Part Two: Charlotta Bass: The Black Journalist Who Refused the Red Scare

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello and welcome to part two of Cool People Who
Did Cool Stuff of an episode. Part two of the
episode I'm your host, Margaret Kildroy put all the right
clauses together in the right order. This is an episode
I have a guest christ and conger.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
Hi.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
You know how a podcast. You've been doing it for
a very long time, and I made you feel self
conscious about it in part one, so I figured i'
just double down on it now.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
You know what that was all on me, Margaret, I
have been doing it a long time and I should
not be ashamed of it.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
I know it's one of the jobs that's easy to
feel ashamed of because it doesn't have a good reputation.
But I believe in us.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
I believe in US too.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
I sounded sarcastic, but I wasn't.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
I was sincere.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, no, I was too. I just sounded sarcastic. You
are the host of two podcasts on Ladylike and Conspiracy Comma,
She wrote, Yes, the comment is essential, Yeah, no, I
otherwise you could get confused with the other. I actually
don't know if there's other podcasts called Conspiracy w but
this they're probably not. No, what are they about.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
So well, my kind of just general obsession is women.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Gender.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
Feminism's plural.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Hell yeah, here for the plural.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
Yeah, oh, it's got to be plural.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Even more important than that comma.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Exactly and unladylike is more focused on kind of culture
and especially now this just intense hyper gendered feminist backlash,
like algorithmically, like just chaotic time that we're.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
In, like like tradwife stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
You mean, oh, tradwife stuff. But also, I guess they're
technically in the femisphere. I've spent the past couple of
weeks in the more of the hardcore like pink pilled
world of life, like female dating strategists and cell.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
I don't know. Oh, I know about fem cells a
little bit, but I don't know about female dating strategists.
Oh yeah, they look smax. I guess that's actually just
called what society does to us. Never mind, we've been
forced to looks max since the concept of women was created.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
I'm sure they advocate looks maxing. But their whole thing
is that it's all very like grounded in like manisphere
kind of bio essentialism stuff. So it's all about cultivating
your feminine energy and presenting yourself as feminine in order

(02:40):
to basically manipulate men into paying for your life. It's
not like sugar.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Baby, it's like literally what the manosphere people claim or
the in cells claim. Yes, whoa.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
And there's also like a fascinating kind of anti capitalist
feminist whige that they wrap it up in of like, yeah,
working is bullshit, we shouldn't have to pay for our lives.
But also they'll advocate for things like UBI universal basic income,
but only for women because men are such pigs they

(03:15):
have to work. Well yeah, and they just don't deserve anything.
So yeah, anyway, that's where I've been.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
This is fascinating. This is like such a mix of
all kinds of things.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
It is, and then there's the reactionary feminism piece of it.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
It's just yeah, yeah, this is a fun story to
tell on air. I was like kind of cougar bait
when I was a teenager, and the first time an
older woman at a bar explained to me that she
could get me drinks by just going up to a
random man and being like, will you buy me two
drinks and then have them buy her two drinks so
that she would come back and give to me one

(03:50):
I'm like seventeen. In this story, I was kind of
like mind blown about, Like I was trying to think
through every step of how complicated this was from a
feminist position.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
You know, she's now a thriving like TikToker. Yeah, probably
in the hemisphere.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
I wish her well, she's fine. I think I don't know.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
She's selling courses online. It's fine.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, someone's gotta sell courses about how to sell courses online.
That's actually what we've been moving to a Cool Zone Media.
How to start Cool Zone Media. It's a paid podcast only,
and you have to pay for every episode. We're ready
to announce this.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
Right, I don't want to do that, No, thank you.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
I'm trying to come up with an acronym that uses MLM,
but I'm failing, so instead let's talk about the podcast topic.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yay.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
So this is part two of a two parter on
Charlotta Bass, who I have not called Charlotta Base this
entire time.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
I believe proud of you.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
I promised I would by accident because Bass, I had
to spend so long learning as a kid that that
was pronounced not the way you think it is, And
I never really went fishing very well. I always left
fish she was fake because I went fishing a lot
and I never caught anything, So I don't think about
bass the fish. This is part two about her. None
of that is about her. She is living in an amazing life.

(05:10):
She has scared away to KKK. She is running a
place with her wife guy and just kind of doing
cool shit and getting investigated by the FEDS for doing it,
which means we get to talk about not friend but
recurring character of the pod, the Red Scares. Do you

(05:30):
know there's been more than one of them?

