 Tell us a little bit about how you how your family came to Detroit because I know you're actually your family's from New Orleans right? Yes I was born in Detroit by accident really or not not only that I think by custom my father was an apprentice to his father Louis Charbonnet who is a craftsman and engineer a millwright developer a man of all trades in New Orleans well known at the time honored and dad was one of seven brothers who worked with their father and one day they were working in the office when a white man walked in off the street he entered and had a request of my grandfather but he addressed him as Louie it was at a time when no white man was be was regarded by a black man except by his surname all black men were called by their first names and that was an insult to my father my proud father my proud Creole father who then asked him interrupted to say do you know to whom you're speaking Harry and according to my cousin who I met a few years ago in New Orleans that signaled the need for my family to get my father out of New Orleans before sundown it was then that my father and my pregnant mother with my older sister took off for Detroit Michigan where his life could be saved if you read Isabel Wilkerson's The Warped the River's sons then you know that we were just one of those families who was relocated by custom I was born four years later in Detroit and in 1924 the family returned to New Orleans upon the illness of my grandfather but I so I don't have any recollection of Detroit but that story was lost in my family until just a few years ago when I learned it on a visit to New Orleans nice so when you're in New Orleans you said you're you mentioned you come from a Creole background can you explain a little bit about what Creole is well I thought that all Creoles were brown people actually my family came into this country as French people before the Louisiana purchase in the mid 1700s two brothers came over from tears France settling in New Orleans one of them brothers went on to fight in the Haitian Revolution on the wrong side the other settled in Natchitoff's I'm a descendant of the family who went into Haiti upon the death of the that that officer that French officer who had left the family in Haiti the son came home to New Orleans returned to New Orleans and later in what I'm heard what I read of as being an unhappy marriage took an African-American slave as his wife with whom he produced 11 children my family was therefore came out of that group it was interesting I was doing my genealogy about 20 years ago and I kept running into the slave curtain and it didn't dawn on me that my family even went back further than that and it wasn't until I was found by a white member of the family of the Charbonne's in sushi not his family that he found my family in California and I realized that oh it doesn't stop at the slave curtain it goes all the way back to 1700s then therefore back to the 1400s the people who settled in this country were called Creoles just as the Spanish who settled in this country were known as Islamos my family brings together the Creole and the Islamos in into New Orleans sequentially I don't think that I've ever had any any more of sophisticated understanding of Creoles than that but it was your family yeah so you mentioned California you you were in New Orleans during the Great Flood in 1927 right on yes good Friday and after that your family you know they had lost everything in that flood and moved out to California yes it was in 1927 when the Great Flood happened in New Orleans and the city fathers chose to bomb the levees to save the Garden District and St. Charles Avenue they bombed they sacrificed the seventh the sixth the seventh and ninth wards and the Tremay which was our ancestral home and that year my mother arrived in at Oakland at the 16th she Southern Pacific Station with three little girls everything we had left in a couple of cardboard suitcases and a crucifix to join George Allen who was my grandfather her father who had settled out here during the first rule after the first war they were sharing a little shotgun bungalow out on the 76th Avenue my great-grandfather Papa George Allen my two Pullman Porter brothers and a sister Vivian and Papa's third wife who is Aunt Louise and we were no longer required to call them grandmother she was Aunt Louise and we would wait for my father who would join us in a couple of months and I would be in life as a child of the service worker generation our fathers and our uncles were the redcaps and the Pullman porters and the waiters and the cooks and the janitors and the bell hops and our mothers were 50 cents an hour domestic servants cleaning white people's homes and taking care of white people's children because that's who we were in those years I graduated from high school from Castlemont High School with two opportunities for employment open to me I could have worked in agriculture or I could have been a domestic servant my older sister Marjorie beautiful young woman and a talented artist spent the first five years of our marriage is half of a domestic team a young husband was a chauffeur and Marjorie was a housekeeper for family in Piedmont and because I lived in on the premises with Thursday's off which was traditional they could save any penny they earned or the down payment on their first home and this was the pathway into the middle-class for African-Americans right when I was 18 and you worked a little bit one day as a domestic there's a great story in the book I only lasted one day or a weekend it was either that or marry well and I married well actually I really did I married Mel Reid whose family has made up made its way out across the country from Griffin Georgia at the first sound of cannon fire the Civil War in a 1942 when I married Mel his father and his grandmother had all been born in Berkeley General Hospital in Dwightway and he was in his senior year at the University of San Francisco playing left half back for the San Francisco Dons and what night general winter for that right so I never did spend my life as a domestic server right because you were married