The Promise of Friendship

JO EVANS LYNN, a native of Greensboro, N.C., taught nearly every grade level and every form of English/language arts during her 37 years in education. She graduated from James B. Dudley High School in 1967 and from Shaw University in 1970. She also received a Masters Degree in Reading Education from North Carolina A&T State University. She began her teaching career teaching middle school in Charlotte Courthouse, Virginia in 1972, but spent most of the early years of her teaching career in the Alamance County Schools teaching Title I Reading at Clover Garden Elementary School (9 years) and Reading Competency/College Prep English at Eastern Alamance High School (5 years). In 1987, she transferred and continued teaching Title I Reading, English, Journalism, Drama, and Speech & Debate at various high schools in the Greensboro City & Guilford County Schools in Greensboro, North Carolina (Grimsley Senior High School-10 years, James B. Dudley Senior High School-8 years, & GTCC Early/Middle College at Jamestown -2 years).

Her diverse experiences as a language arts teacher reinforced her belief that even fiction should be based on real life experiences. In all of her books, the reader shares her experiences during the 1950s & 1960s as an African-American child growing up on the "Colored" side of town in the segregated South and as a teen searching for a place in the world around her in which the rules of life and social order are changing almost daily. Although her subjects are sometimes both serious and controversial, her sense of humor and spiritual faith always shine through as she "speaks" to her readers about the realities of growing up poor and as the second eldest of seven children. She is the divorced mother of three adult children- Janel L. Johnson, Clyde Lynn, III, and Gloria A. Lynn.