Speaker 3 (05:33):
I did.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
I'm not surprised you knew that, but yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
I mean not to brage, but it was something that
I learned recently, though.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, no, because they all kind of get conflated together.
And then there's the like much less talked about but
rather dramatically important Lavender Scare, where like this is my
favorite of them. The reasoning behind the Lavender Scare when
they fired all the gay people and the queer people
from the federal government, was because it's shameful to be
gay in a homophobic society. That means that you could

(06:00):
be blackmailed by the Soviets, and you're like, well it
seems like the obvious solution here is that no one
get in trouble if they're blackmailed, Like you've created the
argument for yourself. If you don't get fired for being
a lesbian, there's not a problem. They can't blackmail you exactly. Anyway,
we have these things called red scares in the United States.

(06:22):
We've had two major ones, and we're probably entering a
third right now. Suddenly federal repression ramps up against anyone
suspected of being anti capitalist. Basically, that's like kind of
what it comes down to. They'll use other terms, but
they mean a pretty broad sense anyone who's against the
American economic system. The first Red scare was kind of

(06:44):
like the First World War. It seemed like a huge
deal at the time, but the second one kind of
stole its thunder. Like I always like the meme of
like the time traveler goes back to the World War
One and is like, oh shit, this is World War One.
The person's like, wait, what, there's another one after this?
How can there be? The Red Scare probably felt like that.
And also both these red scares map to world wars,

(07:06):
which doesn't make me feel good about us entering a new.

Speaker 4 (07:10):
One, Margaret, I had not even connected those dots who
history doesn't repeat, it rhymes and comes back to the
same refrains, you know, So I don't think we're doomed.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
Well in Red Scare was post war.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah, both of them come immediately after World wars. So
if we're having a Red Scare now, maybe we just
will skip the World War hey, or you know other alternatives.
The first Red Scare was nineteen seventeen to nineteen twenty,
and it was in response to the rise of socialist
revolutions across the world, and in particular it is a
response to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and the primary

(07:48):
target of the Red Scare, at least as I've read
about because my own biases, but most of what I've
read implies that this is true, was the Russian immigrant community. Basically,
they were like, oh, y'all are secret communeanists, and many
of them were leftist revolutionaries the people who were targeted
for this, but most of them were anarchists who the
Bolsheviks were in a war against in Russia. So a

(08:12):
great number of the anarchists who were arrested and deported
back to Russia were then imprisoned and or killed by
the Bolsheviks because Bolsheviks were in the middle of a
bloody civil war against all of the other leftists that
initially supported their revolution, so that the first Red Scare sucked,
but the second Red Scare was lasted longer and had

(08:33):
further reaching consequences for the world and for American society.
It gets all the attention these days. It is generally
seen as centering around nineteen forty seven to nineteen fifty
seven or so, but the famous House Committee on on
American Activities was actually founded all the way back in
nineteen thirty eight. So even while the US was allied

(08:57):
with the USSR and the war against Germany, anyone who
is too anti fascist was suspect and under constant investigation, like,
for example, one of our recent episodes. Two of our
recent episodes were about the blues musician Howe He Ledbetter
Akay led Belly, and Alan Lomax, the guy who like
kind of recorded almost everybody and is the reason Americana

(09:19):
like exists. And they're leftists. They're pretty far left. They're
bout as left as you go without being like I'm
a card carrying communist right, and they are hard at
work on the American war effort. Honey Ledbetter's like old
is dirt, and he's like, I'm going to join World
War two and they're like, no, you're not, Bud. He's like,
but I want to kill them Nazis. And Alan Lomax,

(09:41):
who was doing work for the State Department, like creating
propaganda so that people were willing to go fight, he
eventually actually did. He was like, I'm tired of being deferred,
put me in coach and try to get himself shipped
off to war. And then instead they shipped him off
to the propaganda department of the army. And they're both
under investigation. They are literally doing anti fascist work for

(10:04):
the US government, and the US government is like, oh,
a little too anti fascist. I'm onto you. You know,
only supposed to be a little anti fascist in this country.
They ever heard of the premature anti fascists. No, this
is one of my favorite weird tidbits of history. And
I also had to bring up the Spanish Civil War
somehow on this episode. So the Spanish Civil War from
nineteen thirty six to nineteen thirty nine. Margot's favorite subject

(10:26):
of history was this doomed effort to stop Franco from
taking over Spain. And the Americans who went to go
fight were mostly leftist of various types communist, socialists, fewer anarchists,
but like in general, the left went to go fight right.
And when they came back, because they lost that war,
it went really badly. A lot of them died. They
were labeled as premature anti fascists, as if it was

(10:50):
like a ideological like a mental disorder of ideology.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
What does it even mean.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
They were anti fascist before the United States was anti fascist,
so they weren't trusted. So these are the people who
have already fought Germany and Italy, like literally have already
been in a shooting work as Germany and Italy went
and supported the fascists, whereas the democracies did not come
and support the democracy in Spain. And that's why Spain