quite young married well yeah you married well at 20 yes quite young so what was can you give us there's a ton of great stories in the book about your early experience working because you when you first married it took you a minute a while to conceive a child and you eventually adopted your first child Rick at 23 what agency would allow a 23 year old child I was so imprinted with my role of being a wife and mother and I cannot claim that I wasn't complicit in my capture as a I wasn't a feminist because I hadn't delivered a baby by the time I was 23 we adopted one which was my only child until he was five Rick right yeah and so I was wondering if you could tell a little story about one of your first experiences working either in San Francisco and I think was the San Francisco Civil Service Union or maybe at the segregated Union Hall in Richmond there's tons of great stories in the book yeah I my first job I think pretty much was during during the Second World War as a clerk in the basement of the federal building on McAllister I was working but I didn't know which federal agency I don't really remember which federal agency was I just know that we went every day and we met at tables long tables with long boxes of file cards into which the bar and flag cards were filed against the cards that were processed when people took civil service examinations there were pink blue pink and blue cards the blue cards with the with the flag files and the pink cards with the bar cards so that if you were filing cards and you found your card was blue and it met one of the results of a civil service examination it would have a warning on it this this person's car was seen parked within two blocks of a communist cell in Vallejo or something of that sort so that means that they would have to have further investigation before they could be hired if that card was pink it meant under no circumstances was that person to be hired because that was a bar card they would probably suspected a higher risk than that that was the first job I had I was it was at a time when San Francisco was subject to having air raid sirens go off suspected submarines off the coast or or an unidentified plane in the area because of course we were at war my parents became concerned that I would be caught in San Francisco during an air raid and so I transferred to the civil service to the Air Force as a federal employee at Air Force had taken over the the limington hotel in Oakland so as a transfer I didn't realize that I was in over my head that you could not work in the clerical departments for the Air Force unless you were white and I didn't realize that and because I'm racially ambiguous no one had picked it up so I found myself just a few days later with the young woman whose desk abutted mine being called up by the lieutenant in charge of the section to be worn that I was colored and that she was getting very very close to me and she should know that I watched the conversation from afar and it was very clear that my young friend who I'd been sharing lunches with was upset about something her face was reddened she came back to her desk and I said what was that because they had been looking at me while they were talking and I said was it something about me and she admitted that no she couldn't make eye contact with me she admitted that the lieutenant had warned her that I was colored and that she should know I got up and immediately walked to the front to his desk and said who told you that I was not and he said he said don't worry Betty we we I've talked with with all the people who work with you and you supervisors and and they're willing to work with you and I said but are they willing to work under me I went back to my desk because he said you we will see that you get your pay raises which meant no and so I went back to my desk picked up my purse walked out on the Air Force and never want to look back yay Betty maybe that was my second political act yeah then there's tons more to come in the book huh so you after so you're starting your new family and your husband Mel at the time was you know I think he was trying to get into the Navy or went into the Navy and there he it was actually a great lakes when I was doing the thing with the Air Force Mel being a quarter of being a half left half back for the San Francisco Dons when war was declared went to the recruitment office as any red-blooded football player would do and volunteered to fight for his country and found himself at great lakes in the Missman's Corps Mel who was a third generation Californian the two of us had who had grown up as second generation Californians simply had never had any experience with that kind of thing he refused and at his refusal they got him before a board of examiners to try to shake him down he was not to be not to be just waited from his position they kept him for three days gave him mustering out pay an honorable discharge send him home told him to forget that it ever happened but that they could not afford to put a natural leader of men in on to a ship where men who might be easily led because it would spell mutiny at sea he went to his grave not ever telling that story feeling that he failed his country I felt this country failed him right that was when I when he came back to Berkeley after that experience to find me having just left the Air Force for the same reason yeah we were not very good we were not very obedient right and that's how you guys decided to start your own business we were not going to ever work for white folks again so we came back and established reads records in the in the base of in our garage and it's still an existence and it's still like just in seven years later yeah and your son David Reed actually I should mention is selling books today and so be sure to get your book afterwards so yeah so at around that time you decided to build the house and Walnut Creek yes Mel was playing professional football his teammates were all moving off the suburbs Mel as parents had moved to Danville had a little truck farm out there kept a couple horses we would take the kids from Berkeley out to ride the horses on