Thursday, May 31, 2001

Nathan and Julia Jones have been married 64 years. The African-American couple lives on a farm 15 miles outside of Port Gibson, Miss.. They helped open Our Mart in 1967, a cooperative store owned jointly by black residents of Port Gibson that allowed them to boycott white businesses. The spoke with Post-Standard staff writer Teri Weaver.

Nathan Jones: I was born in 1914. That's a long time ago. Eighth grade was as far as I got in school. We lived on a farm; we were sharecroppers. There were 15 of us in our family.

When I got to age 21, I had to pay a poll tax. Without the poll tax, you wasn't able to vote. If you didn't pay your poll tax, they would pick you up and put you in jail. The poll tax was $3, once a year.

. . . You have to take this test to vote. The section, I believe, was dealing with eminent domain. She said, "You take this, and you write and copy all of this, and when you get through writing it, you write the interpretation of it, too." And I sat there just about three or four hours. When I got through, she looked at it and said, "You didn't make it this time, boy." I said, "Well, I'm going back."

I went and took it a second time. I don't know how many pages I had to write, because that section was long. We didn't pass that time.

Finally, they let us pass that test. It was 1962 before I could vote.

Julia Jones: I was born in 1919. I've lived in the country all my life. I've never lived in the city. I went to school until I was 17. When I was 17 years old, we got married. I worked on the farm. And I taught school for 10 or 11 years.

In 1971, I entered the race for (Claiborne County) circuit clerk. Before then, I registered to vote, in 1965 or 1966. And I didn't have any problems because the civil rights people had come down. And I was fortunate enough to win in 1971.

And I was frightened to death. I didn't know a thing about office work.

When the civil rights started, there were a lot of people going to jail. We would put up our land (for bond money) to get them out. Not just us, but several people. And when we would put that land up, they'd never release the bond.

When we would go to the bank for a loan, they would say you haven't cleared up your bond. That was one reason I really wanted to learn about that circuit clerk's office. When I got in, that was my main purpose. And when I found out, I knew our bonds were not held. After court is over (and charges are cleared), the bond is released. But they told us it was not released. And, therefore, they told us we could not borrow any money.