(11:17):
fell the fascism is that the UK, America and France
both were like, oh, we don't know these guys, not us,
you know. And so the people who had already fought
Germany and Italy they were like not trusted. They were
the premature anti fascists. Makes no sense, I know, but
it makes it not surprising that the government decided that
the California Eagle was a threat to national security even

(11:39):
before the war ended, because they were not afraid to
be critical of the US government during World War II.
There they were calling out the hypocrisy of the US
government for using segregated military units. And they're supposedly anti
racist war. For example, by the time the Allies live

(12:00):
France and they're like the Allies were like hanging out
in France, French people, especially black French people, were just
aghast at the racism that the US soldiers faced. They
were like watching it being like, y'all, do what what's
happening in your country? Because not that France is like
the least racist country that's ever existed, but being less
racist than America is really easy to do at this

(12:23):
particular time. And if you want to hear more about that,
you should listen to our episodes about Josephine Baker, the
black pop star of France who helped finance and house
the French Partisans and had like a whole menagerie of
like I think she had like a tiger or whatever
in her like mansion. While she's like letting the partisans
like make Molotov cocktails there. So she's great, she sounds fun. Yeah, no,
she's fucking awesome. And so later the Eagle is going

(12:45):
to get called a Soviet paper. It was not a
Soviet paper, but trained World War two because it was
critical of the US government. You know who else is critical?
This isn't an that transition. You know who else is
critical of the US government, The German and the Japanese.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
I was gonna say us.

Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yes, name a government. I'm not critical of, darry you Rojeva.
So they get accused of being financed by the German
in the Japanese government. Right, they're like, ah, you're secretly
fascists because you're too far left during World War two.
This math I know. And in nineteen forty three, the

(13:27):
Post Office like sued because they wanted to refuse to
mail the paper. They were like, we don't want to
mail this. This is like seditious propaganda. I literally have
the word sedition tattooed on my hands. This is my
own fault. But the Justice Department actually said no, we're
not going to ban them. We do have free speech

(13:48):
in this country. That Bill of rights. This does some
good for us. It's stop some stuff, so one correct
decision was made, I know. But the Eagle wanted victory
in Europe. They fought for what they called the double
V campaign, victory for the black people in the military
I think, including military victory, and also for black people

(14:11):
at home. And of course this was a personal matter.
They had skin in the game. Charlotta's nephew, John had
moved to LA to take over the family business. Like
her husband's dead at this point, I guess I forgot
to write that, and it might come later in the script.
He dies in nineteen thirty four or something like that.
She's running the paper by herself. Her nephew comes out

(14:31):
to LA and she's basically being like, hey, learn how
to do a paper. You're going to take this over.
I'm going to retire at some point, you know. So
John moves to LA and then he fights in World
War Two and he's killed. As soon as the war ended,
they were no longer fascist pawns. They were Communist Party pawns.

Speaker 3 (14:52):
Dun dun, duh.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
I know, much like our sponsor, the Communist part. No,
I don't think I would love now I'll get in Theoretically,
we don't have any political sponsors but we do have
sponsors and you can listen to them if you want.

(15:15):
And we're back. So the FEDS interviewer they like take
her in or like a EU communist have you ever
heard of communism? And I don't know. I'm going to
make up what they said, but it's just annoying crap.
They tailed her. They showed up to every single speech
she gave. I think for the rest of her life.
Oh god, they're going to tailor until she dies. In
the nineteen sixties, like they read every issue of the

(15:39):
paper that she puts out. Her FBI file was five
hundred and sixty three pages long. As regards the second
Red Scare, it is structurally different than the first one
in certain ways because I'm really not trying to defend
the Red Scare, but trying and explain it. A thing
that I think people misunderstand is that to be part
of the Communist part with like a capital C and

(16:01):
a capital P in this particular time, the Communist Party
of America, which is legal, but it's not an independent organization.
The USSR was a rigidly hierarchical country, and through commontern
Communist International, they extended that control to the official communist
parties of various other countries, So Americans in the Communist

(16:23):
Party at the time were beholden to Stalin's orders, which
had some pretty embarrassing consequences. The one that's come up
a bunch on this show is how I learned about
this is that during the lead up to World War Two,
anti fascists of every kind were like, we got to
get the US into this war. It's the only way
we're going to stop Germany. US can turn the tide.
We got to do this right, and that included the

(16:45):
Communist Party. They're like, we got to get in this war.
And then the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact was signed, which was
when Stalin became allies with Germany. So the ussrre suddenly
allies with Germany and the Communist with the capitals distinguished
from communism as an ideology position turns on a dime,

(17:06):
and suddenly fascism isn't the enemy. Or in Germany you
had this thing where like the real fascists of the
social Democrats is what the communists were saying, Right, don't
worry about the Nazis. They're not a big deal. Okay,
I have my timeline a little bit, someone's gonna be
really mad about that my timeline. But in the US,
they stopped pushing for America to get into the war,
some of them, many of them were like, this is nonsense.

