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For the past decade, 96-year-old Betty Reid Soskin has served as the nation’s oldest Park Ranger, where she gives talks at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historic Park. But the triumphant story of the now ubiquitous feminist icon, Rosie the Riveter, is not Betty’s story. While Rosie was breaking barriers for twentieth century white women in the workforce, Black women like Betty and her slave ancestors had been serving as laborers for centuries. In our live talk at INFORUM at the Commonwealth Club, Betty offers a clear-eyed perspective on the untold stories of the American narrative and the ever-rising spiral our country is making toward equality.
TRANSCRIPT: To err is human, please let us know if find a mistake.
Lauren Schiller:
From KALW and PRX, this is Inflection Point, stories of how women rise up. I am Lauren Schiller.
Lauren Schiller:
Something's not right and you go do something about it. I am Lauren Schiller and this season on Inflection Point, I'm talking with the women taking charge and leading change on the issues that are standing in the way of progress, and what we can all do about it. I need your help to make it happen. Our goal is ambitious, but we can do it.
Speaker 6:
Can you really say that out loud without [inaudible 00:00:42]?
Lauren Schiller:
Yes I can. I want to raise $30,000, which covers the cost of one season to pay for things like studio time, transcripts, equipment and people power. I am wildly thankful for everyone who has given so far. Now I need more of you to go to inflectionpointradio.org and click the Support button to make gifts of all sizes so we can reach our goal by November 18th. It's easy to do and it's even tax deductible. Help us make media that shows how women rise up. That's inflectionpointradio.org and click the Support button.
Lauren Schiller:
I just heard about a new podcast you are going to want to hear. It's called Sick from WFYI and Side Effects Public Media in Indianapolis. Jake Harper and Lauren Bavis are two seasoned health journalists. On the first season of Sick, they're diving into the fertility industry, the story of one doctor's abuse of power and the generations of lives he affected. You won't want to miss every twist and turn. Season One episodes start on October 15th and it comes out on Tuesdays. Subscribe wherever you get podcasts. Go to sickpodcast.org for more information.
Lauren Schiller:
There's a saying that goes, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." While that may be true, a wise woman once told me that ...
Betty Reid S.:
... what gets remembered is determined by who is in the room doing the remembering.
Lauren Schiller:
That wise woman is Betty Reid Soskin, who at 96 years of age, is the oldest serving career Park Ranger in the United States. You can hear her speak at the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California. She was instrumental in ensuring the park was inclusive of African-American history. Now, three times a week, Betty shares her experience as a young African-American woman during World War II.
Lauren Schiller:
This International Women's Day, I was invited to interview Betty on stage for INFORUM at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, where I introduced her to an audience of several hundred adoring fans in a gleaming new building.
Lauren Schiller:
One of Betty's first jobs was as a clerk in the segregated Boilermakers union during World War II. She has also been an activist, a singer/songwriter, and a field representative for California State Assemblywomen Dion Aroner and Loni Hancock. She was a small business owner, operating Reid's Records in Berkeley, which has now been operating since 1945. She's got an honorary degree from Mills College and the California College of the Arts.
Lauren Schiller:
Betty attributes her career trajectory to social change over the years. I would argue, Betty was part of making that social change. I started off by asking Betty Reid Soskin to tell us more about what she means when she says, "We have to go back and see the past for what it was, so we can see how far we've come."
Betty Reid S.:
We have to recognize in truth where we have been, because other than that, we have no way to know how we got to where we are, because we have been many nations over the years. Some of them I have lived through. Some of them were not very comfortable.
Lauren Schiller:
Your great-grandmother was a slave.
