Sign My Name to Freedom

A Memoir of a Pioneering Life

By: Betty Reid Soskin

Narrated by: Betty Reid Soskin

In Betty Reid Soskin’s 96 years of living, she has been a witness to a grand sweep of American history. When she was born in 1921, the lynching of African-Americans was a national epidemic, blackface minstrel shows were the most popular American form of entertainment, white women had only just won the right to vote, and most African-Americans in the Deep South could not vote at all. From her great-grandmother, who had been enslaved until her mid-20s, Betty heard stories of slavery and the times of terror and struggle for Black folk that followed. In her lifetime, Betty has watched the nation begin to confront its race and gender biases when forced to come together in the World War II era; seen our differences nearly break us apart again in the upheavals of the civil rights and Black Power eras; and, finally, lived long enough to witness both the election of an African-American president and the re-emergence of a militant, racist far right.

The child of proud Louisiana Creole parents who refused to bow down to Southern discrimination, Betty was raised in the Bay Area Black community before the great westward migration of World War II. After working in the civilian home front effort in the war years, she and her husband, Mel Reid, helped break down racial boundaries by moving into a previously all-white community east of the Oakland hills, where they raised four children while resisting the prejudices against the family that many of her neighbors held.

With Mel, she opened up one of the first Bay Area record stores in Berkeley both owned by African-Americans and dedicated to the distribution of African-American music. Her volunteer work in rehabilitating the community where the record shop began eventually led her to a paid position as a state legislative aide, helping to plan the innovative Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California, then to a “second” career as the oldest park ranger in the history of the National Park Service. In between, she used her talents as a singer and songwriter to interpret and chronicle the great American social upheavals that marked the 1960s.

In 2003, Betty displayed a new talent when she created the popular blog CBreaux Speaks, sharing the sometimes fierce, sometimes gently persuasive, but always brightly honest story of her long journey through an American and African-American life. Blending together selections from many of Betty’s hundreds of blog entries with interviews, letters, and speeches, Sign My Name to Freedom invites you along on that journey, through the words and thoughts of a national treasure who has never stopped looking at herself, the nation, or the world with fresh eyes.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2018 Betty Reid Soskin (P)2018 Hay House

Thought provoking!

Loved listening to Betty tell her story and our story as a nation!
Fabulous

Betty Reid Soskin's life and career, in her own words

This excellent, well-written and engrossing audiobook should be required reading for those who seek truth about African-American history, if there are any such people left in the now-benighted and degraded USA. The author pulls no punches about her opinion of "the land of the free" and she is more right nowadays than she was when she wrote this memoir. Though she ends her story during the hopeful Obama era, today as I read it our country has fallen back to the dark ages with a malevolent despot destroying far too much of what used to be good about America. Soon the US will truly be a shit-hole nation, deservedly hated by every other country, no matter its politics. Betty is 103 now and I hope she lives to see better times.

A life well lived and continuing

I enjoyed the book immensely. It was a wonderful civil rights history by one who lived it.

There are many layers of her story

There are so many layers to Miss Betty in this story. Miss Betty is reading her own book, who could have read better she reads it so elegantly . I felt She was telling bits and pieces of my story,

Singular

Must read if you’re from the Bay
A look at the big changes that came to the East bay after the war.

Debra P.

Thanks for an Amazing Book!!
Enjoy the Black American history told through your eyes.

Everything Stood Out! It Left Me So Enlightened!

I’m so glad that I took a chance at using a credit on this book. I learned about historical facts from someone that actually lived through it. I highly recommend this book.

A Disappointment

I really looked forward to this book. It was bland and boring. i like historicsl books. I like looking back through others eyes. But her voice is wan and weak with little insight offer for her experience. A waste of time and money.

How she stressed Creole, but I guess it was a badge if honor not being regular black.

Dislike perpetuate colorism between black people. But why would I think differently when her nationality on Wikipedia is "American" and not African American