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Betty Reid Soskin | |
|---|---|
 Soskin in 2014 | |
| Born | Betty Charbonnet September 22, 1921 Detroit, Michigan, U.S. |
| Died | December 21, 2025 (aged 104) Richmond, California, U.S. |
| Education | Castlemont High School |
| Occupation | National Park Service ranger |
| Employer | National Park Service |
| Spouses |
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Betty Reid Soskin (née Charbonnet; September 22, 1921 – December 21, 2025) was an American ranger with the National Park Service, previously assigned to the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California.[1][2] Until her retirement on March 31, 2022, at the age of 100, she was the oldest serving National Park Ranger in the United States.[3]
Early life and education
Betty Charbonnet was born in Detroit, Michigan on September 22, 1921, to Dorson Louis Charbonnet and Lottie Breaux Allen, both Catholics and natives of Louisiana. Her father came from a Creole background, and her mother from a Cajun background. Her great-grandmother had been born into slavery in 1846. She spent her early childhood living in New Orleans, until a hurricane and flood destroyed her family's home and business in 1927, when her family then relocated to Oakland, California.[4] She graduated from Castlemont High School in Oakland.[5]
Career
During World War II she worked as a file clerk for Boilermakers Union A-36, an all-black union auxiliary.[4] Her main job was filing change of address cards for the workers, who moved frequently.[6]
In June 1945, she and her then husband, Mel Reid, founded Reid's Records in Berkeley, California, a small black-owned business specializing in Gospel music. They moved to Walnut Creek, California in the 1950s, where their children attended better public schools and an alternative private elementary and middle school called Pinel. The family encountered considerable racism, and she and her husband were subject to death threats after they built a home in the white suburb.[4] The store closed in 2019.[7][8]
She converted to Unitarianism and became active in the Mount Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church and the Black Caucus of the Unitarian Universalist Association,[9] and in the 1960s became a well-known songwriter in the Civil Rights Movement.[4]
She was divorced from Mel Reid in 1972, and subsequently married William Soskin, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1978, after Mel Reid's health and finances had declined, she took over management of the music store, which led to her becoming active in area civic matters and a prominent community activist.[10]
She later served as a field representative for California State Assemblywomen Dion Aroner and Loni Hancock, and in those positions became actively involved in the early planning stages and development of a park to memorialize the role of women on the Home Front during World War II. Those efforts came to fruition when Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park was established in 2000, to provide a site where future generations could remember the contributions women made to the war effort.
Reflecting on her own role in planning for the park's creation, and on how she brought her personal recollections of the conditions for African American women working in that still segregated environment to bear on the planning efforts, she has said that, often, she "was the only person in the room who had any reason to remember that ... what gets remembered is a function of who's in the room doing the remembering."[4]
In 2003, she left her state job and became a consultant at the park she helped create before becoming a park ranger with the National Park Service in 2007 at the age of 85.[11]
Soskin's duties included conducting park tours and serving as an interpreter, explaining the park's purpose, history, various sites, and museum collections to park visitors. She has been celebrated as "a tireless voice for making sure the African-American wartime experience – both the positive steps toward integration and the presence of discrimination – has a prominent place in the Park's history."[12]
Soskin said in 2015, at the age of 93: "Wish I'd had [the] confidence when the young Betty needed it to navigate through the hazards of everyday life on the planet. But maybe I'm better able to benefit from having it now – when I have the maturity to value it and the audacity to wield it for those things held dear."[13]