Betty Reid S.:
Yes, my great-grandmother, Leontine Breaux Allen, born into slavery in 1846, in St. James Parish, Louisiana, and was enslaved until her 19th birthday, which time she married George Allen, who was a Corporal in the Louisiana state Colored Troops fighting on the side of the north in the Civil War. She lived to be 102, not dying until 1948, when I was 27 years old, a mother, married and I knew my slave ancestor as a matriarch of my family
Lauren Schiller:
I read in one of your blog posts, so Betty's a blogger, you all can follow her, that you were doing an interview with someone who didn't want you to say anything too difficult or challenging about slavery. They wanted you to just keep it nice and tighty.
Betty Reid S.:
Yes.
Lauren Schiller:
Your response was, "What? Is that possible?"
Betty Reid S.:
My response was, "How do you clean that up?"
Lauren Schiller:
Noncontroversial, that was what they asked you for.
Betty Reid S.:
Yeah. It was a family show coming out of the Universal Studios in Southern California where I was invited to participate. It seemed to me that there was a [inaudible 00:06:05] of history, that I was being asked to participate in. I couldn't do that. It's true that they wanted to mention my great-grandmother, but they didn't want to mention slavery.
Lauren Schiller:
That makes no sense.
Betty Reid S.:
How do you do that?
Lauren Schiller:
Is there anything that has just stuck with you about what was passed on about your great-great grandmother's time?
Betty Reid S.:
She was amazing. She was the midwife, the intern to the doctor who came to about every three months on horseback into St. James Parish. My great-grandmother was the one who delivered the village babies and took care of people. Her job was to go out on horseback and drop a white towel over the gate post every place he was to be needed when he came through. After he would come through, he would confer with her on the after care of the patients. She was the caretaker for her village.
Betty Reid S.:
That struck with me. That's a story that came down on my family from my grandfather and from my mother's younger sister. It set the patterns for me when I was very young. I thought, "That was an incredible thing for her to be."
Lauren Schiller:
What do you mean, it set the patterns for you?
Betty Reid S.:
Because when I was in Washington, the first award that I received was from the National Women's History Project. I knew that I was going to get this award at a hotel ceremony that evening, went down to Anacostia to the museum there in the African part of Washington, D.C., and there was an exhibit of midwives of the Civil War period. Wonderful pictures, and I found myself bursting into tears at the sight because she only had that role in my fantasies. I had never seen her in that role.
Betty Reid S.:
But that evening, during the ceremonies, I found myself able to receive an award that I felt unworthy of because you never feel worthy of those kinds of awards. But I felt it if I could accept it for her, because I realized that I had been wooed many times to run for public office, but this had never been a role that I wanted, that I had been dropping imaginary white towels over imaginary gate posts my whole life. It was in that spirit that I was able to accept that first honor and have been accepting them ever since in her name.
Lauren Schiller:
You mentioned your grandfather, which I also, I understand he was an inventor, an unrecognized-
Betty Reid S.:
Oh, my father's father.
Lauren Schiller:
Yes.
Betty Reid S.:
Yes.
Lauren Schiller:
So different grandfather.
Betty Reid S.:
Yes.
Lauren Schiller:
On the patrilineal side.
Betty Reid S.:
He was Charbonnet, Louis Charbonnet. He was a eminent builder, millwright, engineer. His degree was out of Tuskegee University on correspondents courses. I have his books in my apartment, books that took him through Tuskegee. He left edifices all through New Orleans. There's a high school, Corpus Christi Church, which he built. The First Order convent for the First Order of Black Nuns in this country, the Holy Family Sisters, he built their convent.
Betty Reid S.:
I have all those, but either he couldn't get patents because he was a Creole African-American. He couldn't get patents on anything that he built. He had to work under the licenses of a white contractor always. All of his buildings are under the names of others. That has been something that has been a cross that I've had to bear for my whole lifetime.
Betty Reid S.:
But I don't believe that he ever resented it. It was the world as he lived in it. It was the nation that he was born into. He accepted it. I'm not so easily accepting. That part of the tradition I didn't carry with me.
Lauren Schiller:
Was he able to see, at any point in his life, his name on one of his buildings or his inventions?
