What Should I Do with the Rest of My Life_ - Bruce Frankel [133]
Betty Reid Soskin
261 Born Betty Charbonnet in New Orleans in 1921: While Betty’s quotations in this chapter come from interviews and other exchanges I had with her, I want to acknowledge the importance to my research of interviews conducted by Nadine Wilmot in 2002 for the Regional Oral History project of The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. She was among numerous residents of the Bay Area interviewed, in collaboration with the City of Richmond and the National Park Service, about their wartime experiences during World War II on a broad range of issues, including civil rights, sexuality, and the relationships between family and work. The interviews are being used by the National Park Service’s visitor center at the Rosie the Riveter/ World War II Homefront National Historic Park. I carefully read Betty’s oral history and checked information in my interviews against it. There were occasionally minor discrepencies. I did my best to sort them out. Betty generally explained that the differences existed because her memory of events has steadily improved in the several years since being interviewed for the oral history as she worked to record her memories herself in her blog. Still, I am grateful for the oral history’s existence as a valuable source and for its availability for consultation.
261 “shattered myth of a quasi-feudal land”: John Barry, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 422.
263 has done extensive research of her family tree: Anyone wanting a more direct taste of Betty’s mind and memory should read her blog, CBreaux Speaks, at cbreaux .blogspot.com. She has included other interesting family links, including California Black Pioneers, The Betty Soskin Pages, and The Charbonnet Pages. I leaned on her blog to reinforce and occasionally augment what I learned from Betty directly about her life. Her blog is, it should be noted, more than memoir only. In addition to her abundant and vivid memories, she speaks regularly and elegantly to current issues of all kinds, political, historical, and creative.