“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”
-Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”
SUCH IS THE FARCE REPEATING ITSELF NOW. History is certainly repeating our society’s rocky relationship with the media. For many of us on the left, we are indignant at the complicity and bent knees we see in today’s journalists. On the other end of the spectrum, those same journalists are seen as the mouthpiece of the unpatriotic. None of this is new. The role of the media has been a contested one since the beginning of news reportage. And here I will share the story of one African-American woman of Los Angeles’ Great Migration era who circumnavigated this contentious relationship, bringing notoriety of various kinds to herself and to her newspaper.
But wait, the reader might say, you said you were committed to unearthing those stories of Los Angeles’ Black women who were not previously noted. To that I will answer, that is correct. And even with an autobiography, several biographies, and some pretty deep archives, too few people know what this fierce woman actually accomplished and the role that her newspaper, The California Eagle, played in Southern California history. And widening the lens, this story also helps us see how this roiling relationship between the media and its consumers has been going on for quite some time.
Charlotta Bass, known before marriage as Charlotta Amanda Spears, was born somewhere between 1874 and 1879. Sources for her birthdate are all over the place. And apparently her place of birth is also up for debate; it may have been Rhode Island or could have been down south. The fact is, all that did not seem too important to Mrs. Bass, who started her autobiography with her life in Los Angeles. So we will start there, too.
Charlotta Spears came to LA in 1910 to recuperate from an illness. This was a common practice as Southern California was touting itself at the time as a wellness center – way before Gwyneth Paltrow and Erewhon ever showed up.
Miss Spears comes to LA and secures a job as “office girl” at The California Eagle, a newspaper finding its way in the African-American media landscape. Spears had sold ads for a newspaper back in Rhode Island and noticed early on how pretty much the only way Black people got into white newspapers was if they were accused of a crime. So, while she may well have had an activist bent prior to coming to LA, once working for John Neimore at The Eagle, Spears deeply understood her position as opportunity.
“John Neimore knew that a better life was possible for his people. He knew there were some cities and some states in the Union where Negroes were allowed to exercise the right of suffrage; where, by use of the ballot they could correct some of these evils. One such city was Los Angeles. Like a veritable pillar of fire leading the Children of Israel into the Promised Land, John Neimore set himself the task of leading his people to this Land of Promise to Los Angeles, the City of the Angels.”
As qtd in Los Angeles Public Library
Bass ended up making a promise in 1912 to the dying Neimore that she would carry on the torch of his paper. It was not an easy task, as you might imagine. She was a Black woman in the early twentieth century, after all. But she was smart and had a vision. She eventually made a deal with a man with some money and turned the newspaper into a nationally famous local periodical. While these last two sentences do not come close to describing all the obstacles that Bass came up against, I think the most compelling part of her story is what she accomplished.
One obstacle that initially stood in the way of The Eagle’s growth was the desire by some well-to-do African Americans to keep dry, boring politics out of their newspaper. They wanted to highlight dances and celebrities, and the houses they had managed to acquire through much effort. This was a politics of respectability moment, wherein some African Americans did not see the merit in looking at what was still wrong, but instead at all that had been accomplished. This would be a better representation of Black life to white society, some believed. And gaining white approval had to be top of mind for some – consciously or not. This conservative group did not want to read about unions, nor especially hear about the kind of entertainment that was making its way onto Central Avenue. The Eagle published pieces on all such things, nevertheless, and eventually found an audience for this kind of reporting.
“But, I thought to myself, aren’t there many more important issues in the community than who had a party at the Waldorf and Golden West Hotels? Or who were among the guests invited to sip tea with Mrs. Robert Owens on a certain date? Yes, l decided, there were.
There was, by this time, a definite trend in Los Angeles to prescribe certain districts in which Negroes could live. Negroes were denied swimming pool privileges. They were refused cafe service, discriminated against in employment, and often mistreated by the police. There were many reforms, corrections and corruptions to be exposed. It was incumbent upon a newspaper such as The California Eagle to deal with these problems. The California Eagle would print social news to please the people who wanted it, but it would also discuss the important issues of the day for those more patriotically inclined.”
– as qtd in Los Angeles Public Library, “’I Promise I Will Do My Best’”
*For the record, one Joseph Bass eventually joined the newspaper as an editor under Charlotta’s watch and they ended up getting married in 1914.
Mrs. Bass was in the thick of things, politically. The Communist Party was going strong in Los Angeles, and elsewhere, especially among African Americans who saw it as the one political group willing to advocate for their rights. According to the book, Radical L.A. by Errol Wayne Stevens, in 1946 leftist Democrats and Communists formed the Progressive Citizens of America party. Its leadership included Mrs. Bass – as well as Charlie Chaplin and Katharine Hepburn, by the way. Two years later, during the presidential election, they reorganized into the Independent Progressive Party. Much like today, there was a split among the progressives who believed that a new party was the only answer, and those who thought it best to reform the Democratic Party from the inside. Repeated patterns.
Needless to say, Bass did not shy away from both writing about politics and immersing herself in them as well. In fact, in 1952 Bass ran for Vice President on the Progressive Party ticket – something the author of the aforementioned book failed to note, even as he named other political candidates who ran for various offices around the same time. (As I said, even the most famous of Black women tend to have their life stories underreported). At any rate, Bass was the first “Negro woman” to run for the VP position in the United States. Before Chisolm there was Bass!
– Los Angeles Public Library, “’I Promise I Will Do My Best’”
Bass’ newspaper took a stand on many pressing issues in the Los Angeles area during her period as owner and chief editor. These issues included segregated schools, housing discrimination, and job discrimination, specifically at Los Angeles County General Hospital and the Los Angeles Rapid Transit Company. Together the Bass’ also fought to prevent the premiere of The Birth of a Nation, ultimately landing City Council’s support in the process. Bass also called out the very active KKK – suffering major harassment because of it. In fact, a group of Klan members reportedly showed up at her offices one night while she was there working alone. Bass wrote in her autobiography that she took a gun out of the desk drawer and pointed it at the group of men, even though she was unsure of how to actually use it. “They made a hasty retreat,” Bass reported.
Bass also amplified the national campaign of “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work.” The importance of Black newspapers across the country is so clear here. Initiatives, campaigns, and the like, when it came to African-American life, were rarely reported in mainstream media. Publications like The Chicago Defender, The Afro-American, and The Eagle kept a Black activist movement growing.
Mrs. Bass, after the death of her husband, continued the work she had started so early on in her life. She ran for L.A. City Council and later became the first African American to serve on a Grand Jury in Los Angeles. There were so many causes for which she labored and it is fortuitous that she recorded many of them in her own words. We are not always fortunate enough to learn the stories of Black women in their own voices. (Unfortunately the autobiography is not currently in print; one must delve into the archives for the manuscript).
Ultimately, Bass sold The Eagle in 1951and the newspaper finally closed up shop in 1964. But Charlotta Bass was not done with her efforts to lead her people to “The Land of Promise in Los Angeles.” In the next decade Mrs. Bass remodeled her garage into a full-scale reading room and voter registration site. As is so often the case, this Black woman stepped into the void created by our government’s inequitable systems. Mrs. Charlotta Bass passed away in 1969 at the age of 81.
NB: In 2020 the fabulous Schomburg Center in New York City sponsored a program of two short films entitled Unladylike: Unsung Women Who Changed America. The film on Charlotta Bass is available through PBS and is a must-see if you are at all interested in hearing a little bit more of this important woman’s story and her connection to present-day journalists. One day, perhaps, the extra labor of living as an African-American woman will not be so demanding. Until that time, many of us will insist on making this fact known through their life stories. Because they are American history.