(17:27):
I'm much more interested in anti fascism than I am
into listening to with Stalin has to say, and kept
doing that work, and I applaud those people. So the
Red Scare was ostensibly about hunting out these foreign agents
beholden to a foreign power which did exist. That's not
really what it was about, though, and that's what matters, right,
So I think it's worth understanding their rationale behind it,

(17:50):
or what they present as their rationale. But what they
did is hunt people about ideology, not political affiliation. People
were accused of political affiliation in order to slander them
and get them blacklisted for ideological reasons. Anyone who is
kind of lefty is now getting blacklisted at all. And
this is why the reds Care is relevant to us today.

(18:11):
I believe the government doesn't really believe that Antifa. Anytime
I say that word here, I have air quotes. Anyone
can hear them in my voice. Probably they probably don't
believe that it's a specific foreign organization with representatives in
the US, even though they picked a couple like groups
overseas that do anti fascist work and call them ftos. Right,
they don't believe that antifa is a specific organization with

(18:34):
a membership list here, but they'll say those things because
it gives them legal tools with which to repress anyone
left of Trump, which these days includes centrists like the
establishment Democrats, you know, progressives like the DSA, or the
center right groups like pre Trump Republican Party, the Rhinos. Right,
all of these people to the left of Trump can

(18:54):
now be disparaged by you know, everyone's being accused of
financing ANTIPHA because it's convenient way to its hack people
for ideology, similarly to how people like Charlotta Bass were
accused of being members of the Communist Party, despite the
fact that this was untrue. The FBI agents knew it
was untrue, thought it was stupid, and didn't want to
do it anymore, but it was a convenient way to

(19:16):
silence political opponents. That's my rant about Red Scarce.

Speaker 3 (19:21):
I've been like following on everywhere like uh huh uh,
because I think you're totally right, like, especially with the
not to fully derail no that's right. But with the
is it the national security like threat assessments? Yeah, the
White House does now where it's like, actually the threat
is all like left wing extremist ideology and stuff.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
It's just like what right like trans ideology that's yeah yeah,
yeah yeah, And it's just like every single study put
out by the federal government prior to like two years ago,
it's like right wing political actors to commit x f
pinentially more violent crime and terrorism. And the red scare

(20:04):
was really effective at getting people to comply in advance,
but it did not catch Charlotta Bass or the California Eagle,
or honestly, as far as I can tell, the black
newspapers all across the country to give into fear. They
were all investigated, like black newspapers all over the country.
This wasn't just the California Eagle, right, but they just

(20:27):
didn't give into fear. Like at one point we're gonna
talk about later. Sure, a lot of Basque goes in
probably nineteen forty nine, but all the history books in
nineteen fifty, but they're wrong. It went to this peace
conferences in Europe that were put on by the USSR.
And we're like kind of sketchy and she comes back
and they're like, give us your passport, and she's like, no,
she just doesn't give the government her passport. And I
don't know what happened after that. I'm so annoyed. I

(20:48):
found one sentence in all of the things I read
that was like and then she came back and the
insisted she give her the passport and she didn't do it.
I'm like, and then what happened.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
That's like her response to the Klan last episode of like,
I know these guys, let me find my gun.

Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah, and in those cases the FEDS, So instead of
like I'm going to find my gun, it's just like, nah,
I can't do it. I'm not gonna let you. You know,
she's clearly not afraid to jail. She doesn't go to
jail as far as I can tell, because institutions cave
to the red scare. And it's happened now too with
like Palestinian resistance movements in the US, and like prematurely

(21:23):
people are complying ahead of actually taking it to any
kind of fight. As soon as a threat is raised,
institutions comply in advance, which is how fascists take over
democratic countries. Is they ignore the rule of law in
order to get away with shit, and she's just not
having it. And it also isn't stopping her from doing

(21:43):
her work, so it's not just her work. Now becomes
I fight the red scare. She is doing organizing community
organizing that has like nationwide impacts. In fact, the biggest
like this is a thing that her and the people
around her paper accomplished. Comes in nineteen forty five, during
the middle of all of this stuff, you heard a

(22:04):
red lining. Oh yeah, red lining is a form of
housing discrimination. Actually, this party didn't know. I just knew
it was like people can't move into certain neighborhoods and
all this horrible shit. You know, I hadn't done more
of a deep dive about it. It's a form of
housing discrimination based on bank loans. And one of the

(22:25):
things I didn't know about it that I should have. Actually,
I think I've probably read this before. A lot of
redlining came out of that usually positive moment, the New
Deal under Franklin.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
Roosevelt starting to ring a bell.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
Yes, that's how I felt for me. Well, as a conger,
that is how you would respond. That's I'm going to
do this to Molly now too, and she's not going
to get it.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
No, she'll probably get it. She's mall, yeah, that's true.

