Charlotta Bass
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
educator, newspaper publisher-editor, and civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
activist. Bass was probably the first African-American woman to own and operate a newspaper in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
; she published the California Eagle
California Eagle
The California Eagle was one of the oldest and longest-running African American newspapers in Los Angeles, California and the West. It started in 1879, founded by John J. Neimore, who had escaped slavery in Missouri...
from 1912 until 1951. In 1952 Bass became the first African-American woman nominated for Vice President, as a candidate of the Progressive Party
Progressive Party (United States, 1948)
The United States Progressive Party of 1948 was a left-wing political party that ran former Vice President Henry A. Wallace of Iowa for president and U.S. Senator Glen H. Taylor of Idaho for vice president in 1948.-Foundation:...
.
Background
She was born Charlotta Spears in Sumter, South CarolinaSumter, South Carolina
-Demographics:, there were 59,180 people, 34,717 households, and 4,049 families living in the city. The population density was 4,469.5 people per square mile . There were 416,032 housing units at an average density of 603.0 per square mile...
, the sixth of eleven children of Hiram Spears, a brick mason, and his wife, Kate, a housewife.
She moved to Rhode Island
Rhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
after high school and began working in the newspaper business. In 1910 Spears moved to Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
to improve her health.
Career
Soon after arriving in the city, she took a job selling subscriptions to the small African-American newspaper the California Owl. Just before the owner John J. Neimore died in 1912, he asked Bass to take over the paper. Changing the name to the California Eagle, Bass in 1913 hired Joseph Blackburn "J.B" Bass. She eventually promoted him as the editor of the paper.Marriage and family
Spears and Bass married. After J.B. Bass's died in 1934, Charlotta Bass took a more direct role as editor.Expansion of paper
By 1925, the California Eagle employed a staff of twelve and published twenty pages a week. The Eagle's circulation of 60,000 made it the largest African-American newspaper on the West Coast.As editor and publisher of the California Eagle
California Eagle
The California Eagle was one of the oldest and longest-running African American newspapers in Los Angeles, California and the West. It started in 1879, founded by John J. Neimore, who had escaped slavery in Missouri...
, the oldest black newspaper on the West Coast, Charlotta Bass fought against restrictive covenants in housing and segregated schools in Los Angeles. She also campaigned to end job discrimination at the Los Angeles General Hospital, the Los Angeles Rapid Transit Company, the Southern Telephone Company, and the Boulder Dam Project. Bass was co-president of the Los Angeles division of Marcus Garvey
Marcus Garvey
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., ONH was a Jamaican publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League...
's Universal Negro Improvement Association during the early 1920s. During the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
of the 1930s, she continued to encourage black businesses with the campaign known as "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work".
In 1943, Bass led a group of black leaders to the office of the Mayor of Los Angeles, Fletcher Bowron
Fletcher Bowron
Fletcher Bowron was the 35th Mayor of Los Angeles, California from September 26, 1938 until June 30, 1953. Until Thomas Bradley passed his length of service during the 1980s, Bowron held the distinction of having the longest tenure in that position in city history.Bowron was born in Poway,...
's office. They demanded an expansion of the Mayor's Committee on American Unity, more public mass meetings to promote interracial unity, and an end to the discriminatory hiring practices of the privately owned Los Angeles Railway Company. The mayor listened, but agreed to do no more than to expand his committee.
Bass was the director of the Youth Movement of the NAACP. The Youth NAACP had 200 members, including some actors and actresses, such as Lena Horne
Lena Horne
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the...
, Hattie McDaniel
Hattie McDaniel
Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American actress to win an Academy Award. She won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind ....
, and Louise Beavers
Louise Beavers
Louise Beavers was an African-American film and television actress. Beavers appeared in dozens of films from the 1920s to the 1930s, most often in the role of a maid, servant, or slave. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Beavers was a member of Sigma Gamma Rho sorority, one of the four African-American...
.
She also served in 1952 as the National Chairman of the Sojourners for Truth and Justice, an organization of black women set up to protest racial violence in the South. After years as a registered Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
, she left the party in 1948. In the Progressive Party presidential campaign of 1952, Bass was the running mate of lawyer Vincent Hallinan
Vincent Hallinan
Vincent Hallinan was an American lawyer and a candidate for President of the United States for the Progressive Party in the 1952 election.-Early life and education:...
.
Bass wrote her last column for the California Eagle on April 26, 1951, and sold the paper soon after. Considering the sum of her career as she was completing her autobiography, Forty Years (1960), Bass wrote: "It has been a good life that I have had, through a very hard one, but I know the future will be even better, And as I think back I know that is the only kind of life: In serving one's fellow man one serves himself best . . . "
Charlotta Bass died April 12, 1969 of a cerebral hemorrhage in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
.
See also
- List of Los Angeles municipal election returns, 1945, for the results of her bid for City Council
Further reading
John M. Findlay. Power and Place in the North American West by Richard White. University of Washington Press, 1999. ISBN 0295977736External links
- Charlotta Bass and the California Eagle, Southern California Library for Social Studies & Research
- "Charlotta A. Bass Collection, 1924-77", Southern California Library for Social Studies & Research
- Charlotta A. Bass, Black Past