Today In Black History: Betty Reid Soskin
A legacy of park ranger leadership and civil and women's rights activism.
Issue #1,005 Today In Black History, Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Betty Reid Soskin was born on February 6, 1921, in my hometown of Detroit, Michigan. Her parents, natives of Louisiana, were of Creole and Cajun heritage, and her great-grandmother had been born into slavery in 1846.
After spending her early childhood in New Orleans, Betty’s family relocated to Oakland, California, in 1927, following the destruction of their home and business by a hurricane and flood.
During World War II, she made history as one of the first African American women to serve in the United States military, joining the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) in the Navy. Her service challenged the systemic racism that defined the era. She worked as a file clerk for the all-Black union auxiliary of the Boilermakers Union A-36, filing change-of-address cards for workers who moved frequently.
In June 1945, Betty and her then-husband, Mel Reid, founded Reid’s Records in Berkeley, California, specializing in gospel music. The family endured significant racism and was subject to death threats after they built a home in a white suburb.
In the 1960s, Betty Reid became well-known as a songwriter for the civil rights movement. Betty divorced her husband, Mel Reid, in 1972 and subsequently married William Soskin, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
After Mel Reid’s health began to decline, Betty took over the management of the music store and became a prominent community activist. The record store closed in 2019.
Betty later served as a field representative for California State Assemblywomen Dion Aroner and Loni Hancock, and 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.
During the building planning sessions for the Historical Park, Betty 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.”
In 2003, she left her state job and became a consultant at the park she helped create, then, at age 85, became a National Park Service ranger at the Rosie the Riveter Park in 2007.
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.
For nearly two decades, she served as a docent and guide, sharing her firsthand knowledge of the home front experience during the Second World War. But more significantly, she became an ardent advocate for preserving and telling the stories of African American women who contributed to the war effort—stories that had been systematically erased from mainstream historical narratives.
Betty Reid Soskin released her memoir, Sign My Name to Freedom, in February 2018. A feature-length documentary about her involvement with music, also titled Sign My Name to Freedom, began filming in 2016.
Beyond her official duties, Betty Reid Soskin had been a powerful voice for truth-telling in American history. She consistently emphasized the importance of including diverse perspectives in historical accounts, particularly those of Black Americans whose contributions have been marginalized or completely omitted.
Here are just a few of the awards and commemorations Betty Reid Soskin received:
She attended President Obama’s Inauguration in 2009 as a guest of Rep. George Miller.
She received an Honorary Doctorate from California College of the Arts in 2011.
She was recognized in the Congressional Record in 2016.
She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Arts and Letters from Mills College in 2017.
In celebration of her 100th birthday on September 22, 2021, the West Contra Costa Unified School District renamed Juan Crespí Middle School to Betty Reid Soskin Middle School.
A stage musical based on her life, Sign My Name to Freedom by Michael Gene Sullivan, with songs by Soskin, premiered by the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company in March 2024.
She had a stroke while working at the park in September 2019; yet she returned to work in a limited, informal capacity in January 2020. She retired from the National Park Service on March 31, 2022, as the oldest serving park ranger.
Soskin died at her home on December 21, 2025, at the age of 104.
Today In Black History
In 1865, the Congress of the Confederate States of America adjourned for the last time.
In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Frederick Douglass as marshal of the District of Columbia.
In 1895, 200 African Americans left Savannah, Georgia, for Liberia.
In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9102, which created the War Relocation Authority that was charged with overseeing the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
In 1972, the USS Jesse L. Brown, the first U.S. naval ship to be named after an African American naval officer, was launched.
In 2002, Black Grammy Award-winning songwriter and singer Isaac Hayes was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
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