At 95, She Cherishes Opportunity to Vote

It was a day of duty for Victoria Chambers.

Now 95, this mother of 10, grandmother of 38, great-grandmother of 66 and great-great-grandmother of 27 got dressed up in a bright blue pantsuit and pink hat and was wheeled by her daughter through the Crenshaw neighborhood to the lobby of the Los Angeles Sentinel.

Nothing was going to stop her from voting for what may be her last time.

In Mississippi, where Chambers was born, blacks couldn’t even register to vote.

“She was so happy, it brightened her day,” said daughter Bonnie Hunt, 69, who brought her mother to the polling place because she lost her absentee ballot.

The Chambers clan moved to Los Angeles in the early 1950s, shortly after the young Chambers boys refused to call their landowner’s 10-year-old son “Mister.”

The Chambers Brothers started singing gospel music at church and playing harmonica, guitar and bass. Several years later, their hit “Time Has Come Today” would become a gold record.

Mother and daughter both voted to reelect Mayor James K. Hahn. “She loved Kenny Hahn Sr. -- there’s no need to tell her any different,” said Hunt. “I know a lot of people say he’s not for me, or not for blacks. But he is probably as much for blacks as any other person I know.”

Yesterday afternoon and evening, Hunt said, her mother kept asking for the voting stub that proved she had voted. She just wanted to touch it. “Every few minutes, she asks what I’ve done with it,” Hunt said. “She wants to keep it.”