Inflection Point with Lauren Schiller; #88; Why Rosie the Riveter is ""not my icon"" - Betty Reid Soskin, National Park Service

but and i'm lauren shuler today an inflection point ninety six years of age they be read sauce campaign is the oldest serving career park ranger in the country and has she got some stories to tell i was a teenager and paul robeson was in town like think to do something at them were shipyards and afterward there was the lemonade part of the house in berkley and we didn't even the bottle then i got just by the vote the painting is it those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat

and while that maybe trio a wise woman once told me that let's remember is determined by who's in the wrestling remembering that wise one man is that he meets ask what ninety six years and the oldest serving career park ranger in the united states and you can hear her speak at the rosie the river world were to compress national historical park in richmond california he was instrumental in ensuring the park was inclusive of african american history and now three times a week he shares her experience as a young african american women this international women's day i was invited to interview betty on stage for him for seven sisko where i introduce her to an audience of several hundred during these cities first jobs was as a clerk in the segregated world works she's also been an activist a singer

songwriter and a field representative for california state assemblywoman dionne aaron air and money can cause she was a small business owner operator reads records in berkeley which is now been operating since nineteen forty five an honorary degree at mills college in california called tr tributes her career trajectory years i would argue that he's a socialist i started off by asking that he reads austen's tell us more about what she means when she says we have to go back and see the past or what it was so we can see how far we've come we have to recognize interests where we have been because we had no way to know how they will be how we got to where we are because we are we have been many nations over the years and some of them so your great grandmother was a slave yes my great grandmother

leon teenage girl on born into slavery at forty six st james parish louisiana residents lady and to see her nineteenth birthday which time she married george allen who is a corporal in louisiana's a colored troops fighting on the side an artist or three hundred and two not dying until in nineteen forty eight when i was twenty seven years old a mother marrying and i knew my slave ancestor as the matriarch of my family did she ever tell you what life is tell me because he only spoke of pepfar french which was the language that was easier for the adults in my family for you just a gothic been anything you know they would just you know now a french and spanish i mean i'm sorry in english when i was a child that left soon

after the stories that i have of my great grandmother mostly company to honor the younger sister who knew and loved my great grandmother very much and down so that the stories i have come to my grandfather her eldest son and my mother's younger sister so i do i you read in one of her blog posts about is a blogger you know that you'd we're doing an interview with someone who did a windy day say anything too difficult or challenging about slavery they want you to just keep it nice and tidy itself and your response oh my yeah it was a family show coming out universal studios in southern california writes invited to dissipate and it seemed to me that there was a disney vacation of history

that i was being asked to do just that is the big i couldn't do that and it's true that they wanted to mention my great grandmother but they do want to mention slavery that makes no sense it do that the aha is there is there anything that has just stuck with you about what was passed on about your great i mean she was on main thing he was in the mid life and he in turn to the dot the er doctor came to about eighty three months on horseback into st james harris ft and my great grandmother was the one who did it deliver that leaves babies six 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 meted out when he came through and after he would

come true the picture with her after care of the patients that she was served a caretaker for her village and that stuck with me that that's the story that came down in my family from my grandfather and for my mother's younger sister and that's her set the patterns for me when i was very young i thought that was an incredible thing for the country because when i was in washington the first award and it was fun and nestle is history project i'm you knew that i was going to get this award at a hotel ceremony that evening went down to anacostia tutti and museum there and the african part of washington dc and there was an exhibit a man bites of the civil war period wonderful pages and i found myself a bursting into tears at the site because i am the

only had that role in my fantasies i had never seen her in that role but that evening during the ceremony i found myself able to receive an award that i felt unworthy and because you never feel worthy of those words but i felt it because i could accept it for her and because i realized that i had the move may times to run for public office but it's never been paroled i wanted that i am and dropping imaginary white towels over imaginary big boost my life and it was in that spirit that i was able to accept that first hour and have been accepting them ever since in her name and you mentioned your grandfather yet i also i understand he was an inventor and i'm here says is a grandfather goes on on the on the patrimonial