Betty Reid S.:
No. I have maybe two dozen old photographs, vintage photographs of his projects that have come down to me. There's a rice mill, there's a ballpark, the Crescent City Ballpark that was designed and built by my great-grandfather that under the ... There was an entrance on one street. From that entrance it was a dance hall under the bleachers. This was at a time when ballplayers, there were black leagues, and the only people who played in those parks were African-Americans. But I often wonder [inaudible 00:11:59] very much good. We should have kept those because that ballpark, I still take a look at it every now and then.
Lauren Schiller:
I have this notion that you have collected his drawings, and photographs and things like that, and you are now passing them onto the-
Betty Reid S.:
Yeah, I'll been going back to Washington, D.C. in April and I'm going to donate them to the African American Museum.
Lauren Schiller:
That's wonderful. He will finally get the recognition that he deserves. That's wonderful.
Betty Reid S.:
He will finally have recognition he deserves.
Lauren Schiller:
With all of this in the background of your life as you were growing up, and you were born in 1921?
Betty Reid S.:
Yes.
Lauren Schiller:
As a little girl, what did you dream you wanted to be when you grew up?
Betty Reid S.:
I think I lived my entire life in a constant state of surprise. I'm not a planner, nor am I list maker.
Lauren Schiller:
A dreamer?
Betty Reid S.:
A dream, maybe, but I don't remember. I guess before I was 20, my life was framed by the country that I was living in. At that time, I could not aspire to even college. I graduated from high school with two opportunities for employment open to me. I could have worked in agriculture or I could have been a domestic servant.
Betty Reid S.:
My eldest sister, Marjorie, spent the first five years of her marriage as half of a domestic team. Her young husband was a chauffer and Marjorie was a housekeeper for a family in Piedmont. Because lived in on the premises with Thursdays off, which was traditional, they could save every penny they earned toward the down payment on their first home. This was the traditional pathway into the middle class for African-Americans. This is the country that I grew up in.
Betty Reid S.:
I escaped that because of the third choice. I married Mel Reid, whose family came out across the country from Griffin, Georgia at the first sound of cannon fire, the Civil War. In 1942, when I married, Mel was in his senior year at the University of San Francisco, playing left halfback for the San Francisco Dons. What 19 year old wouldn't prefer that? Mel, his father and his grandmother were all born in Berkeley General Hospital on Dwight Way. My life took a turn at that point. But up until then, I had no ambitions that I could think of because I was limited by what was possible.
Betty Reid S.:
Now, that meant that for about 20 years I lived out in the Diablo Valley in an architecturally designed home with my four kids that I raised to adulthood, outlived of two husbands. Spent a lot of time with friends, some who were quite powerful in my church who were in my neighborhood. I returned 15 years ago. Well, after 20 years in the suburbs I returned to Berkeley as a field representative, for a member of the California State Assembly.
Betty Reid S.:
If you're wondering whether I became a [inaudible 00:15:49] 20 and 15 years ago, may I quickly assure you that's anything but true. That arc of my life, from 20 to 15 years ago, is not a sign of personal achievement, but a solid indication of how much social change occurred in this country over those [inaudible 00:16:12] years. Something we all did, all of us, black and brown, and yellow and red, and straight and gay, and trans. Some of us did it kicking and screaming, and some of us are still kicking and screaming.
Betty Reid S.:
But enough of us because of what happened here in the city of Richmond, in the Bay Area generally. Between those years of 1942 and 1945, during the second World War home front period, because of that enough of us completed that full trajectory so that to this day social change continues to radiate out of the Bay Area into the rest of the country. That was enough to build a park around. That's what we did.
Lauren Schiller:
Did you build your home in the Diablo Valley after the war or before the war?
Betty Reid S.:
No, 1953.
Lauren Schiller:
It was well after.
Betty Reid S.:
It was after the war. Well after the war. Went through about five years of death threats because those people had built the suburbs with their GI Bill to get away from people like me.
