Aikens, Julia Eva Jackson Stone
(born: December 24, 1901 - died: December 27, 1993)In 1959, Julia Aikens became the first African American switchboard operator at the U.S. Post Office in South Bend, IN. Born in Hancock County, KY, she was the daughter of Fannie Johnson and Jerry W. Jackson from Hawesville, KY.
Julia Aikens was a graduate of Knox Beauty College and Grigg's Business School in Chicago and had owned a beauty shop. Aikens also served as a WAAC and a WAC during World War II, enlisting March 23, 1943, in Columbus, OH.
As a young woman, she had lived in Kalamazoo, MI and was working as a waitress when she married Paul Franklin Stone (1901-1940). Julia Jackson later married Arthur Aikens; the couple moved to South Bend, IN in 1946. By 1951, Julia Jackson Aikens was a widow when she died in 1993; she is buried in the Highland Cemetery in South Bend.
For more see the Julia Aikens' entry in The Black Women in the Middle West Project, by D. C. Hine, et al.; the Julia E. Aikens Collection at the Northern Indiana Historical Society; the Michigan Marriage Records Index (Ancestry); Indiana Certificate of Death (Ancestry) #93-052589; Polk's Mishawaka (St. Joseph County, Ind.) City Directory, 1951-52, p. 29; and the Julia Eva Jackson Aiken entry in the African American Women Veterans section (the link is below in the references).