b'BODY OF CHRIST NEWS MAGAZINEIDA MAE KOONCE-POPE SMITH90TH BIRTHDAY!!!Written by Juanita L. Pope-LevyIdaMaeKoonce-PopeSmithwasborninJackson Countys Sneads, Florida to Tom and Pecola Koonce. She is the 7th born of their twelve children. On March 12, 2024, shell celebrate her ninetieth birthday.Mrs.Smithgraduatedfromhighschoolat Jackson County Training School in 1951. She says, Back then, a lot of people didnt go to high school because there were no high schools around here we could attend. WhenwegotoneinMarianna,Iwasabletofinish school and be the first to graduate high school in our family. Soon after graduation, she married Jasper Pope, Jr., also born and raised in Sneads. He joined the militaryandbecamestationedinDenver,Colorado where Smith joined him.JasperandIdahad3girlsfromtheirunion.They divorced after 10 years and she married several years later to Mahlon Smith, whom she often fondly recalls saying to him, Men have told me Im beautiful but you are the one who has always treated me beautiful. She was widowed after 20 years of marriage to him.Mrs.SmithhasresidedinDenverforoverseventy-years. She owns a hair salon, Beauty Chateau, to this day.BeautyChateaureceivedthedistinguished honor of Most Outstanding Black Owned Hair Salon in Colorado in January 1997 from International ESSENCE Magazine.Shecontinuestoworkinhersalonhercustomerswontletherfullyretireandher employees, one working with her 40 years, continues to experience the success of her salon.Mrs. Smith will go to a lot of places to celebrate her ninetiethbirthday.ShellbeinDenverwithseveral festivities planned with family and friends, plans out ofthecountrycruisingsomewherebeautifuland of course, a highly anticipated return to where it all began for her, Sneads, Florida.A SALUTE TOAncient Civilizations: The Grimaldi, a Black race, lived in Europe as late as 12,000 years ago. Two complete Grimaldi skeletons are in the Museum of BLACK HISTORY:Monaco,nearMonteCarlo.Abundanttracesoftheirculturehavebeen unearthed in Southern and Central Europe. ANCIENTElam, a mighty Black civilization of Persia, flourished about 2900 B.C. and CIVILZATIONS is perhaps older than Egypt or Ethiopia. One of its later Black Kings, Kudur Nkunta, conquered Chaldea and Babylon and brought back to his capital, Susa, rich treasures among which was the famous statue of the goddess, Nana. Later it became the capital of Cyrus the Great and Darius, Dusa is the Shushan of the Bible where Esther, the Jewess, sought the favor of King Ahaserus of Persia and Ethiopia. There were at least eighteen Ethiopian or unmixed Black rulers of Ancient Egypt, the best known of which is Piankhi. Leaving his country in Central Africa, Piankhi conquered all of Egypt to the mouth of the Nile in 750 B.C. The most ancient lineage in the world is that of the Ethiopian royal family. It is said to be older than that of King George VIs by 6130 years. The Emperor Haile Selassi I, ruler of Ethiopia, traces his ancestry to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and beyond that to Cush, 6280 B.C.~ From the Library of the Publisher - Randy M. McCowanBOCNEWS.COM7'