A Mobile native, Joyner graduated from Most Pure Heart of Mary School in 1952, and went on to Loyola University in Chicago, intending to pursue pre-law. After two years, she changed her course of study to a pre-med curriculum. She returned home to Mobile in 1954, where she transferred to Spring Hill College.
After graduating from Spring Hill in 1958 with a degree in biology, Joyner went on to attend Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn., earning an M.D. in 1963. The following year she moved to Washington, D.C., in 1963 when she was offered a position as a resident in psychiatry at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, according to a statement from Spring Hill College.
In 1979, she and her family moved to suburban Clifton, Va. Eight years later, she retired from St. Elizabeth’s and established a private practice in psychiatry in Alexandria, Va., and worked at a state-run mental health clinic in Springfield, Va. She retired from her practice in 2014 at age 80, according to SHC.
That was very nice of the catholics in 1954 to allow blacks to attend their school.