Allie Dowdle is an 18-year-old private school student from Eads, Tennessee outside of Memphis.

She has kept up a 4.0 GPA since 9th grade and has completed 5 AP courses.

Dowdle is active in student life on campus, being a part of equality organization such as Coexist and Facing History and Ourselves.Aspiring

to work in healthcare, Dowdle completed a 2-month fellowship at Regional One Health in downtown Memphis.

For the past year, Dowdle has been seeing an African American student named Michael Swift. When she first showed her parents a picture of Michael, they strong expressed their disappointment in her choosing her to date a person of color. After seeing each other discreetly for some time, in December of 2016 Dowdle tried to introduce Michael to her parents in person, but she described the meeting as "much more drastic than she expected."

When she turned 18, her parents cut her off financially, including her personal savings, car, phone, and college education.

In order to help herself pay for her first year of college, she created a GoFundMe for herself.

Dowdle's father says that he still loves her daughter and that he and his wife are focused on her graduating high school.