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Betty Reid Soskin Is Dead At 104
a day ago
General
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Reid_Soskin
https://soundcloud.com/user-7367473.....chaos-and-hope
https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-december-23-2025/
-This is an interview with her by the wonderful Cat Brooks done in 2018.
I've been meaning to write a journal about her for years now. She died yesterday peacefully, at home in Richmond.
She was a remarkable and unique woman, a local legend, and a direct link to the days of slavery through her great grandmother, who she knew.
She worked as a ranger at the Rosie the Riveter/ World War II Homefront National Park from age 85 to 100, becoming the oldest National Park ranger in US history. She was a remarkable communicator who brought a unique perspective to teaching local history.
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."
Born in Louisiana, she moved to the Bay Area with the Great Migration after her family's home was destroyed by a hurricane and flood.
In June 1945, she and her then husband, Mel Reid, founded Reid's Records in their garage in Berkeley, California, which specialized in Gospel music, and later, black jazz,blues, R&B, etc.
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. They were assisted in the purchase of this land by a white friend, due to the redlining laws. The family encountered considerable racism, and she and her husband were subject to death threats when their white Neighbors realized that a black family was building a house there, They had a cross burned on their lawn. Their record store closed in 2019. Unfortunately, I never went there.
On realizing that their children's elementary school was putting on a minstrel show, Betty raised a stink about it, and they were forced to stop.
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. She was a tireless fighter for social justice. She raised money for, and supported the Black Panthers.
She Attended President Obama's Inauguration in 2009 and introduced him as a guest of California Representative George Miller, where she carried a photo of her great grandmother. This meant a lot to her.
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.
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, and is set to be released next year. https://www.signmynametofreedom.com/
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.
There's another film about her called No Time to Waste. https://www.notimetowastefilm.com/
https://soundcloud.com/user-7367473.....chaos-and-hope
https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-december-23-2025/
-This is an interview with her by the wonderful Cat Brooks done in 2018.
I've been meaning to write a journal about her for years now. She died yesterday peacefully, at home in Richmond.
She was a remarkable and unique woman, a local legend, and a direct link to the days of slavery through her great grandmother, who she knew.
She worked as a ranger at the Rosie the Riveter/ World War II Homefront National Park from age 85 to 100, becoming the oldest National Park ranger in US history. She was a remarkable communicator who brought a unique perspective to teaching local history.
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."
Born in Louisiana, she moved to the Bay Area with the Great Migration after her family's home was destroyed by a hurricane and flood.
In June 1945, she and her then husband, Mel Reid, founded Reid's Records in their garage in Berkeley, California, which specialized in Gospel music, and later, black jazz,blues, R&B, etc.
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. They were assisted in the purchase of this land by a white friend, due to the redlining laws. The family encountered considerable racism, and she and her husband were subject to death threats when their white Neighbors realized that a black family was building a house there, They had a cross burned on their lawn. Their record store closed in 2019. Unfortunately, I never went there.
On realizing that their children's elementary school was putting on a minstrel show, Betty raised a stink about it, and they were forced to stop.
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. She was a tireless fighter for social justice. She raised money for, and supported the Black Panthers.
She Attended President Obama's Inauguration in 2009 and introduced him as a guest of California Representative George Miller, where she carried a photo of her great grandmother. This meant a lot to her.
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.
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, and is set to be released next year. https://www.signmynametofreedom.com/
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.
There's another film about her called No Time to Waste. https://www.notimetowastefilm.com/
