Charlotta Spears Bass

Charlotta Spears Bass (born c. 1880, Sumter, South Carolina, U.S.—died April 12, 1969, Los Angeles, California) was an American editor, the first Black woman to run for vice president of the United States, and a civil rights activist whose long career was devoted to aggressively publicizing and combating racial inequality.

Early life

Believed to have been born in Sumter, South Carolina, about 1880 (reporting of her birth year is not consistent, with dates ranging from 1874 to 1890), Spears was the sixth child born to Kate and Hiram Spears. She moved to Providence, Rhode Island, about 1900 to live with a brother and enrolled at the Women’s College in Brown University (renamed Pembroke College in 1928 and merged with Brown University in 1971) while also selling advertisements and subscriptions at the Providence Watchman, a local Black-owned religious newspaper.

The California Eagle

In 1910 Spears relocated to Los Angeles, where she began working part-time at The California Owl, a newspaper founded in 1879 by John J. Neimore and published for a predominantly Black readership. After Neimore’s death, she purchased The Owl (becoming one of the first Black women to own and publish a newspaper) with $50 borrowed from a local store owner. By May 1912 Spears had renamed the paper the California Eagle, and she began to take it in a new direction by focusing on social and political issues that concerned all “patriotically inclined” Americans.

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In 1912 Joseph Bass, cofounder of the Topeka Plaindealer, arrived from Kansas to work as editor of the California Eagle. He and Spears soon married. With Charlotta Bass working as managing editor, the couple used the newspaper to vehemently attack racial discrimination and segregation. The paper passionately denounced D.W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation and opposed the harsh punishment of Black soldiers involved in a 1917 race riot in Houston, Texas. In 1925 the Ku Klux Klan unsuccessfully sued the newspaper for libel. In 1931 the Basses denounced the results of the Scottsboro case (the swift trial and death sentences given to nine Black teenagers convicted of rape in Scottsboro, Alabama). Several years later they lent their support to A. Philip Randolph as he fought against discrimination in hiring for railroad jobs. The Basses did not shy from dangerous situations, although Joseph Bass would frequently remark, “Mrs. Bass, one of these days you are going to get me killed,” to which Charlotta Bass would retort, “Mr. Bass, it will be in a good cause.”

Political activism

Charlotta Bass’s efforts to end racism were not limited to her work on the California Eagle. In 1919 she traveled to Paris for the Pan-African Congress organized by W.E.B. Du Bois, and in the 1920s she served as copresident of the Los Angeles chapter of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association. In 1930 she was a founder of the Industrial Business Council, which encouraged the development of Black-owned businesses and sought nondiscriminatory employment practices. She also sought an end to housing covenants that denied Black people the opportunity to live in all-white neighborhoods through her organization, the Home Protective Association.

Bass managed the California Eagle on her own following her husband’s death in 1934. Her political activity increased, and her longtime association with the Republican Party led to her selection as the western regional director for Wendell Willkie’s presidential bid in 1940. In 1943 Bass served as the first Black member of a grand jury for the county court in Los Angeles, and in 1945 she was chosen by city representatives as the people’s candidate in an unsuccessful bid for a seat on the Los Angeles city council. She left the Republican Party in the late 1940s to help found the Progressive Party, which she viewed as “the only party in which there is any hope for civil rights,” and campaigned heavily for Henry Wallace in his 1948 bid for the presidency.

Vice presidential candidate

After an unsuccessful 1950 campaign for Congress, in 1952 Bass became the first Black woman candidate for the office of U.S. vice president, representing the Progressive Party. In accepting the party’s nomination at its convention in Chicago on March 30, 1952, she called out her groundbreaking achievement:

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This is a historic moment in American political life. Historic for myself, for my people, for all women. For the first time in the history of this nation, a political party has chosen a Negro woman for the second highest office in the land. It is a great honor to be chosen as a pioneer. And a great responsibility. But I am strengthened by thousands on thousands of pioneers who stand by my side and look over my shoulder—those who have led the fight for freedom—those who led the fight for women’s rights—those who have been in the front line fighting for peace and justice and equality everywhere. How they must rejoice in this great understanding which here joins the cause of peace and freedom.

Her campaign called for peace with the Soviet Union, an end to the Korean War, and greater emphasis on civil rights and women’s rights. In his draft of the party’s platform, Du Bois wrote, “[vote] for Charlotte Bass who represents black America and American womanhood. As if one crown of thorns were not enough she dares wear two!” Despite losing the election by a wide margin—Bass and her running mate received only 0.2 percent of the vote—she made an impact with her campaign, running under the slogan “Win or lose, we win by raising the issues.”

Following her loss, Bass retired to the Black resort community of Lake Elsinore, California, where she continued to be involved in community politics, including opening her garage as a voter registration site. In 1960 she published Forty Years: Memoirs from the Pages of a Newspaper, which provides both a history of the California Eagle and personal reflections on her own career.