Betty Reid Soskin, 99, has been employed at Richmond, California’s Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park since 2004. She is now America’s oldest park ranger.
On well-known transport visits, Soskin recounts her previous days as a 20-year-old African American in the Richmond shipyards during The Second Great War.She worked as a file clerk in a union hall with racial segregation in the early 1940s.
The pandemic necessitated the park’s temporary closure today. However, the twentieth anniversary occurred on October 24, 2020. Soskin personally participated in the park’s early planning in her 70s. She was the only person of color present at the initial meetings.
Related Books: Heartwarming Story of a 94-Year-Old WWII Vet Who Becomes a Park Ranger at 85 Unexpectedly, she became a park ranger at the park she helped design at 85.
Soskin recalls, “My fingerprints are all over this park.”
The main location that tells the untold story of Rosie the Riveter is the historic park on San Francisco Bay.
Today, the well-known picture of Rosie demonstrating her strength with the caption “We Can Do It!”is a permanent component of American culture.It was a well-known 1942 rallying cry that praised female assembly line workers.
The classic image of Rosie the Riveter on the left and one of an African American Rosie from the park:Credit: Rosie the Riveter from Pixabay by PublicDomainPictures and a screenshot from YouTube Rosie the Riveter and Segregation As Soskin recalls, due to segregation, Rosie the Riveter was always depicted as white.
Soskin tells visitors that “Rosie the Riveter was a white woman’s story.”Black Rosies were not present. In the 1940s, segregation was still in place in California, and black people were forced to work low-paying jobs.
Richmond was a boomtown during World War II because 100,000 people moved there overnight to help the war effort. The bay suddenly had 56 different war industries, including bomb manufacturing and home construction.
Between 1940 and 1945, thousands of men and women in Richmond collaborated to construct approximately 747 ships at record speed. It had more ships than any other American shipyard.
History.net says that:
“… Richmond’s female workers weren’t actually riveters because Kaiser’s new shipbuilding method used welding instead of riveting. Along with machinists, drivers, shopfitters, electricians, carpenters, and a variety of other workers, they were actually “Wendy the Welders.”
Industrialist Henry J. Kaiser hired low-level African American workers from the South during segregation. Pre-paid health plans and childcare were two unusual social support services offered to employees.
The following is information from the San Francisco Chronicle about Betty Reid
Soskin:
Soskin, who is now 99 years old, is proud to wear the uniform of a US park ranger because she is aware that she is silently conveying an empowering message to young people of color every time they see her.
She declares, “I’m quietly announcing to every child of color a career path that they may never be aware of because they’ve never seen a person of color like me in a National Park uniform.”
The park was initially designed as a tribute to the women who worked on the home front by the planners. It pays tribute to the entire narrative in part because of Soskin.
Related Books: The Woman Who Got Away: Soskin writes in her most recent Newsweek article, “Meet Flora Sandes, the Only Female Officially Fight in World War I Telling the Untold History:”
“The Rosie the Riveter park was originally designed as a tribute to the women who had worked on the home front.” “It was located in Richmond because of the huge war effort that was mobilized there during World War II, including four Kaiser Shipyards.”
“However, it became abundantly clear that women of color were involved in many aspects of the home front, and the park eventually evolved into much more than just that.It wasn’t that the park planners took the wrong approach; rather, the story was incomplete without my contribution. Because there had never been a story like the one I was telling.
Following the conflict, African Americans were quick to lose their positions and advantages after the conflict. The building where Soskin had been a clerk was immediately demolished. Soskin tells the story that never happened because there are no records of it.
Soskin tells stories that would have otherwise been lost forever, and he is still making history at the age of 99. Soskin says that on her tours of the scattered park sites, people are frequently amazed by the untold history.
It became abundantly clear as I began to describe my part of the work that many of Richmond’s wartime tales were not being told. Other stories included the American internment of 120,000 Japanese prisoners and the Port Chicago disaster, which resulted in the deaths of 320 people, including 202 African Americans. Additionally, the park now incorporates these tales.
Betty Reid Soskin began a new career well past the typical retirement age.She gave President Obama a speech at the 2015 National Christmas Tree Lighting. She sang with the Oakland Symphony and published her memoir, Sign My Name to Freedom, a Memoir of a Pioneering Life, in 2018.
Her advice for people who want to live a life that is so amazing and long;
If I had to give any advice, I would probably say to stay involved. Anything less than that is insufficient to achieve one’s full potential. Because you never know what will stick when you throw the spaghetti at the wall. You have no idea that you are making history when you do it. She stated, “You don’t realize until later.”
She now feels like she has “done it all,” but she is still prepared for anything.