Betty Reid S.:
The year that we moved into our house, I had a third grader who was the only young African-American child in his school. That year the PTA fundraiser was a minstrel show. All of his teachers and the administrators were in blackface because that's who we were in 1953. That's who we were.
Lauren Schiller:
Did you discover that upon arriving at what you thought was going to be a fun school evening or ...
Betty Reid S.:
No.
Lauren Schiller:
... how did you discover that?
Betty Reid S.:
I learned about the minstrel show from a neighbor who came to me the day before the show was to be shown, to be staged. She told me about it. I knew that was wrong, but it was something that I had never run into before. I had no idea of why it was wrong, but I got into my car and I went down to the school. I was led into the principal's office, sat there and he was not in, but he came in five minutes later. His costume was hanging on the doorway, big blousy polka dots, red and white, black pants.
Betty Reid S.:
He walked in about five minutes after I was there, and saw my face and turned around to go out. Then he turned back and I said, "You're having a minstrel show." The poor man, miserable, embarrassed said, "Yes." I said, "You know that's wrong." He said, "I didn't know that until I saw you there." He said, "But you know, don't really misunderstand. We're really showing how happy-go-lucky colored people are." I said, "Do I look happy-go-lucky?" He said, "No."
Betty Reid S.:
I said, "You know that minstrel shows were created to ridicule black people." He said, "No." I said, "I know that your show is tomorrow evening, and I can't possibly ask you to cancel it because it's too late now, but I want you, when you have your dress rehearsal tonight, to explain my visit to you to your staff." I said, "Tomorrow evening I will be here, sitting in the front row."
Betty Reid S.:
I did go with my neighbor Bessie Gilbert. We sat in the front in the front row and cried all the way through it. But we made them do their minstrel show in our presence. But the next week there was a Aunt Jemima pancake feed in the middle of Civic Center Park, so we didn't do that much. But as I say, that's who we were in 1953.
Lauren Schiller:
Talk about looking at the past for what it was. You really explained something.
Betty Reid S.:
It was a time of growth for all of us.
Lauren Schiller:
Well, even in building your home as the second black family in the neighborhood, and the experience that you went through with that, you then saw that happen to yet another family, right?
Betty Reid S.:
Yes. There was a young couple that was moving into Gregory Gardens, which is a low-income community that was being constructed at the time. I read about them because there was an Improvement Association meeting to find an answer to the intrusion of these people into their community.
Lauren Schiller:
Improvement.
Betty Reid S.:
Yes, Improvement Association. I read it in the local paper and decided that where I had felt impotent against what was happening to our little family, that as a defender I could have strength.
Betty Reid S.:
I wrote a letter to the editor of the newspaper complaining about this. Someone, an attorney who lived in the area, liberal attorney, name of David Bortin, now deceased, read my letter, found how to get to hold of me, called, and he wanted to offer help because I had said that I was going to attend that meeting and he said, "You can't do that Betty, because they'll hurt you." I said, "No, they won't do that because people don't say those mean things in my presence. They only say them behind my back. If I go there, I will be able to tell them what I want to say and then I will go." But I knew by that time that our community had gotten past this, pretty much, and that I could tell them that it could be better. They could all get through this.
Betty Reid S.:
I drove out to the school, parked my car and walked into the auditorium, and sat about in the middle on the aisle seat. I was not protected by my color because I'm so racially ambiguous that nobody picked it up. Though I was that black nigger family, only three miles away, here that evening I just blended into the crowd. They went on with their meeting saying all those awful things that I had never heard them say.
Betty Reid S.:
When one point a woman stood up and said, "If we can't get them out, the undesirables, if we can't get them out any other way, we can use the health department on the basis of the filthy diseases they bring in," and at which point I couldn't any longer stand it because I didn't want to be eavesdropping. I got up and I walked to the front of the auditorium, and I talked to her about 10 minutes, and then ran out because I panicked. Got into my car and David Bortin was there.
