Sign My Name to Freedom: A Memoir of a Pioneering Life traces nearly a century of American history through the lived experience of Betty Reid Soskin. Born in 1921 to Louisiana Creole parents, she grows up hearing first-hand stories of slavery and Reconstruction from her great-grandmother, and then watches the United States wrestle with race, gender, and power across the 20th and early 21st centuries.
Soskin moves from the Black communities of the Bay Area into a predominantly white suburb, raising four children while confronting neighbourhood prejudice. She helps open one of the first Bay Area record stores owned by African-Americans and devoted to African-American music, then goes on to community organizing and public service as a legislative aide.
Her work helping to plan Rosie the Riveter National Historical Park in Richmond, California leads to a later-life role as the oldest park ranger in National Park Service history. Along the way she writes songs, interprets the social upheavals of the 1960s, and eventually turns to writing with her widely read blog, CBreaux Speaks.
Blending blog entries, interviews, letters, and speeches, this memoir offers a candid, often challenging account of how one woman has witnessed and helped shape the nation through eras of lynching, civil rights, Black Power, the election of an African-American president, and the resurgence of racist extremism.
- Expansive first-person view of modern African-American history
- Reflections on race, gender, family, and community activism
- Ideal for readers of memoir, social history, and civil rights narratives