thought it was subway louis charbonnet he was an image builders know right engineer his degree without a risky university and correspondence courses i have his books in my apartment because it took into the ski he left as this is all through the new orleans there is a high school corpus christi church which he built the first order content for the first order of nuns by nuns in this country the holy family sisters build a convent i have all those but he could not even be couldn't get patents because he was a tough he was a creole african american and he could get patents on anything that people he had

to work under that under the licenses a white contractor always so all of these buildings and the names of the things that has been something that has been a question i've had a beer during a lifetime but i don't believe that he ever resented it was the world that he lived in it it with the nation that he was born into he accepted it and not so easily except a mask that part of it isn't i didn't carry with me what it was he able to see any point in his life his name on one of his buildings or has until now i have only maybe two dozen of the old photographs and the photographs of his

projects that have come down to me there's a rice mill there is a ballpark because it's a ballpark says that was designed and built by their great grandfather that under the ba it there was an entrance on one street and on that intrinsic it with a dance hall under the bleachers this is a time when the when the island ballplayers that they were but leagues and the only people who've played in the spot for african americans for the upper one day with a ban treaty does dave met very much good that we didn't get a big as those that goes bet that ballpark i still take out like every town that they have this notion that you have collected his trials and lessons about and you've not passing on today to a cdc in april and nine i'm going to donate them to the academic museum

staff that he desires you find the epic bbc unique visits with all of this in your you know that the background of your life as you were growing up in you're born in nineteen twenty one yes so when as a little girl but that you dream you wanted to be when you grew up you know i think i've done my entire life in a constant state of surprise i'm not i'm not planner my oldest makers agreement is a dream may be but i don't remember i guess before i was fully my life was trained by the country diners living in at that time i could not aspired to eton college

oh my i mean i grew up graduated high school with two opportunities for employment open to me i couldn't work in agriculture approved a domestic servant my older sister marjorie stent the first five years of marriage as half of the domestic team a young husband was a chauffer and it was a housekeeper for offending people the landing on the premises with their face off with a traditional baker's a very tiny neighbor into the downpayment on their first time and this was the traditional pathway into the middle class for african americans this is the country that i grew up in ice skates that because of the third choice i'm married now read his family came out across the country from griffin georgia the first sound of cannon by the civil war in nineteen forty two when i'm married now with a new senior year to receive sentences during the attack back the percentages go dancing

but night you know would prefer that you know male his father and his grandmother were all boy entered the general hospital like way and so that my life to turn at that point but often than i had no ambitions and i can think of cash because i was limited by what was possible now that for about twenty years and they doubt the indian diablo valley and architecture design home you know my forties that basis would not have two husbands spent a lifetime wish friends some for quite powerful in my church who are in my mind you know neighborhood it turned fifty years ago

life twenty years in the suburbs i returned to berkeley as the new representative remember the california state assembly and if you're wondering where they became india's use the time i was twenty and fifteen years ago may i could be assure you that that's anything but that arc of my life from twenty to fifty years ago is not a sign of some personal achievement there's solid indication of how much social change occurred this country over those intervening years the thing we all develop its black and brown and yellow and red straighten day in france and so understand it it's bringing in some of the us built it gets rid of the past because of what happened here in the city richmond in the bay area daily between those years of nineteen forty two and nineteen forty five during the second world war a home for a period because of that a knot of us completed that for two jack tricked into to this

day social change continues to radiate out the bay area into the rest of the country and that was enough to build upon that we get this is an inflection point i'm lauren shuler this conversation with beirut soskin was recorded live for informant the commonwealth club of san francisco to hear more stories of how women rise at subscribe to the infection playing podcast on apple podcast stitcher radio public npr one we'll be right back passion a passion i'm lauren shuler and this is an inflection point in this conversation with

