Geography asks three questions:If you have only one hour to learn about the history of the United States, I recommend that you spend it with Betty Reid Soskin, National Park Service Ranger. (The NP Lego post below was in honor of her 100th birthday. As of this edit (July 2025), she is retired but still with us!)
I learned about Ranger Betty as many other people did, when the entire National Park Service celebrated her 100th birthday as part of the centennial celebration of the NPS itself. The occasion came to my attention in several different ways over a couple of days. The most fun, of course, was the item above from the impish creatives at NPS Lego Vignettes, from whom I literally learn something new every day.
She is a ranger at the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park in California. Her personal history is so deeply entwined in the mission and purposes of the park that they have created an entire web page for this particular ranger. The Betty Reid Soskin page included a schedule of the popular presentations she gave on site, a biography focused on her relationship to the park, and most importantly, that one-hour video I reference in the opening lines above.
She is shown sitting as I've seen many rangers do in other parks, on a kitchen stool at the front of a small theater full of visitors. She introduces the park and the park's main documentary video. The hour spent with her includes about 20 minutes with that professionally produced film. It begins, however, with her presenting both a general introduction to the concept of urban national parks and her own connection to this one. After the film is when the real learning happens: in a series of firm but gentle steps, she guides listeners from a superficial understanding of what the home front was all about to a deeper understanding of how that reality was shaped by race and how that might be relevant today.
Spoiler alert: although she was born in Detroit, a key turning point in the life of Ranger Betty Soskin was the evacuation of her family from a flood that ravaged much of Louisiana. Most of us were not aware of it until after Katrina in 2005, though Randy Newman ... and later Aaron Neville ... told us all about it in Louisiana 1927, first released in 1974.
UPDATE: I returned to this post in July 2025 because I happened to hear one of Ranger Betty's talks on The Moth. I recommend both of them! This also led me to read the rest of her story on the Betty Reid Soskin Wikipedia entry.
Lagniappe
If you have more time to devote to learning about the Great Migration that is a big part of Ranger Betty Soskin's story, I highly recommend Isabelle Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns. She focuses on the stories of three families in order to provide a few in-depth examples from among the myriad experiences of millions of Americans moving over a period of half a century. For a link to the book and my own thoughts on it, please see my Warmth of Other Suns review on Goodreads.
I found the Ranger Betty video while I was looking for material about this book; I found it a bit after the fact. Wilkerson was featured on the TED Radio Hour, which includes a conversation with her and a link to her TED Talk.
