Black Virginia Woman Celebrates 110th Birthday

By Maximillian Boudreaux Published: October 19, 2021

Black Virginia Woman Celebrates 110th Birthday

Courtesy of Clark County, Virginia Government

In Summary

Viola Brown reached a milestone when she celebrated her 110th birthday and officially became the 6th oldest living person in America.

A Black woman from Virginia just became the sixth oldest living American when she celebrated her 110^th birthday earlier this month.

Brown was inducted into an exclusive club of supercentenarians, people who lived to see their 110^th birthday, with the proclamation of October 4 being recognized as “Viola Roberts Lampkin Brown Day.”

Brown credits her longevity to her faith and believes that has allowed her be one of the longest living members of the family.

“He wakes me up in the morning. He tells me what to do. I don’t worry about things,” Brown told The Christian Post.

She was born on October 4, 1911 in Hume, Virginia and was a toddler by the time World War I began.

She was alive during the women’s suffrage movement, the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, the civil rights movement and even got the chance to see the inauguration of Barack Obama, the country’s first Black president.

At 110 years old, Brown is living through another pandemic. Brown allows her faith to be her medicine and protection during the COVID-19 pandemic and has chosen not to get vaccinated.

“She never took any prescribed medication until she was 101,” Vonceil Hill, Brown’s 79-year-old daughter and only living child, shared during an interview with The Christian Post. “They put her on a low dose [medication] for high blood pressure.”

According to WJLA, Brown has eight grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren. Her two husbands — John Lampkin and Rev. Paul Brown — passed away in 1982 and 1998, respectively.

“I think one of the things, in terms of her longevity, has to do with her faith,” said Andrew Roberts, Brown’s nephew. “The lifestyle [she practices]. She doesn’t let a lot of things bother her. She has great capacity either to tolerate stress or just kind of eliminate it for the most part because she is centered. She’s centered on something greater than herself.”