She released her memoir, Sign My Name to Freedom, in February 2018. A feature-length documentary about Soskin's involvement with music, also titled Sign My Name to Freedom, began filming in 2016.[14]
Retirement and death
Soskin had a stroke while working at the park in September 2019 and returned to work in a limited, informal capacity in January 2020.[15][16][17] She retired from the National Park Service on March 31, 2022, as the oldest serving park ranger.[18]
Soskin died at her home in Richmond, on the morning of December 21, 2025, at the age of 104.[19]
Honors and legacy
- California Woman of the Year, California Legislature, 1995
- Builders of Communities and Dreams, National Women's History Project, 2006
- Attended President Obama's Inauguration as a guest of Rep. George Miller, 2009
- Proclamation honoring her by Mayor Gayle McLaughlin on behalf of Richmond City Council, 2009
- Honorary doctorate from California College of the Arts, 2010
- The WAVE award as one of three "Women of Achievement", GirlSource of San Francisco, 2010
- Commemorative presidential coin, 2015; it was stolen from her in a home robbery in 2016, but later in 2016 she received a new one.[20]
- The National WWII Museum Silver Service Medallion, at the American Spirit Awards gala, 2016[6]
- Recognition in the Congressional Record, 2016.[21]
- Honorary doctorate of arts and letters from Mills College, 2017
- The Robin W. Winks Award for Enhancing Public Understanding of National Parks from the National Parks Conservation Association,[22] 2018
- Recognition in the Congressional Record, 2019[23][24]
In celebration of her 100th birthday on September 22, 2021, the West Contra Costa Unified School District renamed Juan Crespi Middle School to Betty Reid Soskin Middle School.[5][25][26][27]
A stage musical based on her life, Sign My Name to Freedom by Michael Gene Sullivan with songs by Soskin, was premiered by San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company in March 2024.[28][29]
References
- Zinko, Carolyne (September 26, 2007). "WWII meant opportunity for many women, oppression for others". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved March 23, 2011.
- Hildebrand, Lee (January 31, 2010). "Ranger's voice spans East Bay history". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved March 23, 2011.
- Jones, Carolyn (October 16, 2013). "Federal shutdown puts Betty Reid Soskin on hold". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved April 26, 2014.
- "Oldest National Park Ranger Shares 'What Gets Remembered'," NPR Wisdom Watch, May 15, 2014.[1]
- "Betty Reid Soskin, Groundbreaking Park Ranger, to Have East Bay Middle School Renamed in Her Honor". KQED. June 24, 2021. Retrieved June 24, 2021.
- Pope, John (November 19, 2016) [May 29, 2016]. "World War II Museum to honor park ranger, 94, for telling the truth about racism". nola.com. Archived from the original on October 19, 2018.
- Jones, Kevin L. (February 5, 2019). "Reid's Records, California's oldest record shop, to close in the fall". Berkeleyside. Berkeley, California. Retrieved March 31, 2022.
- Millner, Caille (March 2, 2019) [February 15, 2019]. "Datebook: Reid's Records in Berkeley singing its swan song after nearly 75 years". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved August 1, 2025.
- "Betty Reid Soskin". Williams College. Retrieved January 31, 2024.
- Frankel, Bruce (2010). What Should I Do With the Rest of My Life?: True Stories of Finding Success, Passion, and New Meaning in the Second Half of Life. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-1-101-18596-4.
- "Betty Soskin A Living Monument To WWII History". The Washington Post. June 12, 2015.
- Geluardi, John (July 30, 2007). "Park celebrates women's war effort: 'Rosie the Riveter' symbol of those who transcended traditional roles". Oakland Tribune. Retrieved April 26, 2014.
- Personal blog, May 26, 2015.
- Sobotta, Sharon K. (January 11, 2023). "Sign My Name to Freedom". East Bay Express. Retrieved January 31, 2024.
- Sanchez, Tatiana (September 22, 2019). "Betty Reid Soskin, 98-year-old park ranger, recovering from stroke". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
- Tyska, Jane (January 16, 2020). "Betty Reid Soskin back at work at Rosie the Riveter park after stroke". East Bay Times.
- Reneau, Annie (March 3, 2020). "98-yr-old Betty Reid Soskin is America's oldest park ranger and an inspiration for us all". Upworthy. Retrieved March 9, 2020.
