She hopes to return to regular programming at the visitor center when conditions permit.Some of Betty’s other numerous accomplishments and accolades include: Currently, Betty has been working intermittently during the pandemic and recently started weekly 1-hour virtual visits to continue sharing her perspectives with visitors. In 2015 she was selected by the NPS to participate in the national tree-lighting ceremony in President’s Park at the White House and to introduce President Barack Obama in the nationwide telecast on the annual PBS special.In fall 2019 Betty suffered a stroke and spent months in physical therapy, returning to work in 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to this point she had been known predominantly in the Bay Area, but quickly shot to national and international fame as a result. She participated in numerous national television interviews and managed to stay out of the politics while emphasizing that she had limited time left and needed to be able to get back to the business of sharing her stories of the WWII Home Front. In 2013, during the federal government shutdown, media outlets wanted to interview Betty as the oldest NPS ranger to hear her thoughts on the situation. In 2011, Betty became a permanent NPS employee and has been leading public programs and sharing her personal remembrances and observations at the park visitor center.

She worked with the NPS on a grant funded by PG&E to uncover untold stories of African-Americans on the Home Front during WWII, which led to a temporary position working with the NPS at the age of 84. In the early 2000s Betty participated in scoping meetings with the City of Richmond and the National Park Service (NPS) to develop the general management plan for Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park. Betty has held positions as staff to a Berkeley city council member and as a field representative serving West Contra Costa County for two members of the California State Assembly: former Assemblywoman Dion Aroner and Senator Loni Hancock. In 1945 she and her husband, Mel Reid, founded one of the first black-owned music stores - Reid’s Records closed in the fall of 2019. She also remembers the ammunition ship explosion at Port Chicago on July 17, 1944.īetty worked in a segregated Union hall, Boilermaker’s A-36, during World War II as a file clerk. Betty remembers Amelia Earhart’s departure and tragic loss as if it happened yesterday.

She can recall ferry boats crossing the San Francisco Bay prior to the bridges that now span it, and she remembers when the Oakland International Airport consisted of two small hangars. The Allen family followed the pattern set by the black railroad workers who discovered the West Coast while serving as sleeping car porters, waiters, and chefs for the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railroads: they settled at the western end of their run where life might be less impacted by southern hostility.īetty graduated from Castlemont High School in Oakland during the World’s Fair at Treasure Island.

Her parents joined her maternal grandfather, George Allen, who had resettled in Oakland at the end of World War I. NPS Photo, Luther Bailey Betty Reid Soskin Biography National Park Serviceīetty Soskin (Betty Charbonnet) grew up in a Cajun-Creole, African American family that settled in Oakland, California after the “Great Flood” that devastated New Orleans in 1927. Ranger Betty Reid Soskin sits in front of the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park Visitor Education Center.

Rosie the riveter tools of the trade