Sally Robinson votes to 'try to get things better'

Sally Robinson is not one of the many poor, rural blacks in this state who don't vote. This winter she put down her cooking and accepted a ride on a cold day to go to town and to vote in a local election. Many of her friends stayed home, she said.

''I be voting to try to get things better for us,'' she said, as she stood by her garden outside of the four-bedroom home where she lives with 12 of her children and four grandchildren. There are seven beds in the house, some of them single beds, and no indoor water or plumbing.

While many of her friends have little faith in the electoral process, she says of those who seek office: ''Somebody's going to do right somewhere.''

Her family's income, about $1,100 a month, is from Aid to Families With Dependent Children and from food stamps. She has never married.

Work on a partly completed bathroom and additional bedroom has stopped for lack of money.

Her daughter, Diana, quit a Job Corps training program to return home after eight months, having missed her mother's cooking and ''being around the family - looking at them,'' Diana says.