- "100 year-old National park Service Ranger Betty Reid Soskin retires after remarkable career" (Press release). National Park Service. March 31, 2022.
- Hemmila, Soren (December 21, 2025). "Betty Reid Soskin, nation's oldest park ranger and civil rights pioneer, dies at 104". Grandview Independent. Retrieved December 21, 2025.
- "Oldest park ranger gets new coin after home robbery". KCRA. July 18, 2016.
- "Recognizing Ms. Betty Reid Soskin". Congressional Record. 162 (107): 49. July 5, 2016.
- "Awards and Recognition". National Parks Conservation Association.
- "Recognizing Betty Reid Soskin". Congressional Record. 165 (167): 10. October 22, 2019.
- DeSaulnier, Mark (February 8, 2020). "Recognizing Betty Reid Soskin".
- Page, Sydney (September 24, 2021). "She became a park ranger at 85 to tell her story of segregation. Now 100, she's the oldest active ranger". The Washington Post.
- "East Bay District Names School After Betty Reid Soskin on Her 100th Birthday". NBC Bay Area. September 22, 2021.
- LaBerge, Beth; Marnette Federis (September 22, 2021). "East Bay Middle School Renamed for Pioneering Park Ranger Betty Reid Soskin — on Her 100th Birthday". KQED.
- Zack, Jessica (March 27, 2024). "'Sign My Name to Freedom' celebrates the unheard songs of 102-year-old Betty Reid Soskin". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved August 1, 2025.
- Chávez, David John (April 2, 2024) [March 30, 2024]. "Datebook Review: The profound life and scintillating music of Betty Reid Soskin shine in 'Sign My Name to Freedom'". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved August 1, 2025.
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Betty Reid Soskin, Nation’s Oldest Park Ranger, Dies at 104
She began working as a park ranger at age 85, educating visitors about the women and people of color who served on the home front in World War II, herself among them.
Betty Reid Soskin, the National Park Service’s oldest active ranger, who helped shape the creation of a park honoring the millions of workers in World War II defense jobs, among them women like her who persevered while facing racial discrimination, died on Sunday at her home in Richmond, Calif. She was 104.
Her death was confirmed in a statement that her family posted on her social media account.
In 1942, when women joined the war effort by working in the defense industry and other related roles, as portrayed in “Rosie the Riveter” posters, Ms. Soskin sought to do her part in the Bay Area by seeking work at the boilermakers’ union, which supplied much of the shipbuilding work force in the port of Richmond, across the bay from San Francisco. But the union, which was segregated, relegated her and the other Black women in its ranks to its auxiliary wing.
And so, for the rest of the war, Ms. Soskin sorted index cards at the union hall in the city, miles from the bustling yards that sent warships to the Pacific, a task that left her feeling humiliated. “I never had a sense of being anyone other than pushing papers,” she told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2007. “I wasn’t even always sure who the enemy was.”
But she was able to draw on her World War II experiences in later years. In 2000, while working as an aide to Dion Aroner, a California assemblywoman, she landed a seat at the table in planning for the launch of the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond.
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“I was the only person of color in the room,” Ms. Soskin told Newsweek in 2020. “And as I began to introduce my part of the work, it was very clear that many of the stories of Richmond during the war were not being told.”
Ms. Soskin was made a consultant to the park in 2003 and signed on as a ranger there in 2007, when she was 85.
She took visitors on narrated bus trips and shared the history of the park’s many sites, and was remembered especially for the talks she gave at the park’s theater, where she recounted the lives of people of color who faced racial discrimination at home during the war.
“Because of Betty, we made sure we had African American scholars review our films and exhibits,” Tom Leatherman, the park’s superintendent, told Glamour in 2018, when the magazine named Ms. Soskin as woman of the year in the field of culture. “We also made sure we were looking out for other, often forgotten stories — Japanese American, Latino American, American Indian, and L.G.B.T.Q. narratives — that were equally important.”
