BK Educator, Disability Advocate and Mother Dies at 47, Sparking Conversation Around Stress, Self-Care for Black Women in the U.S.

“She was just a beam of love.” 

This is the sparkling, joy-filled legacy Jeannine Rochelle King leaves with her students, family members, co-workers and friends, her colleague Regine Romain told BK Reader.  

King died of a heart attack in her Brooklyn home on April 3, 2023, at only 47 years old. She was a deeply empathetic educator who specialized in teaching students with learning disabilities, fiercely advocating for the needs of Black, disabled and LGBTQ+ students during her time as a teacher, Romain said. 

King impacted thousands of children at the Bronx Community Charter School, where she was the director of student support, and at the NYC Charter School Center, where she was the inclusive education specialist. 

Her quest for inclusive education is personal as well as political. She fiercely advocated for her transgender son, Naima Ryan, and provided a safe, loving home for him to process his transition. She joined Ryan, who is now 20, in family counseling and made sure he was being respected and validated in school settings. 

King grew up in Austin, Texas, and moved to Brooklyn 23 years ago with Teach for America.

Her funeral on April 12 was a packed house, with colleagues, friends, family and students in attendance. 

She is survived by her husband Christopher Reid; her son Naima Ryan; her mother Gloria King; her sister Alice Alexander; her brother-in-law Leo Alexander; her in-laws Lori and Christopher Llewellyn, Kenneth Reid, Nicole and Gabriel Okoth.

Her husband said a few of her students — who are now in their 20s — attended the funeral in support of their former teacher. King taught with her whole heart, incorporating pop culture and music into her lessons so that students would experience the joy of learning.

“They loved her,” Reid said. “They had to come show love.”

Reid knows how they felt. When King met Reid in 2019, the connection was instant. They talked on the phone every day. On their first date, they went to the movie “Gemini Man” — they had the same taste for sci-fi thrillers. Both deeply in love, they got married just three months later. 

“I felt like she was my best friend so I wanted to have my best friend forever,” Reid said of the quick engagement. 

The heart attack felt mysterious, Reid said. On April 3, she had felt some cramps and fainted twice, but when paramedics arrived on the scene, they said she was likely having a panic attack and hesitated to give her oxygen, Reid said. 

“I don’t know what it was exactly, I ordered an autopsy, but I don’t know. It ultimately was a heart attack; that’s what it said on the death certificate, but who knows?” Reid said. 

King’s friend and colleague of seven years, Natalie Zwerger, the executive director at RE-Center Race & Equity in Education, said the possibility of societal factors added to the distressing nature of King’s death.

“She’s not the first Black woman of our team who we have lost as a community very suddenly,” Zwerger said. 

King participated in nearly every workshop RE-Center offered — sometimes commuting for hours to make it happen, Zwerger said — and had been planning on leading a liberatory workshop series in California specifically for Black women. One of the events King attended was a book club discussion of “Rest is Resistance” by Tricia Hersey, which advocates for self-care as an antidote to capitalism and racism. 

In the U.S., Black, non-Hispanic women have higher rates of hypertension and shorter life expectancies than their white, non-Hispanic counterparts, according to the Journal of Women’s Health.

“There’s so much harm in the world, right, and the impact of systems of racism — and all the systems that she was impacted by — also takes a toll on your body,” Zwerger said. 

King was aware of this grim reality and made it her life’s work to create rejuvenating, supportive spaces where these negative patterns could be disrupted. 

“Rest is powerful. And it is resistance to the oppressive culture that has us moving at breakneck speed to be ‘enough,’” King wrote in an Instagram post in November 2022. 

King was well known for the month-long trip to Mexico she took every year after school ended, where she would unwind with family and dive deep into self-care. It was a month when she prioritized rest, rejuvenation and making fun memories. It was more than just a vacation — it was her form of resistance. 

“She lived every day of her life like a party, she really did,” Reid said. 

“She had such a bright smile,” Romain said. “She was just such a sage and lively person.” 

King’s family is asking for donations to go toward Naima’s college fund and immediate expenses like the funeral and reception.