When I was a little girl, I hung on every
word my Grandpa Clarence Jones
said. He was a beautiful, God-fearing man who had quite an influence on my
life. Despite the hard things he had been through, he seemed to have a deep
enjoyment of life and love for the Lord. I can still see him a short,
powerful gentleman with high cheekbones and a large nose. His hair was so
white we had to look very hard to find a black hair on his head. I loved to
be around him. The minute he started talking, he had my complete attention.
I
remember sitting on the porch on cool summer evenings, listening to Grandpa
Jones tell stories about his life.
Clarence Jones was born into slavery in the early 1860s in these United
States. He, his mother, and his two brothers worked for a family who lived
on
a small farm in Mississippi. I remember him telling me that his mother worked
in the master's kitchen, where the women had to do the cooking and the
washing and all the other household chores. After his mother had fed the
master's family, she would sometimes bring her own family a little bit of
leftover sausage. It tasted delicious to the boys because they were eating
something from the master's table. Clarence's family and the other slaves
weren't allowed to eat in the same room, or share the same food, as the
master and his family….
