Posted on 11/03/2008 6:32:12 AM PST by forkinsocket
Amanda Jones, 109, the daughter of a man born into slavery, has lived a life long enough to touch three centuries. And after voting consistently as a Democrat for 70 years, she has voted early for the country's first black presidential nominee.
The middle child of 13, Jones, who is African American, is part of a family that has lived in Bastrop County for five generations. The family has remained a fixture in Cedar Creek and other parts of the county, even when its members had to eat at segregated barbecue dives and walk through the back door while white customers walked through the front, said Amanda Jones' 68-year-old daughter, Joyce Jones.
For at least a decade, Amanda Jones worked as a maid for $20 a month, Joyce Jones said. She was a housewife for 72 years and helped her now-deceased husband, C.L. Jones, manage a store.
Amanda Jones, a delicate, thin woman wearing golden-rimmed glasses, giggled as the family discussed this year's presidential election. She is too weak to go the polls, so two of her 10 children — Eloise Baker, 75, and Joyce Jones — helped her fill out a mail-in ballot for Barack Obama, Baker said. "I feel good about voting for him," Amanda Jones said.
Jones' father herded sheep as a slave until he was 12, according to the family, and once he was freed, he was a farmer who raised cows, hogs and turkeys on land he owned. Her mother was born right after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, Joyce Jones said. The family owned more than 100 acres of land in Cedar Creek at one point, she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at statesman.com ...
Look like she's a slave just like her pappy.
And there you have America in the 21st Century. Feel-gooding its way to oblivion and ignorant of history despite this woman's age.
Daughter of Slave votes to become slave, that way the tradition continues...
Wouldn’t it be more significant to vote for a black man because he is actually qualified on an equal footing, rather than artificially elevated through a combination of machine politics, racial allegiance and white guilt?
Silly me.
The party of slavery and segregation. What IS it with people?
Still voting for slavery.
Insisting on being enslaved to someone.
Advocating to be enslaved to BIG government is not something to be proud of. U suppose infanticide doesn't bother her either. Very sad.
THIS household wants NOTHING TO DO WITH OBAMA VALUES!
Well shut my mouth.
It just proves that age doesn’t always bring wisdom, does it?
You know what...I’m really sad about the things this woman and her family suffered through. Slavery is a horrible scar on our nation’s history.
I can see how she might be moved, emotionally, to vote for The One, but, one shouldn’t vote for a person based only on their skin color.
I would LOVE to be able to vote for an African American for president some day. Today is NOT that day because Obama’s politics are the polar opposite of mine.
sadly she probably won’t live to enjoy her “reparations money.”
This is what my social security taxes pay for?!
“It just proves that age doesn’t always bring wisdom, does it?”
YUP!
STUCK ON STUPID!
I guess someone forgot to tell her that Obama’s ancestors were the ones selling her ancestors into slavery.
“And after voting consistently as a Democrat for 70 years”
She voted for Democrats when they were fighting segregation?
So can I. However, that doesn't explain her voting for white, segregationist Democrats for the previous 70 years.
I've been thinking the same thing for months!
What suffering?
Slavery was brought to an end 143 years ago (ironically as the result of the actions of a Republican president). This woman is 109 years old. Assuming she never lived in another country that has legalized slavery she was never a slave and never suffered from being a slave.
It’s such a touching story when a person is so happy to vote their skin color.
And just what would they have had if her family had stayed in Africa? Answer ....... most of them would not have been born....their ancestors would have died from disease early in life!
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