A moment for hallelujahs

“It’s a glorious day,” Lawrence Tolliver declared at the kitchen table of his home on West Adams Street.

“It reminds me of the day they desegregated the schools,” said Freddie Moore, his next-door neighbor, who was watching early election day coverage with the Tolliver family.

Lawrence and his wife, Bernadette, were about to walk down the street to McCarty Memorial Church and vote along with their two sons, Aaron and Bernard, and their daughter, Alexandra.

“I’ve been asking people what this meant to them,” said Tolliver, who is African American. “Overwhelmingly, people said the same thing: ‘I thought I’d never see the day.’ ”

As election day rolled around, I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather spend time with than Tolliver. For more than seven years, he and the customers at his Florence Avenue barbershop have treated me to one of the best, longest-running shows in Los Angeles.

“A watering hole of truth and knowledge,” says Tolliver’s business card, which is carried by cops, politicians, professors, business executives, teachers, pharmacists, laborers and others who aren’t afraid to speak their minds on the issues of the day in passionate encounters that make for great theater.

Tolliver slings it with the best of them, but ends up, always, speaking for justice and reason. If a cop beats up a car thief, he wants to know why the hooligan stole the car. If someone talks about the challenges of raising kids in a tough neighborhood, Tolliver the optimist points to his college-educated sons and daughter.

And when someone in his barbershop recently suggested a victory by Sen. Barack Obama wouldn’t really mean that race relations have gotten any better, he pounced.

“I’m proud to be an American,” he bellowed, arguing that on the same days in 1955, 1963 and 2008, a 14-year-old black youth was tortured for whistling at a white woman, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech, and Sen. Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president.

“For a long time, the American dream has been achievable as far as finances go,” Mr. Tolliver said Tuesday morning at his home. “But what I consider the American promise -- we hold these truths self-evident, that all men are created equal -- was not a promise kept. This is the day when, if Barack Obama is elected president, it’s a promise kept.”

Just after 11 a.m., Tolliver and his family headed for their polling place.

Bernard, 30, is an insurance agent.

Aaron, 27, is about to enter the Los Angeles Police Academy.

Alexandra, 25, just graduated from University of the Arts in Philadelphia with a major in dance.

All three kids were as committed as their parents to an Obama victory, and not just because he is black. As the son of a white mother and black father, Obama will be able to relate to all kinds of Americans, the Tolliver brood noted.

At McCarty Memorial Church, which is also the home of the Agape International Ethiopian Church, about 30 African Americans, Latinos and whites waited to vote.

“I’ve never seen a line,” said Bernadette, a retired information technology manager for L.A. County.

An elderly woman named Lounetta Rhodes filed in behind the Tollivers. It was going to be a 30-minute wait, with the turnout matching massive voter interest across California and the rest of the nation, but Rhodes kept it in perspective.

“I moved here in 1960 from Texas, where my grandfather had to pay a poll tax to vote,” she said. “He said he had to save his dimes to make sure he could vote each year.”

Mr. Tolliver was the fourth member of his family to vote on Tuesday. He took his ballot and strode purposefully to the far end of the room and did his duty. And then, with a spring in his step, he turned his ballot in to a young poll worker who asked:

“How’s it going?”

“Glory hallelujah. That’s how it is,” Tolliver said. “Glory hallelujah!”

When the family left the polling place, Mr. Tolliver held up his voting stub.

“I’m going to save this here,” he said. “This is history.”

On the way back home, Mr. Tolliver predicted that if he wins, Obama won’t have an easy time addressing the raft of problems that will await him. He said he didn’t believe Obama’s pledge that he would cut taxes for 95% of all families, but he felt Obama had a much better chance of forging a problem-solving consensus than McCain would have.

As the family crossed the street, he was reciting sections of the Constitution, just because the spirit struck him.

Back in the kitchen, Mr. Tolliver was ready to start the party. “Now we’ll find the best and the brightest” to solve the problems of the nation and the world, he said. “Enough of these average minds” who rose to power “by birthright.”

But his son, Aaron, worried that Tolliver was celebrating too early. “Dad,” he asked, “what are you going to do if McCain wins?”

Mr. Tolliver paused for a moment. On the kitchen table sat a Barack Obama bobblehead. On the wall above the fireplace was a photo of Mr. Tolliver shaking hands with Nelson Mandela.

“Even in defeat,” he finally said to his son, “Obama has proven that someone other than a white man can have a legitimate chance.”

A few hours later, as Mr. Tolliver and his family watched the returns with friends at the barbershop, Obama had proved much more than that.

At 8 p.m., when the networks called the election, a roar went up. Then Mr. Tolliver led a procession out onto the sidewalk. “It’s a miracle,” he said, dancing in jubilation.

Back in the shop a few minutes later, he asked people to join hands. He broke down as he reminded them that they all had friends and parents who hadn’t lived to see this moment.

Prompted by Mr. Tolliver, the Rev. Ron Simmons of West Angeles Church of God in Christ offered a prayer that traveled from slavery to the civil rights movement to this moment: “Oh Lord, you brought us a long way.”

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steve.lopez@latimes.com