Speaker 2 (22:51):
She probably has like a book about Congress.

Speaker 3 (22:53):
Sorry, future Mollie.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
So the New Deal, well, it's created by Franklin Roosevelt
created the Federal Housing Authority, which worked good idea, bad deployment,
and probably racist underpinions from the beginning. It worked to
get affordable housing loans into the hands of people and
just like in general, like business loans and help people
get by, right, so people could own their own houses

(23:17):
and have the American dream or whatever, so that white
people could have those things. Because the FAHA basically decided
that they only wanted to loan money to people with
trustworthy assets, and houses in minority neighborhoods are not trustworthy
assets because of the circular reasoning of racism. Well, those
people are poor, so we can't help them build wealth.

(23:40):
Maps were drawn up and they were color coded, and
certain areas were no go areas for affordable loans, not
just housing loans, right, because if you're like, well, I
own a house, can I get a loan? Usually I
own a house means like, yeah, you can get a loan, right,
because you have an asset that can seize, so that's
all a bank needs to loan you money. But no,

(24:01):
you're redlined. You are on the wrong side of a
color coded map. Even if you meet the financial requirements
for a loan, you could be rejected for where you lived.
But somehow it got worse than that because it wasn't
just black and other minority neighborhoods that were redlined. It
was places that black people were seen to be moving to.

(24:21):
What do you mean, like the neighborhoods. Yeah, so if
there's a neighborhood that's like starting to have black people
move to it, uh huh, it can get red lined, right.
So now you have incentivized racism from white people who
didn't need more incentives. They had enough, but now you've
given them more reason because instead of there goes the

(24:42):
neighborhood meaning like I have to hear Spanish, or there's
black people around, or I'm afraid there'll be more crime,
or these usual racist reasons that are garbage. It's also
I won't be able to get a loan if black
people move to my neighborhood.

Speaker 3 (24:57):
So it's literally like dragging down all of the asset value. Yeah,
around them, that's wild.

Speaker 2 (25:04):
So to solve this, the FAHA was like, oh, sorry,
to solve it for white people, they were like, just
create racist agreements in all of your deeds to say
that you'll never sell to a black person. Problem solved.
These are called racial covenants. Very few positive things are
called covenants, which is a shame.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
Sounds very biblical.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
I know, covenant is a cool word. I like words
like that. Not usually good, unfortunately, and best as I
can piece together. The thing I read talks about the
racial covenants is coming from the FAHA and the red lining,
but I've read other stuff about racial covenants going back
at least decades earlier, So I think that this is
a common practice that the FAHA was like, Aha, this

(25:49):
common practice, This is how you can solve the problem.
Racial covenants are illegal as hell now, and they're illegal
partly because of the California Eagle, or rather the people
who worked on it, which again sixteen year old from
Texas is like, I'm going to go start a paper
leads to racial covenants are illegal in the United States. Like,

(26:13):
never think that your actions don't have impacts for good
and bad.

Speaker 3 (26:17):
And I had even forgotten about the sixteen year old
because Charlotta is so incredible.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Right, totally yeah, yeah, And I'm not sure to give
him the credit, but rather say we're all part of
this lineage, right of people doing this shit. So the
California Eagle, the paper is constantly exposing these terrible new
laws and practices that they come into being. And Bass
created an organization called the Homeowner's Protective Association, which does
not sound like it would be good, but actually in
this case is good to fight against them. So the

(26:45):
reason is the Homeowner's Protective Organization. There's a man named
Lauren Miller, and he had been an editor at The
Eagle in his twenties and thirties, which I think corresponds
to the actual nineteen twenties and thirties. I think he's
born right around the shurt of the century. He's the
city editor, but he left the paper to become what
NPR described as the legendary and DOUAACP lawyer. And there

(27:10):
was a neighborhood. See I told you I'm coming back
to specific la stuff. Sophie. There's a neighborhood in Los
Angeles called sugar Hill, Sophie, is that a thing people
still know. I don't know anything about Los Angeles.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
No, not really.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
Okay, Well, sugar Hill was real cool. It didn't last
very long because of racism.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
Yeah, I was going to say, I don't think that
it's commonly known as that anymore.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
Oh yeah, no it's not. It's been gone since the
nineteen sixties. Yeah. I was gonna say they destroyed it
to build the Iten or the ten or whatever you
call it.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:39):
Yeah, it's like West Adams.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yes, which I read and then didn't put in the
script because West Adams is a nonsense word to me.
It has no signification because again, what do you said?

