medical school. After a 12-hour shift, she’d change her clothes in the garage, spray her shoes with Lysol, and jump in the shower .

She took out more life insurance . And she stayed close to Ayana through texts and video chats, helping her with homework . It wasn’t enough, but it was all they had . They were separated for Ayana’s 16th birthday, but Angela and Joyce organized a sweet 16 party, with a drive-by celebra-tion, gifts opened over Zoom, and a virtual dance party that lasted until 4 a.m.

The month after, in May 2020, the world changed again as the nation erupted in protests following the murder of George Floyd during an arrest in Minneapolis . All three generations of Elliott women participated in marches, Angela alone in Iowa, and Joyce and Ayana side-by-side on the streets of Alton .

“I walked until my feet hurt,” Ayana said.

In August, she returned home to Iowa and prepared for her virtual classroom . There were new rules that were hard to follow, from not seeing friends to avoiding spontaneous hugs with her mother .

“She’d come up to me and say, ‘Hey mom, how’s your day?’ And I’d say NO, you can’t hug me yet. Once I’m all cleaned up you can hug me,” Elliott said.

Saying it was stressful isn’t enough, she added . The clinic she works at didn’t require staff to be routinely tested, but she tested herself . When schools reopened, Angela sent Ayana with an N95 mask, a face shield, and a big bottle of hand sanitizer.

“She didn’t want to wear the shield because it was not cool, not fashionable . She told me her other friends were not doing it . I told her, ‘I’m sorry, you must wear this .’”


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Ayana is riding the bus again . She is on the cheer team, and is back to playing the violin live in orchestra, rather than on Zoom . She loves chilling and hanging out with her mom, listening to music together and watching Netflix movies .

“Covid isn’t affecting me as much as I thought it would,” Ayana said . “Sure I have to wear a mask and places I can go are very limited but we still get to do sports in school. It’s more open to what we can do now .”

The Elliotts lost several members of their extended family during the pandemic, some from natural causes, others from COVID-19. Angela didn’t have time to grieve or attend services. Yet, she wouldn’t say it was the worst year of her life .

“Even all that I’ve had to deal with, good or bad, I still see the blessings in 2020,” she said . “Maybe I should feel bad for having some peace of mind and joy, but I’m a realist . I see how these things happen . I believe in God and I know what the Bible says about a change in seasons. I definitely rely on my faith. And that gives me peace . It really does .”

Joyce Elliott with her daughters, Alison Joelle Randolph (left) and Angela Elliott Photo by Sylvester Jacobs.

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Anthony in a photo from the 1980s.

Chapter 8

“We called her Ma’am”

All three of Joyce’s children graduated from high school, to which she says, “Thank you, Jesus .” With only four years between the eldest and youngest,

she had three in college at the same time.

Anthony was born in 1968. He was a handsome child, and so smart he could read and write before kindergar-ten . Joyce sent him to a Catholic preschool because she thought the education system was better, and she thought the nuns would be a good influence.

But when Anthony started kindergarten in the Alton public school system, he was bored . He didn’t want to do the work; it wasn’t a challenge for him. By first grade, he had fallen behind and had to repeat the year. The next year the principal thought he should skip second grade and rejoin his peers in third, but Joyce disagreed . The principal prevailed but four months later realized his mistake and wanted to drop him back . Joyce wasn’t having it . Anthony was doing the work but not his very best .

“I said, ‘You must be out of your mind . You are not putting him back.’ I had to fight with the board of educa-tion on that one.”

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Because of redistricting, Anthony couldn’t attend the elementary school within walking distance . Instead, he had to ride a bus, which Joyce wasn’t having either . Nothing good happens on the bus, she said, so she drove him to school in her burgundy Malibu .

Anthony calls his mother “a very powerful lady,” who emphasized morals, values, and respect . He can laugh now about the day she showed up to take him out of class because he hadn’t made his bed .

“I said, ‘Yes, Ma’am .’ That’s what we called her Ma’am .”

Anthony had his own room in their three-bedroom home, but calling it a room was generous . It was a walk-in closet . With his arms outstretched, he could almost touch both walls . The family lived in a diverse middle-class neigh-borhood . His mom was there when he got home from school and they’d sit down as a family for supper . If dad wasn’t home, they’d take turns saying grace .

Although he had plenty of space to play in, with a big yard and a telephone pole in the backyard with a basket-ball rim nailed to it, on some days he was more attracted to the kids who lived down the street in the housing project where his mother grew up .

“Those kids wanted what I had and I wanted what they had,” he said. “The energy there was attractive to me.”

Joyce wanted to keep her son busy . He had a paper route, and saved those few dollars a week for clothes and tennis shoes. He was active in church and choir, not that it was an option. His mother was director of the church’s youth group .