figure it's ask and was recorded live for in forum at the commonwealth club of san francisco city do you did you go to a home in the devil in la after the war with the fictional nineteen fifty three years after the war a lot of the work and then i went through about five years of death threats because those people that built the suburbs with their gi bill to get away from people like me and the here that we moved into our house or his third grader who was the only young african american child in his school and that year the pta fund raiser with a minstrel show and all of his teachers and the administrators lacked pace because that's where we were in nineteen fifty three that who we were did you discover that upon arriving at ways i was going to be

a fun school evening or as i learned about the minstrel show from a neighbor who came to me the day before the show was to be shown to the stage as he told me about it and i knew that that was wrong something i've never been into before i had no idea of why it was wrong but i got in my car and i went down the school david the principal's office sat there and he was not in but he came in a pipe five minutes later his costume is hanging on the doorway big blouse the bulk and that's been white black pants he walked in about five minutes after the year and saw my face and turned around to go out and then he turned back end i send you're having an initial shock and forman miserable

in paris said yes and i said you know that's wrong and he said i didn't know that until i saw you there and i said is he said you know don't we don't we misunderstand we're really showing how happy go lucky colored people are and i said do i look and he said know and i said you know that minstrel shows were created do you think you'll like people and he said know and 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 and you have your dress rehearsal tonight to

explain why does it to you to your staff answered tomorrow evening i will be here sitting in the front and i go yeah but my neighbor bessie gilbert and we sat beside bright yellow ensure that it does but we made them do them until selling the presents but the next week that with the back to my mom can get beat in the middle a civic center got so we didn't do that but as i say that's who we were and it could be three yellowing talk about looking at the past when i was yeah i mean you really explain something here for all of this when it did you have to give yourself that good buy to how did you get that courage to go and have that conversation i mean has no idea what i was going to say

in that place and i had no idea except that i had three children at home who have been wronged at all a new year and calling you and i think that they are always been led by intuition i figure i'll know when i get there and i did and i don't know that we did any good but i do know now that we were packed in that we all had a beer the pain apartments all of us but we did that here in the bay area we withstood the pain of each other's crops will even in building year your home as the second but family in the neighborhood and the trees that you went through with that he then saw that happen to yet another family is a ten lillian goble that was moving into grey gardens which is low income communities being constructed the time for an update about them

because there's no improvement proves those patients needing to find an answer to the intrusion of these people into their community improvement in us into a local paper and decided that were i had felt impotent against what was happening for our own family that as a defender i could have strength and so i wrote a letter to the editor newspaper complaining about this and someone an attorney and that in the area of the military name of david boren now deceased and read my letter sound how to get a hold of me called and he wanted to offer tell because i said that i was going to attend that meeting and he said you cant do that they need because they'll hurt you and i said no they won't do that

because people don't say those mean things in my present stay only satan when i'm behind my back so that if i go there i will be able to stick to tell them what i want to say yes and then i woke up but i knew by that time that our committee had gotten past this pretty much that i could tell them that it could be better they don't get through this so i drove out in school my car walked into the fbi detroit and sat about in the middle on the ioc and i was not protected by my color because i'm so racially ambiguous that nobody picked it up though i was that black near family only three miles away here that evening i just blended into the crowd and they weren't only been meeting saying all those awful things that i had never heard dad say when one

point a woman stood up and said if we can get them out the undesirable see if we can get them out for any other way we can use the health department on the basis of the bill the diseases they bring in and it looks like i couldn't any longer stand it because i didn't want to be eavesdropping but i got up and i walked to the front of the auditorium i talk about ten minutes flat and then ran out bigger they can as i got into my car and david barton was there i heard it it had been daylight when i went when i parked my car and it was dark when i came out of the meeting and i heard footsteps behind me i thought i was being chased but apparently there was a report of a cane and tap your show dusty for us doubling of my key in the lock screen he said

he'd been divided south of the reports said i'd need to know your name and it give me until whenever i will call you beginning to get back in to see what happens now and when david boren introduced himself he was one of those that was for money out the league that they're watching ants and he pointed me and that was beginning of my being able to take on the at me get that into association never met again that was fine i'm not sure i wasn't sure they were successful over time i think that that it was because that same community that same jury that so so disturbed by our being there sent me twenty years later to represent them as the mcgovern delegate from miami beach that's how fast social changes occurred

