A 105-year-old woman continued her commitment to the ongoing fight for democracy by casting her ballot early for the midterm elections.
According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, records show that Ida Simmons of Attapulgus, Georgia registered to vote for the first time in the summer of 1964 when she was 47 years old. During that time, it was still potentially dangerous for Black people to vote in South Georgia.
Simmons, who has a fifth-grade education and spent more than 60 years working on tobacco plantations and in packaging businesses, has witnessed the election of 19 U.S. presidents, 22 Georgia governors and dozens of other federal, state and local public officials.
“I’ve been voting since they let us vote,” said Simmons, according to The AJC.
A pastor’s widow and the mother of 11 children, Simmons frequently urges her family members to cast ballots, too. Simon Simmons, her eldest living son, who helped her get to the midterm polls (she uses a walker), has often been told that “too many people died and got beaten up to (not) go vote,” according to The AJC.
His mother revealed to him that she wasn’t allowed to vote when she first wanted to participate in democracy, then remembered how happy she was when she finally had the opportunity.
Poll levies and literacy tests were used to prevent Black people from voting in the late 1950s and early 1960s when Simmons registered to vote. According to a 1961 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report, some people in Georgia chose not to even try because they feared severe retaliation.
Three voting rights activists were assassinated in Mississippi a month before Simmons registered to vote. Eight months after she voted, police violently beat protesters in Alabama who were demanding the right to vote as Hosea Williams — the activist Attapulgus native — and future Georgia congressman John Lewis led them across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
President Lyndon Johnson eventually signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, outlawing several discriminatory practices and making Georgia one of the states that needed pre-approval before enacting new voting procedures.
Joyce Coddington, the local elections supervisor in Decatur County, said most senior voters in the county use absentee ballots. A significant number of ballots has already been returned and early voting in person is anticipated to be at an all-time high in the county of around 29,000 residents, of whom 15,500 are registered voters.
“I thought it was awesome to see,” said Coddington, who found herself impressed with Simmons’ age, tenacity and desire to cast her vote in person, The AJC reported. The elder’s determination, she said “showed that everybody should vote, regardless.”
Simmons said of her insistence on voting, “I think it is my duty to do it,” she stressed.
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