Johnnie Mae Gibson started working at the age of 8, chopping cotton on the plantation where her family lived.
She went on to hold a variety of jobs over the years before retiring from Viking Range in 2015 — and “whatever I did on any job I had, I gave it 110 percent,” she said.
Gibson, who celebrated her 65th birthday last week, is enjoying a slower pace these days. Still, she follows her longtime habit of getting up at 5 a.m. every day and doesn’t even need to set the alarm.
“I don’t work for nobody but the good Lord,” she said with a smile.
Gibson was born and raised in Leflore County, the daughter of Johnny and Alberta Douglas. She grew up on the Poindexter family’s Mayday Plantation, where her mother worked as a maid.
Being the fifth of six children, Gibson spent a lot of time around her mother, who helped raise Louis Poindexter’s children as well as her own four daughters and one son. Alberta Douglas had a fifth-grade education but later became a homeowner, purchasing the Morgan City house where Gibson lives now.
Within a few years of starting work at 8, Gibson was picking 200 pounds of cotton a day. “I learned from my parents that you have to work for what you get. Nothing is given to you. You have to get out there and get it yourself,” she said. “And that’s the way I came up, and that’s why I didn’t mind working.”
She attended R.B. Schlater elementary and junior high schools and then was bused to Amanda Elzy High School. After giving birth to a daughter at 17 and a son at 18, she left school.
“My mother was just a maid making $5 a day, so I had to stop my education to help take care of my children,” she said.
She later worked at the cafeteria at L.S. Rogers School and then spent 10 years at Baldwin Piano and Organ Co. before being laid off.
“I got my 10-year pin and my layoff papers the same day,” she said.
She worked for Sayle Oil as a convenience store cashier and then managed that store for a time. In 1989, she went to Madison, Wisconsin, with a friend who lived there. The visit was only supposed to last a couple of weeks, but she ended up staying 11 years, working first for a convenience store and then a sign company. In fact, she worked on signs for the building at the University of Wisconsin-Madison now known as the Kohl Center.
She said the values she learned growing up served her well in a bigger city. When she applied for the convenience store job, she was told that her boss at Sayle Oil had given her a very strong recommendation.
“I said, ‘Well, I thank you. I’m just an ol’ country girl,’” she said. “You come up hard, you appreciate things and learn to keep your hands off other folks’ stuff.”
She returned to Mississippi in 2000 to care for her mother, who was in declining health and died in 2002. Gibson worked at Viking from 2004 until her retirement in October 2015.
For nine years, Gibson has lived in the house that her mother bought years ago and lived in for 14 years. Her daughter, Jacqueline Gibson, earned a doctorate at 27 and now is vice president of student affairs at Mississippi Valley State University. Her son, Charles, lives in Itta Bena and does maintenance work in apartment buildings. Gibson is proud to have raised them both without having to rely on food stamps. She also has seven grandchildren and helps care for a sister, Annie Ross, who lives nearby.
Her health is good, except for a little arthritis, and she’s happy to take it easy a lot of the time, other than keeping up her house and mowing the lawn. She belongs to Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist Church, where she was baptized years ago, and she speaks highly of its pastor, the Rev. Robert Anderson.
“I love my church, and I truly love my pastor,” she said. “He’s the most humble man I’ve ever seen, and he loves people.”
She said she enjoyed living in Wisconsin and made some friends there, but she prefers small-town life and lives around good people. “I’m glad to be back home,” she said.
•Contact David Monroe at 581-7236 or dmonroe@gwcommonwealth.com.
