{"id":48060,"date":"2016-07-03T18:43:37","date_gmt":"2016-07-03T18:43:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48060"},"modified":"2016-07-03T18:43:37","modified_gmt":"2016-07-03T18:43:37","slug":"rangers-voice-spans-east-bay-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48060","title":{"rendered":"Ranger’s voice spans East Bay history"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ranger’s voice spans East Bay history<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

San Francisco Chronicle<\/a>
\n2010-01-31<\/p>\n

Lee Hildebrand<\/strong>, Special to The Chronicle<\/p>\n

Betty Reid Soskin<\/a> is a “phenomenal woman,” to borrow the title of a famous poem by Maya Angelou<\/a>. In her 88 years, Betty has been a shipyard worker, proprietor of a record store, housewife and mother of four, singer and composer of art songs, community activist and, for the past three years, a ranger at Rosie the Riveter National Historical Park<\/a> in Richmond<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She’s the oldest active National Park Service<\/a> ranger in the country and works at the park six hours a day, five days a week, doing community outreach and giving guided tours of the now dormant Kaiser Shipyards<\/a> where she worked during World War II<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Born in Detroit<\/strong><\/p>\n

She was born Betty Charbonnet in Detroit<\/a> in 1921 to bilingual Creole<\/a> parents from New Orleans<\/a>. She has traced her European ancestry to France<\/a> in the 17th and 18th centuries. The earliest relative of African heritage she’s been able to identify was her great-great-grandmother, a former slave named Celestine who married her former master, Cajun<\/a> plantation owner Eduouard Breaux. Their daughter, Betty’s great-grandmother Leontine Breaux, was 19 when they married.<\/p>\n

“Marriages were relatively common between Cajun slave owners and their slaves,” Soskin explains. “Their marriage papers are dated 1865, at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation<\/a>. His signature is there alongside her ‘X’. Her name is given, in French, as ‘Celestine of no last name.'”…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ranger’s voice spans East Bay history San Francisco Chronicle 2010-01-31 Lee Hildebrand, Special to The Chronicle Betty Reid Soskin is a “phenomenal woman,” to borrow the title of a famous poem by Maya Angelou. In her 88 years, Betty has been a shipyard worker, proprietor of a record store, housewife and mother of four, singer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,8,20,25],"tags":[24354,24355,24359,8918,2820,24358],"class_list":["post-48060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-betty-reid-soskin","tag-betty-soskin","tag-lee-hildebrand","tag-national-park-service","tag-san-francisco-chronicle","tag-the-san-francisco-chronicle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48060"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48061,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48060\/revisions\/48061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}