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"Sign My Name to Freedom"
A New Book by Betty Reid Soskin

Monday January 15, 2018 - 04:28:00 PM

In Betty Reid Soskin’s 96 years of living, she has been a witness to a grand sweep of American history. When she was born in 1921, the lynching of African Americans was a national epidemic, blackface minstrel shows that both mocked and denigrated black music were the most popular American form of entertainment, white women had only just won the right to vote in American elections through the 19th Amendment passed the year before, and most African Americans in the Deep South could not vote at all. From her great-grandmother, who had been enslaved until she was in her mid-20s, Betty heard stories of slavery and the times of terror and deep difficulties for Black Folk that followed. In her lifetime, Betty watched the nation begin to confront its race and gender biases when forced to come together over the Fascist and Nazi world threat of the World War II era, saw those differences nearly break apart at the seams again in the upheavals of the civil rights and Black Power eras, saw the defeat of the Southern-led white segregationists following the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and, finally, lived long enough to witness both the election of an African American president and the re-emergence of a militant, racist far right that rose up out of the ashes of the old segregationists. 

But far more than being merely a witness, Betty Reid Soskin has been an active participant with so many other Americans in shaping the country as we know it now. The child of proud Louisiana Creole parents who refused to bow down to Southern discrimination, she was raised in the Black Bay Area community before the great westward migration of World War II. After working in the civilian homefront effort in the war years, she and her husband, Mel Reid, helped break down racial boundaries by moving into a previously all-white and initially unwelcoming community east of the Oakland hills. 

There she raised four children—one openly gay, one developmentally disabled—while resisting the prejudices against the family that existed among many of her neighbors. 

With Mel, she opened up one of the first Bay Area record stores in Berkeley both owned by African Americans and dedicated to the distribution of African American music. Her volunteer work in rehabilitating the community in which the record shop began eventually led her to a paid position as a state legislative aid, helping to plan the innovative Rosie the Riveter National Park in Richmond, California, then to a “second” career at the Rosie Park as the oldest park ranger in the history of the National Park Service. In between, she used her talents as a singer and songwriter to interpret and chronicle the great American social upheavals that marked the 1960s. 

In 2003, Betty displayed a new talent—writing—when she created the popular blog CBreaux Speaks. Now followed by thousands, her blog is a collection of Betty’s sometimes fierce, sometimes gently persuasive, but always brightly honest story that weaves both the wisdom of the ages and the fresh enthusiasm of an always youthful mind into her long journey through an American and African American life, as well as America’s long struggle to both understand and cleanse its soul. Blending together selections from many of Betty’s hundreds of blog entries with interviews, letters, and speeches collected throughout her long life, Sign My Name to Freedom invites readers into an American life through the words and thoughts of a national treasure who has never stopped looking at herself, the nation, or the world with fresh eyes. 

Betty Reid Soskin has been a home-front war-years worker, a singer-songwriter and performer, a writer, a legislative aide, a National Parks ranger, a national icon, and an honest and tireless fighter, both against discrimination of all forms and for the growth and triumph of the human spirit and values that would benefit us all. In her blog, CBreaux Speaks at cbreaux.blogspot.com, she writes, “Life has never been richer, nor more abundantly lyrical,” and “I’ve grown into someone I’d like to know—were I not me already!” Website: cbreaux.blogspot.com 

About the Editor: Oakland, California, native J. Douglas Allen-Taylor was a natural choice to edit Sign My Name to Freedom. Besides having known Betty Reid Soskin literally “all my life” through extensive family and community ties, he is a longtime journalist and political columnist. He is the author of the 2012 novel Sugaree Rising about resistance in a black Southern community.