Josephine Bolling McCall retired from her illustrious career as a school psychologist and began a journey into the past. Her goal was to discover the truth about her father, Elmore Bolling, an entrepreneurial black man in Jim Crow Alabama who was murdered in 1947 when Jo was five years old.

After ten years of painstaking research, Jo came to understand the complex array of businesses that her father developed and that his murder in retaliation for his success was a lynching. In 2015, Jo published her book The Penalty for Success: My Father Was Lynched in Lowndes County, Alabama.

She is a sought-after media commentator and speaker who has appeared on PBS, NBC, ABC and WBAI/NYC. She has been interviewed by The New York Times for The 1619 Project and by the Associated Press.

Jo has told her father’s story to diverse audiences throughout the country including The Commonwealth Club of San Francisco; the Universities of San Francisco and Santa Clara; the libraries of Cambridge & Somerville, Massachusetts; the Massachusetts Supreme Court; the National Center for the Study of Civil Rights at Alabama State University; and the United States Holocaust Museum symposium at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, among many others.

Founder and President
The Elmore Bolling Foundation

Partner Affiliate, Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project
Northeastern University School of Law

Consultant, Alabama Black Belt National Heritage Area
National Parks Conservation Association

Nationally Certified School Psychologist
retired

First Black President
Alabama Association of School Psychologists

Alabama’s first Black delegate
National Association of School Psychologists

Past President, Montgomery Chapters
Delta Sigma Theta Sorority & The Links