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In addition to her own wartime experiences, Ms. Soskin told of how thousands of people of Japanese heritage living on the West Coast, many of them American citizens, had been transported by the government to inland internment camps.
In 2009, Ms. Soskin was invited by her congressman, George Miller, as a guest on the National Mall to witness President Barack Obama’s inauguration. In 2015, she introduced Mr. Obama during the nationally televised Christmas tree lighting in Washington, where he presented her with a commemorative coin stamped with the presidential seal.
On that evening, as was often the case, she carried in her pocket a photograph of her great-grandmother, Leontine Breaux Allen, who was born into slavery.
“Here I was with my great-grandmother in my breast pocket and with the first African-American president of the United States,” Ms. Soskin told The New Orleans Times-Picayune. “It was sheer poetry. What could be more American than that?”
Betty Charbonnet was born on Sept. 22, 1921, in Detroit, where her family lived briefly before returning to their home in New Orleans. Her father, Dorson Louis Charbonnet, who, like his father, worked as a builder. Her mother, Lottie Breaux Allen, had African, French and Spanish roots.
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The family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when Betty was 6 after a devastating flood ravaged their home in New Orleans.
After graduating from high school, Betty married Mel Reid, and in 1945 they founded Reid’s Records in Berkeley, one of the first Black-owned record shops in California, selling jazz, gospel and rhythm and blues recordings. Mel and his uncle, Paul Reid, became highly successful music promoters.
While raising their four children in the mostly white Berkeley suburb of Walnut Creek, Ms. Soskin and her husband encountered racial hostility and received death threats.
In the late 1960s, Ms. Soskin held fund-raisers through the Unitarian Universalist Church to support the Black Panthers and delivered the proceeds to Kathleen and Eldridge Cleaver, two of the group’s central figures. She was a delegate to the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach that nominated Senator George McGovern of South Dakota to face President Richard M. Nixon in what became Nixon’s election to a second term.
Ms. Soskin also wrote songs in the 1960s and ’70s, performing them on her guitar throughout the Bay Area.
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Ms. Soskin and Mr. Reid divorced in 1972, and she married William Soskin, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. That marriage also ended in divorce. She took over management of Reid’s Records in 1978 after her first husband’s health declined.
Working to revive the record store’s fortunes, Ms. Soskin pressured Berkeley City Hall to clean up the drug problem that had overtaken Sacramento Street, where Reid’s Records was located.
That led to her working in City Hall herself, as a legislative aide to a council member, Don Jelinek. She also worked with Berkeley’s mayor at the time, Gus Newport, to help build low-income housing. (The record store closed in 2019.)
In 2003, she learned to use a computer and began a blog, which became a basis for her memoir, “Sign My Name to Freedom” (2018), edited by her cousin J. Douglas Allen-Taylor, a journalist and author.
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Ms. Soskin recalled a searing episode in the 1950s when she entered a suburban diner in the Walnut Hill area with three of her children around 5 p.m.
“After a very long time, the waitress came over,” she wrote. “She announced with a grin, ‘You’ll have to get out of here. We’re closing.’ The rest of the customers had gone silent. Some were also obviously enjoying my misery. It was the dinner hour. The place could not be closing.”
Ms. Soskin returned with her children to her car. “This was before the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the establishment of racially shared restrooms and drinking fountains,” she wrote, “but this was not Mississippi, but California. How could this be?”
Information on survivors was not immediately available.
As she approached her 100th birthday, Ms. Soskin continued to work, returning to the job after a stroke in 2019, although on a reduced schedule via video conference. Three years earlier, she had sustained injuries when a burglar attacked her in her apartment in the middle of the night.
Even off duty, Ms. Soskin was devoted to wearing her ranger uniform.
“When I’m on the streets or on an escalator or elevator, I am making every little girl of color aware of a career choice she may not have known she had,” Ms. Soskin said in a 2015 interview with the Department of the Interior. “The pride is evident in their eyes.”
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