Speaker 1 (27:49):
Sugar Hill. There's like a there's a bar in Portland
that I went to my friend. She asked me to
go with her too.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
Way.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
It was like a singles mixer.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Huh. And the bar is called sugar Hill.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
And it's called sugar Hill. The drinks were good, the
vibes were weird.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
Huh. I wonder if it's named after the same thing
the sugar Hill was named after. I also wonder which
is a Harlem neighborhood that was important in the Harlem Renaissance,
sugar Hill. Sugar Hill in Los Angeles, I don't know
as much about. Sugar Hill in New York was a
wealthy black neighborhood and that scares the piss out of
white supremacy and white people, and sugar Hill only lasted

(28:27):
fifteen to twenty years. It lasted from the nineteen forties
to the nineteen sixties because it had to fight systemic
racism in order to exist, and it also was destroyed
by another sort of systemic racism because in the nineteen tens,
rich white people started leaving that neighborhood to move to
Beverly Hills, and most of the houses had racial covenants.

(28:50):
But the sellers and buyers they're all like kind of
like rich Hollywood folks, and they're like, I don't really
give a shit about thought, so they don't. So they're like, ah,
I know, my deed says I can't sell to a
black person, but like no one's checking, you know, So
they sell houses to black people because they're not horrible monsters.

Speaker 3 (29:08):
And I imagine these are nice houses that cost a
lot of money, so they're also making money off of.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
It, totally right. Yeah, yeah, they're like, I'm sorry, I
want to sell to the rich person and it happens
to be that Los Angeles is one of the places.
Oh you're asking earlier about Los Angeles is a place
of it's nice for black people. Some of it is
that the center of the entertainment industry is going to
have a higher percentage of like wealthy black people than
other places. Right, although that's less true in the nineteenth
century than the early twentieth century, I believe, but I

(29:34):
am not as certain about that. So all kinds of
black performers of various sorts, actors and singers and shit
start moving in, and then also black professionals, doctors and
folks like that are moving into these like they're called mansions.
And then you look at pictures, you're like, ah, modern,
large suburban house. When I imagine like La mansion, I
imagine something much bigger than what these are. But they're

(29:56):
still large, wealthy houses. You know. But by the early
nineteen forties, the racist white people in the neighborhood were
really mad about the fact that all these black people
were moving there. They started putting up signs like the
sign I saw a photo of was in the window
and it says, we want white tenants in our white

(30:16):
community with little American flags on it, and it's one
of those things that, like, twenty years ago, you'd be like, man,
old timey people were so weird, and now you're like, yeah,
I could see people doing that now too.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
Yeah, that looks like a MAGA sign. Okay.

Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah. Hattie McDaniel, the first black person to ever win
an oscar, bought a mansion in sugar Hill and she
used to host parties there all the time. It sounded
like they were coolest shit, I bet. And the white
neighbors sued Hattie and some of her other black neighbors
for having broken the racial covenants by daring to have

(30:52):
bought things with money, like the money's no good here thing.
It's just like, I'm sorry. I thought we live in
a society where we determined value by these little coin
which isn't a good system, but theoretically.

Speaker 3 (31:04):
The length to go to to file a lawsuit for
someone owning, oh, just.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
Owning the home. Yeah, like that's wow. I'm sorry that
your house isn't as nice as hers. Fuck you, Sorry
she didn't invite you to the party. Yeah you're a trip.
Yeah totally, I wonder why. And Lauren Miller, the legendary
NAACP lawyer, who had been an editor at the California Eagle,

(31:33):
stepped up to represent everyone, and they won. Racial covenants
were clearly against the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Within three years, in nineteen forty eight, the Supreme Court
cited this nineteen forty five case as precedent when they
ruled that racially restrictive covenants were unconstitutional nationwide. It still

(31:55):
took twenty more years for there to be legislation passed
out lawing the practice, but in nineteen forty five everyone
got to keep their mansions. Except racism will always find
a way. Systemic racism is really good. Like I think
most white racists are just ignorant. But it's just like

(32:16):
the degree to which well, I think most of them
are bad hearts, but the degree to which you have
to like not understand history, like having money isn't enough.
That's like what happened with reconstruction. Like whenever people are like,
all right, we'll play the same game as you all,
and they're like, oh wait, you're doing really well in
that game. We changed our mind. We changed the rules.
It's like playing a fucking board game with a seven

(32:38):
year old. You know, and they're like changing the rules
of the game as you're playing it. So the other
famous destroyer of black prosperity, another form of systemic oppression
reared its head. White neighborhoods didn't want highway expansions to
go through them, so sugar Hill was bulldozed. Oh sugar
Hill is now the ten again. Like you said, like,

(33:00):
your money's no good here. Even their property value didn't
save them.

