Louis Jones is a keeper— working as a Field Archivist at the Reuther Library at Wayne State University in Detroit, he cares for the largest labor archive in North America. Home to numerous union and labor collections from around the country, the Reuther Library also actively collects material documenting Detroit’s civil rights movement, women’s struggles in the workplace, the LGBTQ Archive of Detroit and more.

Born in New York City, the grandson of a Pullman porter, Jones takes us through the archives with stories of the United Auto Workers, Cesar Chavez, Utah Phillips, A. Philip Randolph, the Civil Rights Movement, the 1967 Detroit uprising, and how archivists are examining and re-imagining their roles in the midst of Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Special thanks to the Reuther Library at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan; Nancy Beaumont and the Society of American Archivists (SAA); Paulina Hartono; The National Endowment for the Humanities; and supporters of The Kitchen Sisters Productions.

Produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of Radiotopia from PRX.

On December 21, 2025, activist and trailblazer Betty Reid Soskin passed away in Richmond, California. She was 104. Over the years we've chronicled Betty's remarkable story and want to share it today in honor of Betty and Black History Month.

In 2011, at age 89, Betty became America's oldest national park service ranger, a position she held until she retired at 100. Her bold and forthright tours and talks at the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front Museum were legendary. As a Black woman who worked in the segregated war effort, she spoke from her personal experience revealing a fuller, richer understanding of the World War II years experienced by women and people of color on the home front.

Betty's Creole/Cajun family was from New Orleans and her great grandmother had been born into slavery in 1846. Displaced by the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, Betty moved with her family to Oakland, where she grew up in the late 20s and 30s. During WWII she worked as a file clerk for Boilermakers Union A-36, a Jim Crow all Black union auxiliary, where she witnessed firsthand the discrimination faced by Black workers in the wartime industry.

Betty raised four children in the highly segregated Diablo Valley area where the family was subject to death threats. She and her first husband, Mel Reid, owned one of the first Black record shops west of the Mississippi located in Berkeley. She also worked as a Field Representative for California State Assembly women Dion Aroner and Lonnie Hancock. In 2016, at age 94, Betty survived a violent home invasion and returned to work at the Rosie the Riveter Museum just weeks later.

A singer, songwriter, poet and musician, Betty chronicled her life and work in a memoir, "Sign My Name to Freedom," which inspired both a stage play and a documentary film. Betty received numerous awards and honors throughout her life, including a presidential coin from Barack Obama in 2015 after she lit the national Christmas tree at the White House.

Special thanks to: The San Francisco Public Library and Shawna Sherman of the African American Center of the San Francisco Main Library; This is Love Podcast and creators Phoebe Judge and Lauren Spohrer; and A Lifetime of Being Betty, a Little Village Foundation recording release produced by Mike Kappus. Thanks also to Betty’s son, musician and songwriter Bob Reid http://www.bobreidmusic.com/

The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. We are part of the Radiotopia network from PRX.

The Gilded Age was a time of unparalleled wealth and prosperity in America—but it was also a time of staggering inequality, corruption, and unchecked power. Among its richest figures was Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate who built his fortune on the backs of low-paid workers, only to give it away—earning him the nickname the Godfather of American Philanthropy. He didn’t just fund libraries and universities, he championed a philosophy: that it was the duty of the ultra-wealthy to serve the public good.

But, as it turns out, even philanthropy is a form of power. So, what exactly have wealthy philanthropists done with their power? We explore that question at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, inside Carnegie’s former mansion. There, a board game called Philanthropy invites players to reimagine the connection between money and power—not by amassing wealth, but by giving it away.

Produced by The Smithsonian's Podcast — Sidedoor. With host and Senior Producer Lizzie Peabody. Featuring:

• Christina de León, Associate Curator of Latino Design at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
• Tommy Mishima, artist and co-creator (with Liam Lee) of the installation Game Room in Cooper Hewitt's triennial Making Home
• David Nasaw, author of the biography Andrew Carnegie

The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. Part of the Radiotopia network from PRX.