nina i'm lauren shuler in this episode of inflection point was recorded at leeds aston for him for the commonwealth on march eighteen twenty eighteen to international women's day we'll get icons like rosy the river there as a shorthand for what happened in the past and often what can inspire is for the future and the rosy the river national historical park or betty gets taxed three days a week is proud of its rizzi heritage and so much so that they've continuously held the guinness world record for largest gathering of people dressed as rosie the radar for a few years now i took my family there to help them keep their standing just this past summer the pictures were precious at one on a holiday card you know have a rosy twenty eighteen

the rosy is an icon and history has never as the entirety of bell as a rosy the river's headscarf but it reads austen told us why the rosy story couldn't be her story no she's not here fifty years ago and that went went back into the valley and when we came back into the city in the valley as the new representative that the park was created in my assembly district says the rose that the rolling memorial with a cart national attention was less than a mile from my office in richmond i was in a satellite office one person office and even though it was only a mile away i had never seen that did it because that was a white woman's story the women in my family directly outside their homes and slavery

because in back in nineteen forty two it took forty seven dollars and twenty five cents a week at the port of them if i asked if you were white but our hobbies and uncles were all members of the service for free generation twenty twenty five to thirty five pounds of meat pullman porters you're beating our latest tips so it always take into wages to support that families so that story when those boycotting the rosy story recently had nothing to say to me but when the department your ear players are gathered in my assembly district and how their first meetings to begin to frame the spark and that was when i discovered the national parks because it was coming into my area and being defined by status isolate to rock the city instantly recognize this sites of racial segregation

was also true that nobody in that rome knew that pity because that gets remember is determined by who's in the room during the remembering there was any grand conspiracy to legalize throughout the city but anybody that romney had the reason another but maybe they won't in the planning of the stories because such a child development center ed american child about percentage did not serviced by families and all attkisson village was built by maritime commission to this part of the park's biggest not built to house temporarily tries to manage that but there would have been any black managers at the tops the catalyst look at least a village which was to be used during the show how workers that the dog i had that you couldn't live in eastern religion the civil rights but there wasn't anybody else in that round that new debt

at me and when the story of rosa the river is extremely important is the time of the story as a feminist icon there were many many stories on the home front there was a story of the internet a hundred and twenty thousand japanese and japanese americans seventy thousand of whom were american citizens do that great story that the supposed nest for chicago in which there were three hundred and twenty lives lost two hundred and two of them being backed up workers in uk trials because fifty the senate used to go back and nobody could explain what happened this is the onion is saying that they were living under the word head yes and a lot of actors live in the bay area had no idea that puts you probably didn't happen because it's a deep next to crisis its own there were so many stories that the home front door with thirty seven thousand six hundred

lives lost in industrial accidents and the home front a long lines to endeavor memorialized that story is so complex and has only moving parts that being reminded of that became something that i was obsessed with because the story was so important and was so heavy and so last tuesday and so that's when i became a four year contract and sells national park service because you guys well it's only sees utility based santeria her flat fee we denied it think that that that story because i'm so passionate about my story that story gets crowded out because they're an important white feminist ok that we don't get to and someday we're going to get it get white images that you want to tell the story that views on the further than

nonstarters and letters m n roses river is getting hurt her dances well you i mean so you would you have been or as if you could have been you know now that was simply beyond my imagination since i've worked in and jim crow segregated union hello there was nowhere near the shoreline i never saw a sip and the construction murder ever seen shipping launched all their history completely escape me i wasn't even always sure who that enemy was during that period so i would not ever aspired to rosy because of that was simply beyond my imagination i learned more about that he's reached inside and arranges and i never knew before them well even the job he did hold was not a difficult job for a woman for a while and actually being filed they're in nineteen forty two is a step up

