A Conversation with betty reid soskin
An Ashby Village Arts & Culture Series event
Co-sponsored with Epworth United Methodist Church
Story by Charli Depner, photo by Richard Bermack
On Sunday June 30, 2019, a full house at the Epworth United Methodist Church’s stately sanctuary turned out to hear the heralded local nonagenarian Betty Reid Soskin, in conversation with acclaimed Bay Area journalist Brenda Payton.
Introduced by Ms. Payton as a witness to history, Ms. Soskin recounted tales of Transbay travel before the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, the Oakland departure of Amelia Earhart’s fateful flight around the world (“… she was one of my childhood heroes”), and the tragic Port Chicago explosion and mutiny trials.
It soon became clear that Ms. Soskin has been more than a spectator to landmark events in her lifetime. “What gets remembered,” she said, “depends on who is in the room doing the remembering.” Her presence in many such rooms has preserved a richly diverse history, including stories that need to be told about Home Front World War II and that draw from a near century of life as a person of color in the Bay Area. At 97, Ms. Soskin is the oldest National Park ranger in the United States. She is assigned to the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California, a site that she was instrumental in founding. There she continues to tell visitors the near-forgotten stories about the contributions of people from all walks of life to the American legacy. She is also a jazz singer (“I no longer sing because I sound like Bob Dylan with a bad cold”) and composer.
Ms. Soskin told us about growing up in a Cajun/Creole African-American family that settled in the East Bay when she was 6 years old, after the New Orleans Great Flood of 1927 devastated their home. She attended Castlemont High School. During WWII, she worked as a file clerk in a segregated Union hall, Boilermaker’s A-36. After the war, she and her husband, Mel Reid, were among the first African Americans to open a record store in the Bay Area. She remembered opening Reid Records to Wynonie Harris’s cut on Blues Around the Clock and the struggle to increase distribution of African-American music. Raising their four children in what had been an all-white Bay Area suburb that Reid called “Disneyland with mortgages”, the Reids encountered bias, discrimination, even death threats. “That was the first time that I took on the system,” she recalled, “But it was not the last time.” Ms. Soskin has long been engaged in community volunteering and was staff member to a Berkeley city council member, former Assemblywoman Dion Aroner, and State Senator Loni Hancock.
When Ms. Payton read an audience question about what advice she had for younger generations, Ms. Soskin demurred. “It is the job of every person to figure out their best life,” she explained. “They are living a reality that I did not. In World War II, my generation met the threat of our day; now my grandchildren need to save the planet. It is a matter of stepping ahead with them into a future they are busily creating. The young know.”
Ms. Soskin counts herself fortunate to have known generations of women in her family. “My grandmother was born into slavery, my mother was born in 1894, and I was born in 1921. Those three lives cover the American narrative from Dred Scott to Black Lives Matter… Each of us began with the America that our predecessors left us, and each of us tries to create a future that is better.”
“Today the rate of change is accelerating at a dizzying speed. Since 1776, democracy,” she said, “has gone through periods of chaos when it is redefined. We are in one of them now. There are always people who are trying to get it right; but history is often written by those who get it wrong.”
Ms. Soskin is the recipient of many prestigious awards and honors. She is one of two female recipients of the Silver Medallion Award at the World War II Museum in New Orleans. In 1995, she was named a “Woman of the Year” by the California State Legislature. In 2005 she was named one of the nation’s ten outstanding women, “Builders of communities and dreams,” by the National Women’s History Project. In 2018, she published her autobiography, Sign My Name to Freedom. But Betty Reid Soskin does not rest on her laurels.
When Ms. Payton inquired, “What was the most challenging or rewarding time in your life?” Ms. Soskin’s response was inspiring. “At 97, I still am having first time experiences. I don’t think that I have yet lived the most interesting period of my life. I have outlived my fears and am using everything I ever learned. I realize that I am speaking to the future. I have lost my future. My right now is my future, the period that most excites me. Every single minute must have meaning.”
Thanks go out to Marcia Freedman and Rochelle Lefkowitz, who lead the Arts & Culture (A&C) team and to Ashby Village A&C team members including Joanne Carder, Sigrid Duesberg, Irene Marcos and Betty Webster, as well as to AV volunteers, photographer Richard Bermack and videographer Howard Kirsch. Special thanks to Susan Jardin, coordinator of the Epworth United Methodist Church’s Older Adult Ministry, who helped us make the kickoff event of Ashby Village’s 10th anniversary year an especially memorable beginning.
To share this experience with someone unable to attend, please direct them to our website, www.ashbyvillage.org, for the video of Betty Reid Soskin’s extraordinary presentation.
At next event in the Ashby Village Arts & Culture Series on Sunday October 20, our guest will be Bay Area culinary legend—and radio personality—Narsai David, who will discuss his global reputation in food and wine, his life in an immigrant family and his relationship to our community. To RSVP, please email info@ashbyvillage.org or call 510-204-9200.