Oral history with Mrs. Lillie Jones, native Mississippian

              Oral history with Mrs. Lillie Jones, native Mississippian
This oral history is provided through a cooperative project of University of Southern Mississippi Libraries and USM's Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage.
Funding provided by a National Leadership Grant for Libraries from the Institute for Museum and Library Services
The transcript is presented here for reference purposes only. Interviews in this collection are protected by copyright. PERMISSION TO PUBLISH MUST BE REQUESTED from the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. Please call ( 601) 266- 4574 for more information.
Biography
Mrs. Lillie Jones was born in 1892, in Lauderdale County, Mississippi, on her parent's farm, but moved to Neshoba County at a very early age. Her father taught school, but the family was broken up when he moved to Texas and she did not see him again. Mrs. Jones was one of twelve children, of which only she and one sister were surviving when the oral history was recorded.
Mrs. Jones attended a rural school when students were given only four months of education in a year. Upon completion of the eighth grade her schooling ended. She married in 1908 to a classmate and they made their life farming. She recalls that " I raised my family on forty acres of land." The Joneses became parents of ten children, and life became more difficult after Mr. Jones died in 1943. Nevertheless, she can say with pride that " I finished schooling my children after he died."
Mrs. Jones has lived in Philadelphia, Mississippi, for many years, and became active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s because " I did not believe in a heap of this stuff." She sensed the inequality and stood up for her rights. " When I was growing up playing with the white children, I told them ' you do anything to me I'm going to do it back to you, because I'm just as good as you is."'
Abstract
The oral history recorded with Mrs. Lillie Jones brings out, in the words of a proud lady, her feelings about the inequality of her people, the black race, and some of the efforts that she made to gain a measure of freedom. Mrs. Jones was well into the seventh decade of her life, but participated in marches, traveled to the national capital to testify before legislative committees, and went to various northern cities to tell the people how life was for black people in Mississippi. She emerges as a brave and philosophical person.
The history opens with Mrs. Jones's reminiscences about her family background and life in Mississippi for a young black girl at the turn of the century. She was one child of twelve in a farm family in rural Mississippi. There was little to do but work, go to church, and her education was taken at a country school where the school session covered only four months of the year. Also, the eighth grade was generally the end of the educational experience for most students. Mrs. Jones discusses life on the farm and she notes
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