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November 2, 2008
The Promised Land
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 Republican-leaning 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.
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.
Filed under: Barack Obama || Election 2008 || Polls || Republicans
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Posted By Bob Cesca | November 2, 2008 2:20 PM
Comments
How can read that and swell with pride?
Posted by: bibimimi ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.bobcesca.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at November 2, 2008 2:33 PM
How can read that and NOT swell with pride?
*crap!*
Posted by: bibimimi at November 2, 2008 2:34 PM
I CAN have it both ways...the shame of slavery and the joy of Ms Jones getting to cast her WHOLE vote for Obama!
Posted by: bibimimi at November 2, 2008 2:37 PM
Amazing.
Posted by: Broadway Carl at November 2, 2008 2:39 PM
Congrats, Bob.
You've made this tough guy mist up again.
Posted by: PackyJ at November 2, 2008 2:57 PM
Do they make an antidepressant type drug for good crying? Wait--I'm enjoying this. It's like with manic episodes, nobody having one ever wants to me medicated.
Posted by: dontpanic23 at November 2, 2008 6:02 PM
BE, dammit.BE. That was not Freudian, either.
Posted by: dontpanic23 at November 2, 2008 6:03 PM
I also was touched by this one. Go Bob!
Posted by: GItheJOE at November 2, 2008 6:09 PM
In honor of Amanda and Obama:
THE CROSSING (by Langston Hughes):
It was that lonely day folks, when I walked by myself,
My friends was all there with me, but it was as if they’d left.
I went up on the mountain in a high cool wind,
And the coat that I was wearing was mosquito-netting thin.
I went down to the valley
And I crossed an icy stream,
And the water I was crossing was no water in a dream,
And the shoes that I was wearing, no protection from that stream.
I stood out on the prairie, and as far as I could see,
Wasn’t no one on that prairie who looked like me.
Posted by: CycloCynic at November 2, 2008 8:04 PM