“I had to sing,” he said . “She had a bad thing about pulling my ears if I wasn’t doin’ what she wanted me to do .”

In middle school and high school, he became more engaged in music, playing percussion in the symphony and

marching band. It was a pretty normal middle-class life, but he was never allowed to forget he was Black . There was discrimination, and he couldn’t avoid it even when he tried to stay out of the way . There were protests at Alton High School and he remembers Black students rioting over the death of “Big D,” a Black student who drowned at camp .

“Somehow, he drowned and he could swim good,” Anthony said .

Anthony didn’t go near the protests, or the fights that broke out at his high school. It was the early ‘80s, after the TV mini-series “Roots” aired, and that’s what stirred things up, he said .

“That was very impactful,” he said. “It created tension around town . Fights broke out for nothing .”

The group he hung out with headed him in the wrong direction.

“They were hustlers and so-called gangsters,” he said . “That was kinda attractive to me at the time.”

Black residents felt the town was pushing them out of their neighborhoods as housing projects were being torn down, and they felt targeted by police, he said .

“There was just nowhere for us to network . It got so bad that we couldn’t even be at the park . The white guys could be up there in the parking lot uptown hanging out, and the police wouldn’t bother them . That bothered us because we could be in our own neighborhood and they would come in and bother us .”

There were a few Black officers, but too few, he said.

“We were targets . They’d give us a record early in high school or whenever that would keep us from getting good jobs, so that was a barricade .”

Anthony’s choices made his high school years difficult. His mother made him move out, telling him he could come

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back when his behavior changed . She also told him that if he got involved in drugs, she would turn him in . When he was a senior, he told her he was dropping out of school and she told him he was out of his mind . That’s when she wrote her first rap song, about what a fool he’d be to drop out of school . Anthony got the message and graduated, although she had to persuade him to attend the ceremony.

“I’m so glad I did it,” he said . “It was a very good feeling .”

With an aptitude for math and drafting, Anthony had his mind set on a drafting career and enrolled in Lewis and Clark Community College, living at home. After his first year, his mother opened a piece of mail that confirmed her suspicion . Although he’d been on campus, he wasn’t going to class, so she made him move out .

“I couldn’t follow the rules,” he said . “So I had to go .”

He hustled to make a living, he said . Some jobs were legitimate, like mowing lawns; others were not. In his early 20s, he was arrested and convicted of a firearms charge. He was sentenced to eight months in prison .

But that wasn’t enough to change his direction. A few years later, police kicked his door in and arrested him on drug charges. By this time he had three children, Aaron, Arielle and Arthur . Joyce took the children to visit their father in the medium-security prison three hours away . Earnese went too, submitting to a body search to see her grandson .

Those years are long behind Anthony now . He takes full responsibility for his life, saying God gave him choices and he made some bad ones . While in prison he became a licensed barber, and later learned construction in trade school. Afraid trouble was going to find him again in Alton, he moved to Arlington, Texas, in 2009.

“The hardest thing was the best thing, leaving Alton,” he said . “I shut those doors, came down here and opened

some new doors and I’m doing a whole lot better than I was before .”

His mother agreed he had to leave .

“My son, he has learned a lot . I had to get him away from his relatives, loose women, and drugs. I told him, ‘That is not a life for you .’”

Anthony has married and divorced, and along with his three children, has a grandson, Ameer Muhammed . He hasn’t given up on his hometown, trying in small ways to make life better for Blacks who live there. When he visited in 2019, he made posters for local businesses that said, “Let’s restore unity in the community .”

He has faith, which keeps showing up like it did for his mother. When he was working at a hospital construction project, being lifted five stories on outdoor scaffolding every morning, he’d say a prayer .

“Lord, I thank you for your mercy . I thank you for your grace . I thank you for your holy love that lets me remain in this worldly place .”

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Alison Joelle Elliott Randolph is a legal secretary in the Madison County State’s Attorney’s office. Photo by Sylvester Jacobs.

Chapter 9

A as in A Student

Alison Joelle Elliott came along in 1970, two years after Anthony. You may notice a pattern here. All of Joyce’s children have first names that begin with A

-- as in A student, Joyce likes to say. You may have noticed, as well, that Angela and Anthony’s children have first names that begin with an A and Joelle’s daughter is named Alaina .

When she was in high school, Alison told her mother that her name sounded too white so she wanted to be known as Joelle. Joyce had named her Alison after her favorite actress in the 1960s television series Peyton Place, the fictional character Allison MacKenzie.

Although Joelle’s father, Linwood Elliott, was in her mother’s life at the time she was born, they wouldn’t marry for another two years . Joelle remembers a close family, with parents having very distinct roles. Joyce was the disci-plinarian and took care of the home . Linwood was more laid back . He brought home the paycheck, working over the years at Olin Chemical, Alton Box Board and Clark Oil.