Betty Reid S.:
It had been daylight when I parked my car and it was dark when I came out of the meeting. I heard footsteps behind me. I thought I was being chased, but apparently there was a reporter who came and tapped me on the shoulder just before I was juggling with my key in the car, then the lock. He identified himself as being a reporter, said, "I need to know your name and give me your telephone number. I will call you because I need to get back in to see what happens now." Then David Bortin introduced himself. He was one of those that was running out of the [inaudible 00:24:38] and he [inaudible 00:24:41] me, and that was beginning of my being able to take on. That Improvement Association never met again. That was fine.
Lauren Schiller:
You're here.
Betty Reid S.:
I'm not sure, I wasn't sure that it was ever successful. Over time, I think that I was because that same community that was so disturbed by our being there sent me, 20 years later, to represent them as a McGovern delegate to Miami Beach. That's how fast social change was occurring.
Lauren Schiller:
I'm Lauren Schiller and this episode of Inflection Point was recorded with Betty Reid Soskin for INFORUM at the Commonwealth Club on March 8, 2018, International Women's Day.
Lauren Schiller:
We look at icons like Rosie the Riveter as a shorthand for what happened in the past and often what can inspire us for the future. The Rosie the Riveter National Historical Park where Betty gives talks three days a week is proud of its Rosie heritage. So much so that they've continuously held the Guinness World Record for largest gathering of people dressed as Rosie the Riveter for a few years now.
Lauren Schiller:
I took my family there to help them keep their standing just this past summer. The pictures were precious. I put one on our holiday card, you know, have a Rosie 2018. But Rosie is an icon, and history is never as neat and tighty about as say Rosie the Riveter's headscarf. Betty Reid Soskin told us why the Rosie Story couldn't be her story. We'll hear why in a moment.
Lauren Schiller:
This is Inflection Point. I'm Lauren Schiller. This conversation with Betty Reid Soskin was recorded live for INFORUM at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco.
Lauren Schiller:
Well, we should probably talk about Rosie the Riveter.
Betty Reid S.:
Yeah.
Lauren Schiller:
She's become something of a feminist icon.
Betty Reid S.:
Yes.
Lauren Schiller:
But there's something missing from that narrative for you. She's not your icon.
Betty Reid S.:
No, she's not because in ... Where do we begin?
Betty Reid S.:
15 years ago, when we came back into the city from the valley, as a field representative, the park was created in my assembly district. It simply rose up. The Rosie Memorial, which had caught national attention, was less than a mile from my office in Richmond. I was in a satellite office, one-person office. Even though it was only a mile away, I had never [inaudible 00:29:34] to visit it because that was a white woman's story.
Betty Reid S.:
The women in my family had been working outside their home since slavery because back in 1942, it took $42.25 a week to support a family of five if you were white. But our fathers and our uncles were all members of the service workers generation, earning $25 to $35 a week. Pullman porters earned $18 a week plus tips. It had always taken two wages to support black families.
Betty Reid S.:
That story, it wasn't that I was boycotting the Rosie story, it simply had nothing to say to me. But when the Department Interior planners were gathered in my assembly district and held their first meetings to begin to frame this park, that was when I discovered the National Parks, because it was coming into my area and being defined by scattered sites that laid throughout the city, which I instantly recognize as sites of racial segregation.
Betty Reid S.:
But it's also true that nobody in that room knew that but me, because what gets remembered is determined who is in the room doing the remembering. There wasn't any grand conspiracy to leave my history out. There simply wasn't anybody in that room that had reason to know that but me.
Betty Reid S.:
I became involved in the planning of the stories because the Child Development Center, the Maritime Child Development Center did not service black families at all. Atchison Village was built by the Maritime Commission. It was part of the parks, but it was built to house temporarily Kaiser management, but there wouldn't have been any black managers at the time, so the [inaudible 00:31:35], but Nystrom Village, which was to be restored to show how workers lived, was built by HUD, but you couldn't live in Nystrom Village unless you were white. But there wasn't anybody else in that room that knew that but me.