Speaker 3 (33:05):
These rich mansions would not save them.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
Yeah, I guess they got eminent domain doubt. Like, if
there's going to be a group of people that would
be hard to fuck with with systemic racism, you think
it would be the like black Oscar winners who live
in the wealthy neighborhood. You know, one would think. But no,
it because in order to put in the tent anywhere
else they would have had to take out the fraternity
and sorority row at USC.

Speaker 3 (33:28):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
Well, so we have to destroy a black neighborhood instead,
And other Black and Latino neighborhoods were destroyed for making
the ten two. I'm not trying to like woe is
me the rich people, but I think it's really telling,
Like you were saying that wealth didn't stop them, because
systemic racism is worse than that. And if you want
to see before and after photos of these houses and

(33:49):
what's there now? In my sources list, there's a link
to a site called Segregation by Design that has a
lot of before and aftershots and stories about like the
first black woman doctor in California and a famous psychologist
and their families that grew up in these houses that like, yeah,
are gone, but do you know what isn't gone? Do
you know what's here now? Capitalism, that's right, and products

(34:13):
and services that support our show.

Speaker 3 (34:16):
You gotta have the products and services.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
I know, what would we do without them?

Speaker 1 (34:23):
Probably not have places to live.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
Yeah, that's a big one for me. I'm really fond
of feeding my dog and having shelter. Yeah, it's been
a decent chunk of my life with a van as
my house. Pretty into these products and services. Enter back

(34:46):
and Lauren Miller, the legendary end of LCP Lawyer. We'll
be back in this story soon enough and back at
the Eagle. But first he had to go set precedent
to bring down one of the most racist practices in
American economics with the racial covenants. But shar Alata Bass
did organizing outside of just running a newspaper or the
circulation of sixty thousand people. As if that wasn't enough,

(35:09):
she worked with an organization started by Marcus Garvey, recurring
hero ish figure of the POD, called Universal Negro Improvement
Association in the nineteen twenties, fighting against discrimination and segregation.
I read one thing that I really liked that was
talking about how wanna shar a Lotta. Bass's strengths is
that she both worked with the moderates and the more radicals,
like she was just like kind of a whatever it

(35:29):
takes kind of girl, where she's like working with Marcus Garvey,
but also the NAACP, who are much more liberal. Although
that said later the NAACP is going to rip up
her membership card after she gets blacklisted by the government
for being a terrible communist or whatever. So NAACP has
a lot of wins in history, but has also a
lot of embarrassing moments, especially during the Red Scare in

(35:51):
the nineteen thirties. She coined or popularized the slogan don't
buy where you can't work, which was just the like
one of the best slogans you've ever that's a planes
talker right there, right Like. By the nineteen forties, she
was director of the youth movement of the NAACP. She's
probably in her late sixties at this point. She was

(36:12):
also really good at running unsuccessfully for public office, starting
with a bid for city council in the nineteen forties.
I don't think her failing. She's also gonna run for
Congress at one point fail, like her not succeeding in
the nineteen forties. As for punning for Congress as a
black woman, like, I'm not, Yeah, this is not a
slight to her.

Speaker 3 (36:31):
This would be a different country if she had won.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
Yeah. Absolutely, There are so many moments in this especially
coming up, that are like, oh, wow, it would be
so much better off a certain thing had happened different.
But also the thing that I always trying to remember
is that like the wins that she did have also
dramatically improved things, you know. And now she had been
a lifelong Republican, which makes sense because everyone should remember

(36:57):
the Democrats and Republican meant opposite things from about the
eighteen sixties to the nineteen sixties. She lived through the
entire many decades in which the Republican Party was the
more reasonable and less racist party in American politics. The
ideological switch between the Democrats and the Republicans started in
the nineteen thirties with the New Deal and was definitely

(37:17):
in placed by the Civil Rights era, so in nineteen
forty eight, so she didn't really leave the Republican Party.
The Republican Party left her, you know. And she left
officially in nineteen forty eight to help create the independent
Progressive Party of California, which soon joined the nationwide Progressive Party,
which is like really annoying to research because there's been

(37:41):
so many parties called the Progressive Party, but usually at
different times. So if you look up like Wallace nineteen
forty eight, you get different thing than if you look
up the Progressive Party of what's that other Roosevelt? Teddy,
he also.

Speaker 1 (37:55):
Had one what's that other Roosevelt?

Speaker 2 (37:58):
Okay, So I've like always kind of assumed that old
Roosevelt Roosevelt one was like not the best man or whatever, right,
But like I've read now so much stuff basically about
how he's so much better and everyone came after that.
I'm like all confused, Wait about two or one or
number one? So he's better than number two. No, sorry,
number two is better than number one, but number one

(38:18):
is better than Okay, Like probably any politician working today
in the traditional Democratic or Republican parties in terms of
like non imperial whatever. I'm not getting into Teddy Roosevelt.
I read a long thing about it, but the thing
I read was from the nineteen forties, and I cannot.