Joelle was popular in school, more outgoing than her siblings . She was a good student, but acknowledges she

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could have been even better. In fifth grade, she took her mother’s advice to stand up for herself .

“I used to get picked on because I was small . My mom said I needed to start speaking up and when she told me that, I started speaking up .”

She had no shortage of friends, and they liked to hang out at her house .

“People know when they go into a house if they have love . Mom always made people feel welcomed and loved .”

As the middle child, her role was negotiator, and she wasn’t afraid to negotiate with her mom.

“I’d sit down and talk to her about an issue and I’d say, ‘I know you have your opinion but I gotta voice mine.’ My sister wouldn’t sit down like that, or my brother . When we would get in trouble, I’d go to mom asking, ‘Mom, can we just have a meetin’ first?’ and then I’d get them together and say, ‘OK, let’s make sure our stories are all together now .’”

During her senior year, her parents divorced, which didn’t bother her then, and still doesn’t.

“The only difference was dad wasn’t in the house. He was still there for us.”

When she got a scholarship to an Alabama university, where she wanted to pursue her dream of becoming a lawyer, her father told her she couldn’t go because it was too far away and they didn’t have family there . Joelle didn’t like his decision, but she respected it so she enrolled at Lewis and Clark Community College .

Joyce said Linwood didn’t encourage his children to go out and explore the world like she did.

“I took them everywhere,” she said . “He wanted to protect them, but I don’t know from what .”

While attending college and working, Joelle developed some health issues and had to make a choice. Only a semester away from graduating from college, she dropped out. She still thinks about going back. She went to work for the Madison County State’s Attorney’s office, where she’s been 27 years, the last 20 as a legal secretary .

At 26, she became a single parent to a daughter, Alaina Cochran. Seven years later, she married Kamal Randolph, who had a daughter, Jordan, the same age . Alaina has her associate’s degree and a goal of becoming an archi-tect . Jordan has a bachelor’s in social work and wants to become an attorney.

Joelle is clear in the message she delivers to both of them .

“I tell my daughters all the time to keep going to school while they can .”

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Epilogue

Freedom through forgiveness

While preaching at Union Baptist Church, Joyce encouraged those sitting in the pews, standing and swaying, and voicing the occasional “Amen”

to offer their shoulders to lift up those around them, especially the children .

“What gift do you have that you’re willing to go all the way to make it work for another generation?” she asked. “Are you determined to make a change, not only in your life, but in the lives of others? We need to leave a legacy that is meaningful. It is so important for us to think beyond ourselves.”

Standing in a church founded by former slaves, she reminded members it’s their responsibility to thank those who have traveled before them, and move forward their purpose of encouraging, educating, and transforming others in their journey.

“Fight for others, not with your hands, but with your brain, your integrity and your heart, giving it all that you have,” she said.

Minister Joyce Elliott at home.Photo by Sylvester Jacobs.

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Joyce knows about the fight. It’s what she’s been doing for more than seven decades, fighting to be heard, seen and valued. Fueled by her faith, she made others believe in her, but only after she started believ-ing in herself. Not only did she fight through all the times she felt she had less than she deserved, she for-gave those who took what she had, and that’s moved her forward.

“Forgiveness is for you, it’s not for the person you’re forgiving,” she said. “I found that out. It makes you feel so free, and freedom is so important to me. If you really want to be free and move on with your life, you forgive, otherwise, you’re held captive and I re-fuse to be held captive. I’ve gone on with my life. I’m a happy person. I’m not the prisoner that I once was. I went to hell and back, but I’m good. I have things to do.”

And she has a list. She would love to travel to Israel and explore the places she’s read about in the Bible, but that would cost a lot more than the $100 a day a substitute teacher makes. She wants to take her 17-year-old granddaughter Ayana to visit colleges this year, including historically black colleges and universi-ties, and she’ll make that happen.

And then she’ll focus on what’s closer to home. Pulling out two 1989 Alton newspapers, she read the headlines from more than 30 years ago, which sound too familiar – “Racial problem still lingers in the Alton area,” and “Prejudice hits people in every place they live.”

Alton has its first Black mayor, the Rev. David Goins, a Baptist pastor and retired Alton police officer. “Maybe that’s a change that’s going to make a differ-ence,” she said, in a way that sounded a lot like doubt.

Joyce will go to city council meetings, and she will keep answering her landline, which rings nearly every

day with someone asking for a little of her time, or a lot. She would like to live to be 100, but she will not get there quietly.

She believes she’s learned the lessons she was supposed to learn, and one of those is huge.

“I have learned to appreciate being me,” she said. “Indeed, that was God’s plan for my spiritual growth.”

Joyce Elliott with her sister Betty Holloway.

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