Celebrating 114 Years, She’s Our Nation’s Oldest U.S. Citizen

By New Journal And Guide Staff

NEW YORK

Last week, as the nation was celebrating its 243 years of Independence, Alelia Murphy of Harlem, New York was celebrating her 114th birthday two days later.

She was born the same year as the Niagara Movement which later contributed to the creation of the NAACP.

It was the year Black residents of Nashville boycotted the streetcar system to protest racist treatment, fifty years before the one in Montgomery took place.

Murphy, an African-American, was born in North Carolina on July 6, 1905. She raised two children alone after the death of her husband at a young age.

She migrated to the North and has lived in  Harlem since the 1920s.

Her secret to a long life: eating well and staying active, her nurse Natalia Mhlambiso told the Manhattan Times.

“She grew up in the South in the days before processed food, so she ate very healthily,” Mhlambiso, who visits Murphy twice a week, told the local outlet. “Keeping active when you are younger, and eating healthy and continuing to do so – it really does help a lot.”

Gerontology Research Group, the Los Angeles-based organization has verified her age. The agency tracks people 110 and older since 1990.

The Guinness Book of World Records works with GRG to confirm supercentenarians.

The Harlem resident is the eighth-oldest person in the world, behind five women from Japan and two from France, according to GRG.

Currently, the oldest person in the world is Kane Tanaka, of Fukuoka, Japan, who is 116-years-old.