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November 05, 2008
A Neat Story
Via Insta, she's got to be one of the last, if not the last, child of a slave still alive
Along a rural highway in central Texas sits a small white house with some cows grazing out back and a wheelchair ramp leading to the front screen door. Inside that house lives Amanda Jones, 109, the daughter of a slave. No one in her family, least of all Jones, thought she would live long enough to vote for the man who is to become the first black president.Jones is the living link between the time when black men were owned as property and the time when a black man has been elected president of the United States.
...Her father was Emmanuel Alfred Roberts, who was emancipated in 1865 at the age of 12. He took the name of his last master, a farmer and rancher named Abe Roberts.
He eventually married Moriah Josephine Washington. They farmed on Alum Creek, east of Austin, and had 13 children. Amanda Jones is the sole survivor.
She remembers very little of what her father told her about slavery days.
"When he was a little boy, he herded [the master's] sheep," she says, and he protected them from mountain lions that then prowled the forests of central Texas.
A precious piece of history she is.
God bless her.
Posted by Mr. Bingley at November 5, 2008 08:56 AM
Comments
That is way cool.
Posted by: Ken S, Fifth String on the Banjo of Life at November 5, 2008 10:51 AM
Rock'm sock'm, and God Bless her.
I can't help but add that I wish her dream had come true with Thomas Sowell or Clarence Thomas instead of the Dalai Obama, but it IS still history and it is still amazing.
Posted by: nightfly at November 5, 2008 02:58 PM