Remembering Betty Reid Soskin
She was born into the terror of the Jim Crow South and lived long enough to advise presidents,
shape a national park, and confront the country about the stories it tried to bury.
Betty Reid Soskin’s life traced the entire arc of modern America:
from segregated union halls and a Black-owned record store to the halls of power in California
politics and the National Park Service. At 84, when most people are told to slow down,
she put on a ranger’s uniform and began rewriting how the World War II home front was remembered,
insisting that Black workers, women, and marginalized communities finally be seen.
Her voice, steady and unflinching, carried into her final years as she warned of a nation losing its moral compass.
Yet her legacy is not despair, but instruction. Every school named for her, every visitor moved by her stories,
every frame of her unfinished documentary is a reminder: history is a living thing,
and we are responsible for telling it honestly. Through Betty Reid Soskin,
countless people discovered that their lives, too, were worthy of the record.