Sunday afternoons and would pass through Saranap which was between Lafayette and Walnut Creek Mel fell in love with a lot that was there decided this was where he's going to establish a home for his family and we got we knew that we couldn't buy the property because they were this was all white this commu de Avalo Valley had only one African-American couple Jack and Eleanor Watkins and their twins we got Lionel Wilson's wife who was white Dorothy Wilson Lionel who was at that time I think mayor of Oakland or judge of Oakland whatever was she made the purchase we got a Quaker architect to design our home built house of the lovely Redwood House out in D'Apple Valley and then lived with five years of death threats it was an incredible period but the acceleration of social change that was accelerated by what happened here in San Francisco Bay Area was so strong that that same community 20 years later sent me to recognize to to represent them as a McGovern delegate to the my damnate Democratic Convention so it was not without its benefits right so that was a pretty hard time for you back then you had your adopted son Rick and then you your son Bob and David and then you had also had a daughter who was developmentally disabled and your husband Mel was working a lot so that I think you called this chapter into the lion's den could you describe a little bit about I mean you I think you talk about having a breakdown back then and can you talk a little bit about how you overcame that that's a difficult period but also was a period of growth that I don't think been matched by any other period in my life I could not find my voice while I was a victim in those first five years but I found it when the opportunity to become a defender of someone else arose there was a young couple who had he was a truck driver and she was a nurse's aide as I remember I don't remember their names young African-American couple who had bought into a low-income community in Pleasant Hill moderate price homes and the Improven Association gathered to prevent their moving in and I read about their plight in an announcement for the Improven Association meeting in the local paper and decided that I was going to go and to their Improven Association meeting because I had lived through that and my neighbors by that time had lived through it with me and that we had come to a different place and I thought if I can go there to their Improven Association meeting and share that tell them that this goes this passes that they will get over it and and maybe I can keep this young couple from suffering from same fate that we had a young attorney David Borton who lived in the area saw a letter that I'd written to the editor of that newspaper and called me looked me up and said that he didn't think that I was going that I should go to that meeting that I was going to be hurt and I said no I'm not because they don't say those ugly things when when in your presence they only say them behind your back and I will go and I will sit in the audience and I will get up when it's appropriate and I will make my speech and then I will somehow save the situation for everybody he said they will hurt you and I said no I will go he said then I will also be there but I hadn't ever met him he was an attorney because a member of the Unitarian Church fellowship actually that time it was not a church yet he said there will also be friends there and I did I drove out drove out to that little there was a elementary school cafeteria where they were meeting walked in the lion's den sat on the aisle seat waited for my turn assuming that they were going to recognize me and I was going to be able to have my speech you know while they were getting over it and they didn't recognize me because I'm racially ambiguous though I was less than two miles away known as that nigger family on the corner of Warren Road and Boulevard Way here in Gregory Gardens I was not recognized and I got to hear all the awful things the people say at those meetings without anybody knowing I was among them and it was at a point where I couldn't stand it any longer when a woman got up and said if we can't get bit of them undesirable niggers in any other way we can use the health department on the basis of the healthy diseases the unhealthy diseases they bring in at which point I got up and walked to the front of the auditorium and said I can no longer eavesdrop I and Betty Reed and I and here and I made my speech and told them up and I in the middle of it my mouth went dry and I was terrified and I ran out of the auditorium to my car by this time it was in the dark because they'd be gone in in the daylight now it's dark and I heard thundering footsteps behind me and I thought I was being chased I got into the car and someone appeared at the car windows I was trying to unlock the car it was a reporter he said I need to know your name I'll call you when when I get out here but I have to go back in and hear what happens at the result of what you've just done and then the next hand on my shoulder was David Borton saying I'm here I'm David and that was when I joined the Unitarian Denomination forever but that improvement association never met again though the couple did not remain their lives are maybe as miserable so I think you mentioned that this is when you started to see that your power was internal that you could yeah this is when that was the point where I became self-defined I think that up to that point I'd been defined pretty much by the men in my life I realized that I could I could do this I could do this I don't think I ever even shared this story with Mel it was something that I needed to do for myself not only for that couple but for me and I think I was successful though felt shamed at the time because I'd bolted but I'd done what I needed to do this is also the time you started writing songs right I went into a period where I was struggling with being alone lonely wife in the suburbs among many lonely women whose husbands were all in the cities in the urban areas making them mortgage money I was raising three little boys a handicapped daughter I had to find ways