Lewis, Joice Christine Bailey: - During the Jim Crow era in Alabama, African American children were told by their parents and teachers that they had to be "ten times better than their white counterparts just to stay even." Striving to be ten times better became the standard behavior for Joice Lewis, who achieved success with ten times fewer resources and against ten times greater odds. What sustained her during the most difficult times was the evidence that her people had survived the hardships faced during two periods of slavery: the enslavement of Africans and the era of sharecropping. Raised on a sharecropping farm, she was a gifted learner who had no money to go to college. Joice Lewis, nevertheless, found a way to achieve a doctoral degree at prestigious universities and experience success as a top-level educator. She was married to her high school sweetheart until his passing for sixty-two years.