rents and to be proud of me i was making better though i wasn't taking care white people's children are bringing my kids' houses when independent some popular restaurant work with the nineteen forty two would have been the equivalent of today's young women being uprooted their family to enter college is that who we were as a nation i came under the national park service at first as a consultant on a four year contract after four years became less a park ranger at the age of eighty five the separatists the reality is i have now been a printer cartridge or eleven years

and one had to get a job as a file clerk because the unions were putting this together is simply by the color of our skin who are they exactly secretary of the jim crow union hall was a friend of mine mullen roles was brought out here by his ministers uncle who was choked chosen by the by the makers of put him in charge of the union didn't administer from oakland because you have the right color and then he felt that that was not bidding for a black ministers of the senate for his nephew smaller roles in chicago came out because of a social france those unions are made up of people of color and mostly because they were connected totally now working as a

social scene like enrichment at that time and you know because i was not living in it's maniacal haven't opened it minarets nixon in the city to work and went home at night a couple low initial lines i was a part of that at all i had no idea wood what was a typical day we get into work go home go to sleep or to just beginning after the couple went home at night never had anything to do with richmond until i came in as a major this is an inflection point i'm lauren shuler this conversation with betty reid suskind was recorded live for him for him at the commonwealth club of seven sisko will be back right after a break i'm

lauren shuler and this is an inflection point this conversation with betty reid soskin was recorded live streamed forum in the commonwealth club of san francisco subscribe to the inflection point podcast to hear more rising up stories you said something just a few minutes ago about what gets remembered is a function of who's in the room dr remembering so this is a kind of philosophical question but you can maybe answer attentively which is how do you get in iran how do you to another question i can't say 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 they're constantly improve social programs if they are our own here's garden gathered up in india in inner cities and delivered to national parks so that we can have representations in the parks and there's been an honest to goodness effort to get people in the past and i

find myself feeling like the parts and there are some parts are is really created and used by the middle class you have to have the leisure time and the financial resources and are to take advantage of the parks and internet support of the federal agency concentrates on bringing more people of color into the middle class with a job we'll find our way and attack and that that's the answer i've heard i've heard that if any group is comprised of the least thirty percent of that pig anything thirty percent women are very particular color thirty percent you name it that that's the tipping point that's the point which more people who fit into that category will join in i don't know if i don't shoot is the critical mass that we would be

operating at that might be true on it and sizes sometimes and not at other times that my audience is that the national parks don't have been nearly as many people colors i would expect to have big as much on my p's and patients are clearly out of my shoes on but i realized that those two years of rejection that is very hard to be nostalgic about if you're not quite terry's nineteen forty two to nineteen forty five my youngest and who was as i say em let's get back to the senate does go down down immediately when the war was declared to enlist and fight for his country and found himself in the manson score because the only thing a young black man could do is cook in the

navy he lasted only three days and he's used because he'd grown up as a californian not as an african american man and he had never faced into that level of discrimination us to three days the hand commanding officer who was on the committee that examined him decided he was clearly honest and end and it is intact o is not to get out of serving but wanted to define how he was going to serve its own beside me get in mustering out pay an honorable discharge told him just to forget that it happened but that they could not put a man who was a natural leader of man onto ships were men might be easily lead because of mike's the mutiny so they sent in on and he went to his grave believing anything on this country of

his country failed him that was kind of we were hearing do you feel like we've made enough progress i did it i think there's a fallacy to believe that democracy will ever be fixed it's a process and it has to be regenerated by every single generation they had to retreat we were always be forming that more perfect union and promoting the general welfare i don't know that we're ever get they're not sure that's that thirty nine percent turnout four years ago in the election was to dig a book of four hundred percent or not in the most recent election and we haven't come to choose you to get the right to be wrong says he did it to get that that we won't be that our freedoms but we've

also create this incredible system that apartment now possible for us to visit almost any year in our history the heroic places that the attempted of places the sr wonders the single places in the bagel places in our own that history and that between a process that in order to begin to forgive ourselves an hour to move toward a more compassionate future because i don't believe that we have yet process to sew war as a nation and though they were designed at curtis that's how i see the national parks at this point my nice that's the national park that i'm involved in he had it so it's so easy to think of history is just as dry boring thing we have to learn in school that it's so true no yeah i mean it's a democracy is costly reinventing itself in a i feel like we're in another one of those moments of reinvention