Betty Reid S.:
Why the story of Rosie the Riveter is extremely important is the feminist story and as a feminist icon. There were many, many stories on the home front. There was a story of the internment of 120,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans, 70,000 of whom were American citizens. There was a great story of the explosion at Port Chicago, in which there were 320 live lost, 202 of them being black dock workers. The mutiny trials because 50 of those men refused to go back and load those ships because nobody could explain what had happened.
Lauren Schiller:
This was the ammunition [crosstalk 00:32:28] that they were loading onto the ship had exploded.
Betty Reid S.:
Yes, at Port Chicago.
Lauren Schiller:
They didn't want to go back because they were scared.
Betty Reid S.:
If you didn't live in the Bay Area, you had no idea that Port Chicago even happened, that those ships had even ... two Kaiser ships. There were so many stories that the home front ... There were 37,600 lives lost in industrial accidents in the home front alone, lives that were never memorialized. That story is so complex and has so many moving parts that being reminded of that became something that I was obsessed with because the story was so important and had been so lost to history. That's when I became on a four-year contract, to consult into the National Park Service because you guys have forgotten all that good stuff.
Lauren Schiller:
Well, it's so much easier to look at her pretty face and her flexed arm, and be like, "Yeah, unity. We got this."
Betty Reid S.:
I really think that that story, because I'm so passionate about my story, that that story gets crowded out because there is an important white feminist story that we don't get to. Some day we're going to get a kick ass white feminist that's going to tell that story just as I tell mine.
Lauren Schiller:
But she's not in the front of the room. She's on a lunch box, she's on posters. Rosie the Riveter is getting her day in the sun, that's for sure.
Lauren Schiller:
Would you have been a Rosie if you could have been?
Betty Reid S.:
No.
Lauren Schiller:
No.
Betty Reid S.:
That was simply beyond my imagination. Since I worked in a Jim Crow segregated union hall, that was nowhere near the shoreline, I never saw a ship under construction, nor did I ever see a ship being launched. All that history completely escaped me. I wasn't even always sure who the enemy was during that period. I would not have ever aspired to Rosie because that was simply beyond my imagination. I've learned more about that history since I've been a ranger than I ever knew before.
Lauren Schiller:
Well, even the job you did hold was not a typical job for a woman, right? At the [crosstalk 00:34:48] Boilermakers union?
Betty Reid S.:
[inaudible 00:34:48].
Betty Reid S.:
No. Actually, being a file clerk in 1942 was a step up. My folks would be proud of me. I wasn't making beds in a hotel, I wasn't taking care of white people's children or cleaning white people's houses, wasn't emptying bed pans in some hospital or rest home, I was a clerk, which in 1942 would have been the equivalent to today's young women of color being the first in her family to enter college, because that's who we were.
Lauren Schiller:
How did you get that job?
Betty Reid S.:
I backed into it as I did with most in my life. I came onto the National Park Service at first as a consultant on a four-year contract. After four years became a National Park Ranger at the age of 85, which the congratulations go to the National Park Service, not to me. I can't imagine the conversations that railed in Washington about that. But I have now been a permanent Park Ranger for 11 years.
Lauren Schiller:
Well, how did you get the job as the file clerk?
Betty Reid S.:
Because the unions were putting us together simply by the color of our skin. The Executive Secretary of the Jim Crow union hall was a friend of mine, [inaudible 00:36:24] was brought out here by his minister's uncle who was chosen by the Boilermakers and put him in charge of the union. He was a minister from Oakland, because he was the right color. Then he felt that was not fitting for a black minister, so he sent for his nephew [inaudible 00:36:46] in Chicago, came out. Because we were social friends, those unions were made up of people of color, mostly because they were connected socially.
Lauren Schiller:
Networking.
