DEL.ICIO.USAt 103, Lithonia man votes for the 1st time
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, November 02, 2008
In his 103 years, Ernest Smith says, he never drank, smoked or voted.
Though he’s yet to sample tobacco or alcohol, on Thursday, Smith cast his first ballot — for Democratic nominee Barack Obama.
Marcus K. Garner/mgarner@ajc.com
Ernest Smith cast his first ballot during early voting last week. He was accompanied by his stepdaughter’s husband, Robert Elliott to the polling place at Lithonia Middle School.
“I voted, and I want to vote again,” said Smith. a testament to clean living. “It felt good.”
While the Lithonia man’s hearing is poor and his memory, spotty, Smith moves without the aid of a walker and has few wrinkles.
“Loving the Lord,” he said, when asked his secret to longevity.
Born in 1905 in Pembroke, N.C., Smith lived most of his life there and was first eligible to vote in 1928, when then the voting age was 21.
But for African-Americans like Smith, suffrage was far from universal. Literacy tests and poll taxes were enacted through much of the Jim Crow South to suppress black turnout.
Had Smith attempted to vote in 1928 — he says he never tried to register — his choices would have been Herbert Hoover, campaigning as a Republican maverick, and Democrat Al Smith who, like Obama, was a historic nominee.
Smith was the first Catholic to seek the presidency. He lost in a landslide.
Ernest Smith is confident that this year, he’s backing a winner.
“We’ll make it, thank the Lord,” said Smith, bolting up from his rocking chair, clapping. A snapshot of Obama sits on his dresser.
The retired railroad worker plans on being around for the next presidential election, in 2012, to vote for Obama a second time.
“I wish I had done it before,” Smith said. When he was young, he added, “we never thought about voting.”
He turned 60 the year Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Enacted at the height of the Civil Rights movement, the law mandated equal access to the polls for all eligible voters.
Smith lives with his stepdaughter, Clara Elliott, 58. She kept him informed of the history that was unfolding in the Democratic primaries. When Obama secured the nomination, she encouraged her stepfather to register.
He was reluctant at first.
“We told him he had to go vote,” joked Robert Elliott, 64, Clara’s husband. After Smith cast his ballot in last week’s advance voting in DeKalb County, “he couldn’t stop talking about it.”
“I had tears rolling down my eyes,” Clara Elliott said. “It makes you think about how far we’ve come.”
Smith won’t be the only member of his family to vote for the first time this year.
Step-granddaughter, Chiquetta Route, said nothing will keep her from voting Tuesday.
“It made me want to vote even more,” said Route, 26. “On Tuesday I’m getting up at 4 a.m. [and] dropping the kids off, and I’m going to stand in line as long as it takes.”
That night, Ernest Smith will be watching the returns on TV. He’s normally in bed by 9 p.m., but he’s determined not to miss out on history.
“Just like the old tent revivals,” he said when a visitor asked if he’d be able to stay up late. “We’d go all night with no sitting down.”
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