you know women's voices are being elevated more than ever to me to movement the black lives matter movement where do you see what would you like to say to the leaders of those movements that will hold them i don't think that at ninety six i have lost my son to teach but there are no models for me anymore about that might do that what's happened in compensation is that i now am more aware of the past and i am aware that these periods of chaos a cyclical and that they've been happening since seventeen seventy six i sense that we're at the creek spire of it it tempting the same places at higher higher levels and lance played not my great grandmother was and it's time we get one of these places now

that slogan democracy is being redefined anatomy have access to the recent patents and when that happens on this upward spiral resetting this stage for the next generation and that gives me great hope and i think in that process the national park is one of my greatest fools have the total re framing of the national park service it's good did you and changing the story that you told about the horrible

minstrel show and then in the dell of alley and homeowners and if there's something that gives you the courage to stand up we're motivates you have been in a city going to resist or interesting an organist a bit there must be some theme song or something fancy our permission to make a change i'm not sure how i'm probably as i say i've had my entire life is cancelled say to supply then you have enjoyed that i mean i think that i reinvented myself but like every ten year i get restless and i wonder what's coming next i don't know how to answer that because i don't spend much time recreating yesterday flavor tomorrow it's all now from a bit farther other nhl is there anything that you know for that i got to write elders sitting in the front row here in the media the kids in the audience with a couple is anything that you would like them to know that they can you know i think that there's a place on the

film that that we show that was at the taco truck heroes that soon as an orientation film for i might be conditions at the park is a place on the film and this moral still living rosy since nineteen forty two to five to forty five was the greatest coming together because he'd ever seen by the american people is it ever mr mac virus used to say that on the film and i would stand up against the wall and what's your night say how to say that you know that isn't true and i got to talk about what aereo a day after my nineteenth birthday i was able to hear that establishes truth and i realize that we all created our own reality and that there are many truths rise out of religious conviction a rise out of

education they rise out life experience and those issues are in conflict and as long as there's a place on the planet where and this is true than mine and co exists that was all i needed that a forward and i'd like to be able to tell every fourteen year old comes through our part so that insight so they don't have to get to be ninety years old before they read as i have to ask you one or think again which is i understand that you placed in the bottle can you take us inside it a teenager and we were a really paramount cleared of song the south's autism the un and paulson was in town likely to do something at them were shipyards and we met in

the air at the paramount theater and afterward there was lemonade party for us kids and paul robeson it was a macro grid house and thirty eighth and replaced in the bottle and i got just like all our lives the peace begin as you can hear that he reads austen's brought the house down she received a standing ovation including for me a few days before we got on stage together and that any other stomping grounds of the breezy the revered national park in richmond california at that time i sat with the audience and watched as a full house and also was wrapped with attention

and 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 now we're going to pass it in the lyric that these periods of chaos so sick and that they've been happening to seventeen seventy six i said sit weren't rich cairo egypt tempting the same places entire packet of us and not insulate that might make them otherwise each time we see one of these things now that's democracy it's being redefined anatomy have access to its end when that happens on this upward spiral resetting this stage for the next generation

my conversation with ad reads austen's was recorded for him for a link to the resiliency and entities blog at my website and fiction and lauren shuler this is unfortunate christians that sounds like something for today no one of the dreamers and that story really had died or wanted their antennae to become your contribution to its women's

stories and center thing you'll be rewarded with a devastating infection there it's on earth should be at dot org we're on facebook and inflection point radio you can follow me on twitter at la show and to find out more about the guests you heard today and center for genome that unfortunately radio dial or inflection point is produced in partnership with playhouse ninety one point seven fm in san francisco dr oliver episodes podcast public stitcher and try to give us a five star review interest or listening to you her story isn't content manager as an engineer and producer