Kamala Harris’ candidacy gives Americans nationwide their first opportunity to vote for a Black and South Asian woman running for president. Helen Smith is about to do it at the age of 102.
Affectionately known as Momma Dear to her great-niece, Tasya Lacy, Smith is based in Queens, New York, and has participated in the nation’s electoral process for nearly 80 years. She cast her first vote for Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940s. “We voted from at Dunbar High School in Lubbock, Texas,” she tells EBONY.
With Jim Crow laws in full effect to disenfranchise African American voters, Smith had to pay a poll tax to complete her vote.
“You walk in and show your paper that you had and write your name on the ballot,” she recalls. “And then there’s another little piece of paper you would sign, and that was the tax pay so that you would pay for the next year when you get ready to vote.”
Smith voted through two decades of the Jim Crow Era before witnessing the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting. She never believed in her lifetime that she’d see Barack Obama, the first Black person to serve as president, and Harris, the first woman in the role of vice president. And she never fathomed being able to cast a vote to potentially put the first Black and South Asian woman into the presidency.
Here, Smith, the last matriarch of her generation for her family, shares in her own words what voting in this election means to her.
“My first time voting, I was 21 years of age. I voted at a high school in the principal’s office. And there were quite a few people there for our first voting experience. Back then, it was impossible to think that I could be voting for a Black woman for president.
When [Harris’] candidacy was announced, I was very happy. In fact, I cried during most of that first week. I felt the lady was ready and responsible. I knew, just by hearing her, that she was qualified. She had been in the presence of a president, and I felt she would make a good one because she had that experience. I believe she will make the best president based on what I have heard on the radio and television and read in papers about her, the positions she has held, and what has happened in the past.
I can get to the vote polls; it’s not any trouble. It’s not far from my house. We have a car, and we can go by bus, cab or any other means so that I can get there. There’s transportation all around. It’s impossible for me not to vote for her. [We can’t have a Trump in the highest office again.]
My fellow elders can call Access-A-Ride so they can go and vote. Call them now and get a [pickup] time. You can carry on your scooter or different apparatuses to help you get around the polling place. They can request Access-A-Ride right now while they have time. Don’t wait.”