In 2011, Williams-Bolar was jailed for sending her two daughters to school in a predominately White school district in which her father lived. This year, audiences will be able to get a more in-depth look behind-the-scenes when her story is brought to life with her upcoming book, The Kelly Williams-Bolar Story set for an April 1 release and a movie, directed by Stephen Stix Josey and starring Garrett Morris and A Different World’s Charnele Brown, who will portray Williams-Bolar.
The family had lived in an Akron, Ohio housing project neighborhood where lacking schooling options spurred her to ask her father if she could she use his address to enroll her children in a school in his Copley Township school district in Ohio. Her children were enrolled for two years until the school district filed criminal charges against her for enrolling her children in a school district where she was not a legal resident. Williams-Bolar, like many of her supporters, to this day, asserts that the charges were racially motivated.
“There weren’t that many minorities out there,” Williams-Bolar says. “This was their way to narrow down our enrollment. I didn’t hear them say that, but at the same time there were only a sprinkle [of non-White students].”