LOS ANGELES — Gertrude Baines’ 114-year-old fingers wrapped lightly over the ballpoint pen as she bubbled in No. 18 on her ballot Tuesday. Her mouth curled up in a smile. A laugh escaped. The deed was done.
A daughter of former slaves, Baines had just voted for a black man to be president of the United States.
“What’s his name? I can’t say it,” she said shyly afterward. Those who helped her fill out the absentee ballot at a convalescent facility west of the University of Southern California chimed in: “Barack Obama.”
Baines is the world’s oldest person of black descent, according to the Gerontology Research Group, which validates claims of extreme old age. She is the third-oldest person in the world and the second-oldest in the United States after Edna Parker of Indiana, who is 115.
“Why am I voting for him? Because he’s for the colored,” Baines said, her language itself hearkening to a different time. “Sure it’s good. That’s the first one I know to be in there. Everybody’s glad for colored men to be in there sometime.”
