Great-great grandmother featured in N.Y. Times 1619 Project

NYT 1619 entry copy 2A piece of my family history was recently included in the New York Times’ 1619 Project. My entry (posted below) is a 1936 newspaper article about my great-great grandmother Lucy Ann Jackson. Enslaved on a plantation in southwest Virginia until shortly after the Civil War, my great-great grandmother was identified in that 1936 article as the nation’s “oldest voter” at the age of 114.

Lucy Ann J article - 1936American slavery is said to have begun in August of 1619 when a ship carrying 20 enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia. The 1619 Project recognizes the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery and highlights the many contributions of the enslaved African–and those that followed in their footsteps.

 

Great-great grandmother Lucy Ann Jackson was a 114-year-old celebrity

My great-great grandmother, Lucy Ann Jackson, was born a slave in Nelson County, VA in the 1822. In the late 1800s she moved to New York where she lived to be 114 years old. This news clip from around 1935 celebrates my great-great grandmother as being possibly the “oldest voter” in America. She lived in Tarrytown, NY at the time.

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