Josephine Bolling McCall, author of The Penalty for Success: My Father Was Lynched in Lowndes County, was born in Lowndes County, Alabama. She attended G. W. Carver High School in Montgomery, Alabama State University and Auburn University. She is a Nationally Certified School Psychologist (retired) and was the first Black president of the Alabama Association of School Psychologists and the first person ever elected to serve two presidential terms. She was the first Black person to serve as Alabama’s delegate to the National Association of School Psychologists. She retired as Director of Special Education from the Phenix City Public Schools.

After retirement, she served as the Director of the Alabama League for the Advancement of Education where she worked with six historically Black colleges providing tutorial and other educational services to public school children. She currently serves as the president of The Elmore Bolling Foundation which she founded to preserve the legacy of her father, Elmore Bolling. According to the NAACP, Bolling was “too prosperous as a Negro farmer”. Josephine and husband, Charlie, have two children: Carlton Alan (Chuck) McCall and Jerilyn McCall Corlew; three grandchildren: Adam McCall, Matthew and Clark Corlew.