When 102-year-old Lillie Irving cast her ballot in November, she did something for the first time in her long life — she voted for a black man for president.

“I felt good voting for him,” she said.

Through the decades, Irving has seen 18 presidents go through the Oval Office, but as an active voter since the 1920s, the thought that one day a U.S. president would have a black heritage never crossed her mind.

“I never thought of that,” she said. “All my life I didn’t know anything but the white presidents.”

When she was born on Sept. 11, 1906, her parents — Elijah Knight Sr. and Queen Ella Knight — were farmers on the Chamberlain property in Cannonsburg.

Unlike farmers today, the Knights didn’t grow just one crop. Instead, they raised a plethora of plants and animals, not only for sale but for themselves.

“It wasn’t like today,” Irving said. “You had to grow crops for living.”

She attended a small frame school in the county through the eighth grade.

“It was just a little schoolhouse, not anything like they have in Natchez,” she said.

Irving had to go to the city to finish school, and when she graduated at 18 she went to the then-Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College to study elementary education.

She started teaching as soon as she graduated from college, and spent the next 48 years fighting the good fight one student at a time.

The schools were segregated when she started teaching, but so was everything else. She taught in schools in the county and in Natchez in a career that spanned from Herbert Hoover’s presidency to the Ronald Regan administration.

When she retired in 1981, much of business society had desegregated, but it would be another eight years before a court order thrust desegregation on the Natchez School system.

But Irving’s perspective on race relations through the years is pretty simple.

“Time brings on changes,” she said. “Things are much different now.”

And she thinks that — now that the political glass ceiling has been broken — they will continue to evolve.

“I think we have a good president,” Irving said. “I think that now that we have a black president we will have more.”

During the years when she was teaching, Irving wasn’t just teaching — she was raising a family.

She and her husband, the Rev. Monroe Irving had eight children, seven of whom lived to adulthood.

Irving has 35 grandchildren, 64 great-grandchildren and 5 great-great-grandchildren.

“Lord, I feel great to see that great-great-grandbaby,” she said.

After she retired from teaching, Irving would still go to the schools from time to time to teach handcrafts like sewing, something she still does regularly.

She doesn’t get out as much as she used to, but Irving still attends church at Greater Mount Bethel Baptist Church on Sundays and Tuesday nights whenever she is able.

“I was baptized there from a child, and I have been there ever since,” she said.

Old age has its perks, too. She has a special card that allows her to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at Ryan’s for free every day, if she so chooses, and last year 150 people attended her birthday party at the Natchez Convention Center.

“I thought it was good for them to show up for my birthday,” she said. “They appreciate me and I appreciate them.”

Her longevity might be attributed to the fact that at one time she was a vegetarian, Irving said.

Making that shift from little meat to no meat was easy when she considered her childhood, she said.

“I grew up with a family raising vegetables,” she said.

“They could kill hogs, but we would eat more vegetables than meat, so it wasn’t hard to eat just vegetables.”

But she thinks there is another reason she’s made it this far.

“I try to do my best for other people, and I try to stay in shape with the Lord,” she said.

And how much longer does she think she’ll be around? She’ll take what she gets, Irving said.

“I don’t want to question the Lord about that,” she said. “That’s in his hands.