Betty Reid S.:
Yeah.
Lauren Schiller:
You said something just a few minutes ago about what gets remembered is a function of who is in the room doing the remembering.
Betty Reid S.:
Yeah, that's true.
Lauren Schiller:
This is a philosophical question, but you can maybe answer it tangibly, which is how do you get in the room?
Betty Reid S.:
How can I answer that? No, it's related to another question that I can answer. There's been a drive in the National Park Service for a number of years now to encourage more people of color into the park system. I keep running into that constantly. There are professional programs, there are kids gathered up in inner cities and delivered to National Parks so that we can have representations in the parks. There's been an honest to goodness effort to get people into the parks.
Betty Reid S.:
I find myself feeling like the National Parks are really created and used by the middle class. You have to have the leisure time and the financial resources in order to take advantage of the parks. If the National Park as a federal agency concentrates on bringing more people of color into the middle class with the jobs program, we will find our way into the park. I think that that's the answer [inaudible 00:38:29].
Lauren Schiller:
I've heard that if any group is comprised of at least 30% of pick anything, 30% women, 30% people of color, 30% you name it, that that's the tipping point. That's the point at which more people who fit into that category will join in.
Betty Reid S.:
I don't know. I'm sure that there's a critical mass that [inaudible 00:38:53] operating and that might be true.
Betty Reid S.:
I am surprised sometimes and not at other times that my audiences at the National Parks don't have nearly as many people of color as I would expect to have because my presentations are clearly out of my shoes. But then when I realize that those were years of rejection, that there's very little to be nostalgic about, if you're not white of the periods of 1942 to 1945. My young husband, who was as I say a left halfback for the San Francisco Dons, went down immediately when the war was declared to enlist, fight for his country, and found himself in the [inaudible 00:39:48] because the only thing a young black man could do was cook in the Navy.
Betty Reid S.:
He lasted only three days and refused because he had grown up as a Californian, not as an African-American. He had never faced into that level of discrimination. He lasted three days. The commanding officer who was on the committee that examined him decided that he was clearly honest and his intent was not to get out of serving, but wanted to define how he was going to serve, decided to give him mustering out pay and honorable discharge. Told him just to forget that it ever happened, but that they could not put a man who was a natural leader of men onto a ship where men might be easily led because it might spell mutiny. They sent him home and he went to his grave believing that he had failed this country, when his country had failed him. That was who we were. Thank God we are not there anymore.
Lauren Schiller:
Do you feel like we've made enough progress?
Betty Reid S.:
I think that it's a fallacy to believe that democracy will ever be fixed. It's a process. It has to be regenerated by every single generation. It has to be recreated. We'll always be forming that more perfect union and promoting the general welfare. I don't know that we'll ever get there. I'm not sure that's the object. I think the 39% turnout four years ago in the election was predictive of the 400% turnout in the most recent election.
Betty Reid S.:
We have a [inaudible 00:41:50] protected right to be wrong. Our [inaudible 00:41:53] protected right to be bigot, if that's what we want to be, that's part of the freedoms. But we've also created this incredible system of National Parks where it's now possible for us to visit almost any era in our history, the heroic places, the [inaudible 00:42:09] places, the scenic wonder, the shameful places and the painful places in order to own that history. Own it, that we may process it in order to begin to forgive ourselves, in order to move toward a more compassion future, because I don't believe that we have yet processed the Civil War as a nation. Though they weren't designed for that purpose, that's how I see the National Parks at this point in my life, that's the National Park that I'm involved in.
Lauren Schiller:
It's so easy to think of history as just this dry boring thing we have to learn in school, but it's so not.
Betty Reid S.:
No, it's an amazing, amazing trip. No.
Lauren Schiller:
Well are there any ... Is there anything for the ... I've got two of my children sitting in the front row here, and there may be other kids in the audience. I see a couple. Is there anything that you would like them to know that they can take with them tonight?
