Soskin became a national park ranger in her mid-80s, educating visitors about the contributions of black women to World War II, where they faced discrimination.
Pioneering park ranger and historian Betty Reed Soskin dies at 104
Betty Reed Soskin, a National Park Service ranger who spent her life preserving the overlooked history of Black Americans and Black women, has died.
Betty Reed Soskin, a historical figure who was the National Park Service’s oldest ranger when she retired several years ago, has died at the age of 104.
Soskin’s family confirmed her death in a Facebook post on Dec. 21. As a park ranger at Rosie the Riveter World War II Homefront National Historical Park in Richmond, California, she has been sharing her story for more than 12 years, filling in the missing chapters of America’s story that only people like her can know. They did not share her cause of death.
Soskin was born in Detroit in 1921 and was the great-granddaughter of former slaves in Louisiana, according to the documentary about her life, “No Time to Waste: The Urgent Message of Betty Reed Soskin,” produced in conjunction with the Rosie the Riveter Trust.
Mr. Soskin’s Cajun-Creole family moved to California six years later, where he grew up in Richmond and worked as a file clerk in a segregated shipyard union hall supporting the U.S. effort in World War II. Decades of discrimination would harden her character and determination.
As a child of what she called the “service worker generation,” including bellhops, laborers, Pullman porters and domestic servants, Soskin was familiar with racism and its effects. She said her job as a union clerk represented a step up, the modern equivalent of being the first person in her family to go to college.
“I wasn’t making beds in hotels or taking care of white kids,” she said in “No Time to Waste.”
According to the National Park Trust, Soskin was one of the first black record store owners in the United States. She would work with the Black Panthers in California’s East Bay Valley, and would eventually write a memoir, make spoken word recordings, and write songs that reflected her emotional highs and lows. The latter was a way to stay sane, she said.
It wasn’t always easy to stay hopeful, she said, but she was more successful, encouraged by the crowds that gathered on the streets of America during the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations.
“There are other people working on the same thing,” she told USA TODAY in July 2020. “And one of us will be successful one day. The people in the city are multiracial now, but it’s different. So, for me, as a black person, that problem no longer exists. It involves everyone now.”
In 2015, Soskin was invited to the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony at the White House Ellipse, where she introduced President Barack Obama. Meeting the Obamas was “the high point of my life,” she said.
In 2007, Soskin, then in her mid-80s, became a national park ranger, educating visitors about the contributions of black women to World War II, where they faced discrimination.
“I feel like I’ve lived my life to the fullest,” she said. “I have no regrets. There’s nothing I feel like I’ve left undone. I feel like I’ve lived my life to the fullest and lived every moment of it to the fullest.”
Contributed by Autumn Schoolman, USA TODAY
