Meet Charlotta Bass – The First Black Woman to Run for Vice President of the U.S.

Charlotta Spears Bass (1874-1969), a crusading newspaper editor and politician, was one of the first Black women to own and operate a newspaper in the United States. She followed in the tradition of ‘muckraking’ or reform-minded journalism, publishing the California Eagle in Los Angeles from 1912 until 1951, at a time when newsrooms were male-dominated and few white journalists focused on issues of importance to African Americans. The California Eagle, one of the first African American newspapers in California, with the largest circulation of any Black paper on the West Coast, addressed social and political issues such as racial violence, and discrimination in schools, housing, and the job market. Bass confronted the Ku Klux Klan, and later in her career, she entered electoral politics and was the first African American woman to run for Vice President of the United States in 1952, on the Progressive Party ticket.

Interviewees: historian Susan​ ​D.​ ​Anderson, history curator at the California African American Museum; Nikole Hannah-Jones, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for The New York Times Magazine, creator of the 1619 Project, and co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting.

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