Betty Reid S.:
Yeah, I think that there's a place on the film that we show that was ... It's called Home Front Heroes that's shown as an orientation film for my presentations at the park. There's a place on the film where Agnes Moore, a still living Rosie says that that period of 1942 to '45 was the greatest coming together that she had ever seen of the American people, that she had ever lived through. When she first used to say that on the film, and I would stand up against the wall and watch her, and I'd say, "How can Agnes say that? She knows that isn't true and I'm going to have to talk to that one."
Betty Reid S.:
One day after my 90th birthday, I was suddenly able to hear that as Agnes' truth. I realized that we all create our own reality and that there are many truths. They rise out of religious conviction, they rise out of education, they rise out of life experience. Many of those truths are in conflict. As long as there is a place on the planet where Agnes' truth and mine can coexist, that was all I needed from that day forward. I'd like to be able to tell every 14 year old that comes through our park that insight so they don't have to get to be 90 years old before they recognize it. Thank you.
Lauren Schiller:
I have to ask you one more thing.
Betty Reid S.:
Okay.
Lauren Schiller:
Which is, I understand that you played Spin the Bottle with Paul Robeson.
Betty Reid S.:
I sure did, I got kissed on cheek by Paul Robeson.
Lauren Schiller:
Can you take us inside that moment?
Betty Reid S.:
I was a teenager and we were picketing the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, A Song of the South of Walt Disney. Paul Robeson was in town, I think to do something at the Moore shipyards. We met him there at the Paramount Theatre. Afterward, there was a lemonade party for us kids and Paul Robeson. It was at Matt Crawford's house in Berkeley. We played Spin the Bottle and I got kissed by Paul Robeson.
Lauren Schiller:
You'll never wash that cheek again.
Betty Reid S.:
Yeah.
Lauren Schiller:
As you can hear, Betty Reid Soskin brought the house down. She received a standing ovation, including from me.
Lauren Schiller:
Now, a few days before we got on stage together, I met Betty on her stomping grounds at the Rosie the River National Park in Richmond, California. At that time, I sat with the audience and watched as a full house was also wrapped with attention as she spoke. She got a standing ovation there as well. I think it's because she's providing a clear-eyed perspective and a sense of optimism. It bears repeating.
Betty Reid S.:
I now am more aware of the past, and I am aware that these periods of chaos are cyclical, and that they have been happening since 1776. I sense that we're on an upward spiral. We keep touching the same places at higher and higher levels. I'm not enslaved like my great-grandmother was. Each time we hit one of these places and we're in one of them now, that's when democracy is being redefined and that's when we have access to the reset buttons. When that happens, on this upward spiral we're setting the stage for the next generation.
Lauren Schiller:
My conversation with Betty Reid Soskin was recorded for INFORUM at the Commonwealth Club. I'll put a link to the Rosie Museum and to Betty's blog on my website at inflectionpointradio.org. I am Lauren Schiller, this is Inflection Point.
Lauren Schiller:
That's our Inflection Point for today. Know a woman with a great rising up story? Let us know at inflectionpointradio.org. While you're there, I invite you to become a patron of Inflection Point. Your contribution keeps women's stories front and center, and you'll be rewarded with gifts like an Inflection Point mug and EO body care. It's all on our contribute page at inflectionpointradio.org.
Lauren Schiller:
We're on Facebook at Inflection Point Radio. You can follow me on Twitter, @laschiller. To find out more about the guest you heard today and sign up for our email, go to inflectionpointradio.org.
Lauren Schiller:
Inflection Point is produced in partnership with KALW 91.7FM in San Francisco and PRX. All of our episodes are on Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Stitcher and NPR One. Give us a five-star review and add us to your listening queue. Our Story Editor and Content Manager is Alaura Weaver, our Engineer and Producer is Eric Wayne, and I'm your host, Lauren Schiller.
Speaker 4:
Support for this podcast comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Speaker 5:
From PRX.
