Betty Reid Soskin is the 96-year-old ranger at Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historic Park, author of the recently published memoir Sign My Name to Freedom, former co-owner of Reid’s Records on Sacramento Street in Berkeley and field representative to Assemblymembers Dion Aroner and Loni Hancock. She became politically active during the Civil Rights Movement, wrote and performed protest songs, fundraised for the Black Panthers, and became involved in Berkeley politics upon taking over the management of Reid’s Records in the late 1970s.
Carole Davis Kennerly, MSW/LCSW, was the first African American woman on the Berkeley city council and served as vice mayor. Earlier this year she received a Lifetime Achievement Award for activism at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Breakfast, having spearheaded the Byron Rumford memorial on Sacramento Street.
Tina Jones Williams is the author of Things I Want You to Know and the “Julia Street” series of novels, set in the same South Berkeley neighborhood as Reid’s Records, the Rumford statue, and the South Berkeley Senior Center.