to travel with Dory hanging to my skirt because I couldn't leave her even for moments I was learning to live with all of that in a hospital community and became pretty suicidal I had to find deep within me the strength to travel without leaving myself behind and I found within me the little girl who sang in the same Vincent Molay's Renaissance behind the barn I began to write music for about ten years I was secretly performing composing never wanting to be a singer but needing to be Betty who sings I would sing in my church I would sing at a college campuses with other poets I find that over time I documented about 20 years of history I could sing for an hour all original music but never published anything that music was all preserved on tapes which have recently been digitized and now I am hearing them in the third person I can play on my cell phone songs in the voice of Betty of 40 years ago and I find myself competing with my younger self yes so they're actually the wins so like the text first a lot of your songs are actually in the book and they're very poetic yes and the title of the book is actually another song that you wrote and signed my name to freedom is another one of your songs I'd love you to be able to you know read it maybe tell maybe tell a story about which one is oh yeah this is the title is signed my name to freedom and the story is that Susan Sanford I think she was 18 young daughter of Don Sanford who was a member of my church who was going off to Canton Mississippi in summer of 64 to work in a freedom school with Nick from her letters home some couple of them that Don shared with many of us allowed me to imagine the woman in whose house whose home Susan may have shared with other sneak workers or with the woman's family and I wrote this song at that time it's Monday morning streets are bare seems like they don't want me nowhere since I went to the courthouse and signed my name to freedom daughters say mustn't run sound of trumpets the kingdoms come mama go to the courthouse got to sign your name to freedom feels the fire cotton flaming in the summer skies shrouds of white no name naming you don't know this dream can't die church is burned deacon dead still I know it's like daughter said ain't no turning back now I done signed my name to freedom young folks here around my table talking through the night faces here I can't label brown ones blending with the white Sunday morning church ain't there bombed at Wednesday but I can't care God was down at the courthouse day I signed my name to freedom my Lord was down at the courthouse day I signed my name and Susan Sanford is in the house right now she came to Susan and I reconnected tonight for the first time since 1964 thank you for reading that song it's so beautiful I we're sort of running out of time so I mean there's so much more we could talk about but I'm sure people in the audience have questions and maybe we'll open it up for about 10 50 minutes of questions now if anybody asks questions we have a mic as well okay I want to hear about how you became a park ranger I backed in the park ranger business I came in some years ago I guess 15 years ago now as a few represented that was when I returned to the Bay Area from the suburbs after my kids grew up after raising four kids to adulthood and outliving two husbands I came back into into Richmond as a field representative for a member of the California State Assembly I worked for Deion Aaron Erwin Deion term limited out I stayed on as a field representative for her successor Lonnie Hancock who only recently term limited out of the California State Senate I was in Richmond in a one-person satellite office doing constituency work and helping to determine what kind of legislation might be needed out of the five cities of West Contra Costa County over which my office sat and if you're wondering where I became a genius we do time I was 20 and 15 years ago may I quickly assure you that that's anything but true that that amount of social change that occurred in this nation over those intervening years is just amazing it was in that year when I came back into Richmond as a field rep that the park was being formed in my assembly district and I began to attend meetings of the planning groups who were here from Washington from the National Park Service from the Department here to determine the shape of this park and because it was very clear to me the city of Richmond had been selected as the only place in the country suitable for interpreting the home front story because there were more still standing structures through which to interpret that history than any other place in the country where they'd all been redeveloped out of existence but all of the structures that would have told my story as an African-American had been turned down immediately when the war ended so if this story was to be inclusive it had to incorporate those stories not only of Rosie the Riveter who was a white woman story the women in my family working outside their homes in slavery it always taken to two salaries to support black families because very few men at the service level could do it on their own so our mothers and our aunts had been working outside their homes since slavery so this was not going to tell our story nor was it going to tell the story of the hundred and twenty thousand Japanese and Japanese Americans who were interned hundred and twenty thousand seventy thousand of whom were American citizens nor the Braceros who were brought in from Mexico to take over the agricultural scenes when the Japanese were interned there were so many stories and if that park was going to be inclusive of its total history there had to be a broader approach that was when I became involved as a consultant to the National Park Service because fear that that history was going to be distorted was not going to be inclusive and four years later after a four-year contract as a consultant I became a park ranger at the age of 85 because you guys have forgotten all the stuff great so yeah the mic's coming thank you Betty tell me your read records which should be a landmark in the area I wonder