Charlotta Spears Bass

Charlotta Amanda Spears Bass (February 14, 1874 – April 12, 1969) was an American educator, newspaper publisher-editor, and civil rights activist. She also focused on various other issues such as housing rights, voting rights, and labor rights, as well as police brutality and harassment.[1] Bass is believed to be the first African-American woman to own and operate a newspaper in the United States; she published the California Eagle from 1912 until 1951.[2] In 1952, Bass became the first African-American woman nominated for Vice President, as a candidate of the Progressive Party.

Due to her activities, Bass was repeatedly accused of being part of the Communist Party, for which there was no evidence and which Bass herself repeatedly denied. She was monitored by the FBI, who continued to view her as a potential security threat until she was in her nineties.

Charlotta Amanda Spears was born on February 14, 1874, to Hiram and Kate Spears.[3] Some sources give her birthplace as in Sumter, South Carolina,[4][5] while other sources suggest she was born in Little Compton, Rhode Island.[6][7] She was the sixth child of eleven. Her sister was Victorine Spears Kinloch. She received an education from public schools and one semester at Pembroke College in Brown University.[4][6][5] When she was twenty years old, she moved to live with her brother Ellis in Providence, Rhode Island, where she worked selling subscriptions for the Providence Watchman, a local Black newspaper.[5][4] Spears worked for the Providence Watchman for about ten years. 

The Eagle, as it was first called, developed a large black readership. By 1925, the 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.[9]

When the editor John J. Neimore became ill, he turned the operations of the Eagle over to Spears. After Neimore's death, "it turned out, this Black-founded newspaper was owned by a white man, who offered his support only if [Spears] would become his 'sweetheart.' 'Get out, you dirty dog!' she told him. She borrowed $50 from a local store owner to purchase the deed."[10] She renamed the newspaper company to the California Eagle due to increasing social and political issues.

Her purpose for the California Eagle was to write about the wrongs of society. The newspaper served as a source of both information and inspiration for the black community, which was often ignored or negatively portrayed by the predominant white press.[11] As publisher, Bass was committed to producing a quality periodical. In her weekly column "On the Sidewalk", begun in 1927, she drew attention to unjust social and political conditions for all Los Angeles minority communities and campaigned vigorously for reform.

The Eagle is credited as pioneering multi-ethnic politics, advocating Asian-American and Mexican-American civil rights in the 1940s, especially during World War II. Most Japanese Americans were relocated from the West Coast to interior detention camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor and fears about security. The California Eagle, along with other African-American presses, were under investigation by the Office of the Secretary of War, who viewed it as a threat to national security.[4]: 102  The Department of Justice interrogated Bass in 1942 over claims that the paper was funded by Japan and Germany, fearing that criticism of the US was motivated by enemy alliances.

The Basses championed the black soldiers of the Twenty-Fourth Infantry who were unjustly convicted and sentenced in the 1917 Houston race riot. They also later covered the case and supported the "Scottsboro Boys," nine young men who were framed and convicted of rape in Scottsboro, Alabama, in 1931.[citation needed]

In 1934, Joseph Bass died and Charlotta Bass assumed control of the paper. During this time period the California Eagle, along with other African-American presses, were under investigation by the Office of the Secretary of War, who viewed it as a threat to national security. They were suspicious of the Communist Party's attempts to build an alliance with African Americans by supporting their activism in civil rights.[4]: 102 

Following US entry into World War II after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Department of Justice interrogated Bass in 1942 over claims that the paper was funded by the Axis nations of Japan and Germany.[4]: 102  The FBI continued to monitor Bass, as they deemed her actions advocating for the Communist Party despite a lack of evidence and Bass herself denying any assertions of the kind.[4]: 102–103, 104  In 1943, the Department of Justice was asked by the Post Office Department to revoke her mailing permit. The Post Office Department argued that the newspaper could not be mailed due to sensitive and illegal material within the paper. Bass again won the case, and the Department of Justice said her mailing permit would not be revoked.[4]: 103 

Bass continued to use the paper as a way of raising awareness of various issues facing African-Americans and other minorities. For example, she wrote about restrictive covenants in housing. The United States Supreme Court found these to be unconstitutional in 1948.[4]

Bass had no children, and she intended to pass on the paper to her nephew, John Kinloch, son of her sister Victorine Spears Kinloch. He lived with Bass in Los Angeles and worked as a reporter and editor for the California Eagle. He joined the military to serve in World War II; he was killed in Germany on April 3, 1945, in the last weeks of the war. His mother was his life insurance beneficiary, and when she died, the policy passed to Bass.[13]

Bass continued to run the California Eagle on her own until selling it in 1951 and moving to New York City. There she focused on politics.[4]: 105  In the postwar period, with the beginning of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, her activism and political activities continued to arouse FBI and other official suspicions that she was a communist. She continued to deny this assertion.