two stars and I remember when I was a youngster if I wanted tickets to go to any concert of gospel it was read records that's right that's the only place and I remember when I gave many concerts I had my tickets at read records there's swans department store when did you organize when was that June 1st of 1945 we opened this we cut a hole in the garage window of the wall and we had we had the albums in orange crates and the the a cigar box for the money and but safe was our washing machine in the back of it was an inauspicious beginning but we but we got we did it and we did it because we were going to be independent and we were right it was on Sacramento Street on Sacramento Street at 3101 Sacramento Street Emmett Powell how are you Emmett I can't see you I thought I'd recognize your voice yes my name is Kayla Barnes thank you so much for being with us tonight my question is you've lived and seen so much a lot of good times in our country a lot of not so great times what gives you hope what gives me hope is the fact that I think that I have at 96 I have lost my sense of future I don't any longer have a peer group I am at the place where there are no more models for me but in compensation I have an enhanced sense of past and that I know in looking back that these periods of chaos are cyclical that they've been going on since 1776 that in those periods are the times when when the democracy is being redefined that we can get at the reset buttons that those are the times that and we're in one of them now incidentally those are times when the tables being set for the next generation and I'm seeing that we're that we're all involved in uppers upward spiral that we keep touching same places at higher and higher levels and we're in one of them again now all of those things which have been encoded and hidden are now obvious and out there for us to see and get at I have great hope I have sat in the last month with incredible young women at the makers conference in Southern California unbelievable young women motivated beyond anything that I've ever seen in my life only this last weekend I was a member of a presenter at Bend Oregon with another muse of the world young women from all over the world and there is such hope there is such energy there's they're so motivated I can't help but I just wish I could make a you know a Faustian bar bargain for another 20 years right yeah we hope that as well they're gonna take me away kicking and screaming I think there's a question at the back a couple questions at the back hi my name is Joy thanks for having this and being here I didn't get here on time sorry I work in the South Bay but my question was where did your family move to California from how far back do they go did they migrate from the south like me or where are you all from if I can ask sorry we still call New Orleans home that that's the that's where my family comes from that's where our culture comes from that's why I identify most clearly though I grew up from the age of six in California my roots are still buried in New Orleans I'm a Charbonne and that means a lot to me still I just want to say you're fantastic I just like to tell you my family's from New Orleans too and when we did our DNA come to find out our last name is a bro the art you but we had been Johnson's for a long time till they changed it but anyway but I just want to tell you you did a good job and it's been a hard time but you look good for yeah thank you one question over there in the back one one question in the back right there and then we'll have to hi Betty again thank you so much for coming I just wanted to ask since you said you were a former field representative as I am currently I wanted to ask you if have you ever at any point in your career thought about running for office no you know what no I clearly this this is a story I think that we ought to close with but but my great grandmother Leon teen bro Allen was born into slavery in 1846 and she was enslaved until she was 19 freed by the Emancipation Proclamation which time she married George Allen who was a member of the the Louisiana state colored troops fighting on the side of the Civil War she lived to be 102 not dying until 1948 three years after my experience in that Jim Crow Union hall her role in her village in st. James parish was that she was the intern to Dr. Hidal who would come through on his on horseback about every three months and her job was to go through the village hanging a white towel on the gates on the fence posts of where he was to be busy when he had finished his rounds he would meet with her and they talk about the aftercare for those patients and it wasn't until I was in Washington receiving an award from the women's the national women's history project and got to visit in Anacostia an exhibit of the midwives of that year of slavery and saw the equivalent of my great-grandmother there and the next night I that night I was to be awarded this given this award at the Hay House Hotel I remember coming to terms with the fact that I had spent my entire life based on the stories that my Papa George my grandfather told me about his mother about that story in particular that I had been hanging imaginary white towels on imaginary gate posts ever since I was a kid that I had never never aspired to being that top person I always cast myself in that role of being the supporter I made a lifetime of it and I'm still doing that even the National Park Service and that is I think realizing or bringing into being her life that was lost to slavery I carry her picture around in my wallet every day of my life she was in my breast pocket when I met the president of the United States the first African-American president she was with me no I've never wanted to public office because what I had was a whole lot worse better thank you well thank you so much miss Betty this we just touched on like you know a little bit of all the stories that are in your book thank you like I said they're going to be in the back if you want to get your a copy and we'll be doing some signings as well thank you really appreciate it thank you for being thanks so much