Speaker 3 (38:35):
I won't Roosevelt bait you.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
Yeah, No, I don't know enough about it. It's like
the fun thing I'm sure you've never had to run
into this with your job, is that, like, in order
to understand anything, you have to understand everything, but you
can't understand everything, so you have to like try, and
it's impossible, and it's one of the most brilliant and
rewarding things you can do, is to try and understand
these things. But like it's too much, there's too much stuff.

Speaker 3 (38:57):
Yeah, but that's also part of what makes it fun.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
I know. The Progressive Party was the DSA of its day,
but instead of trying to push for change with an
existing party, which is the DSA strategy today, of trying
to have the Democratic Party actually represent the Democratic voters,
the Progressive Party ran as a third party which was
much more the style at the time. And but nineteen

(39:22):
fifty two she's going to be its vice presidential candidate.
But in nineteen forty eight, the party existed to support
the presidential run of Henry Wallace. This is the guy.
Have you heard of this guy? You have to look
on your face.

Speaker 3 (39:35):
Is this like the super arch racist Wallace?

Speaker 2 (39:39):
WHOA, I don't think so.

Speaker 3 (39:41):
The George Wallace That's what I'm thinking of. Never mind
George wwas the Alabama governor who was like segregation.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
Now, okay, yeah, yeah, no, how could you possibly get
George and Henry Wallace the two most English sounding names
that have ever existed mixed up?

Speaker 3 (40:00):
Okay, I'm glad Charlotta is not in league somehow with
George Wallace.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
No, no, George Wallace is the really scary eyebrow guy.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Well the thing I was expecting to
have to cover but didn't end up happening. And she's
actually very anti segregation. A lot of people in like
kind of her position at the time weren't necessarily pro segregation,
but weren't really like trying to fight against it either,
because there is like also a like attempt to try
and insulate black society right from like racist white people.

(40:29):
So I was expecting to have to cover that, but
I don't because she was actually very explicitly anti segregation
the entire time ahead of her time in a way
that's an oversimplification anyway. Henry Wallace, who didn't wag his
finger in that particular way. He had been vice president
for almost the entirety of World War Two. This is

(40:50):
the fun thing about vice presidents. No one remembers them.
Do you know he had a I do remember his name?
Do you know he had a Native American vice president?
And like I want to say the twenties or thirties. No,
I think he was a piece of shit who like
privatized all the indigenous lands and was like, I don't
remember enough about him to talk shit. No one remembers
vice presidents. That's the rule. I'm looking forward to not

(41:10):
knowing who JD. Vances. Oh God, yes, he was dropped,
not vance, but Henry Wallace was vice president during World
War Two for most of it, all but seven months
or something of it. And he was dropped from the
nineteen forty four ticket as vice president because everyone knew
Roosevelt's health was bad. And they needed a more electable
vice president, whereas like Wallace is lefty, and so they're like, oh,

(41:34):
it's like the same problem that Lincoln fucked up with
and ended up with a horrible racist as his vice president,
and then he got shot to his name I don't
remember because I refused to remember Voce Ohl. That guy
got into a president, so I should remember his name. Anyway,
they picked a more electable guy to be vice president
instead of Wallace, so he was dropped from the ticket.

(41:55):
Then Roosevelt died eighty two days into his fourth term
in office. That's the other thing people got about Hi.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
That is so wild.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
Four terms in office. I understand why sometimes people call
him the dictator. He was not. He's still probably my
favorite president, which is a low bar. He did a
lot of racist shit. Anyway, Truman ends up president, not Wallace,
whereas Wallace would have been president. And Wallace is like,
at least by nineteen forty eight running on this incredibly
progressive campaign, so that could have been what had happened. Right,

(42:23):
This is that moment of like the world could be
really fundamentally different, because specifically Wallace doesn't want a fucking
cold war. He's like they were our allies, why are
we having a war with them? Which is a reasonable
argument to make. So he ran as a third party
candidate nineteen forty eight, which didn't work. The party's idea,

(42:46):
the Progressive Party. This is now what Bass has thrown
her weight behind. The party's idea is basically, both of
the existing parties are corrupt and we shouldn't be doing
this cold war nonsense. And also, let's just have diplomatic
ties with Russia and work with the UN and stop
doing Jim crow bow and let more refugees in and
build housing for the homeless and do universal health care.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
Sounds good.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
I know, I'm like, all right, I can say no notes,
but I'm gonna have some notes in a moment. Some
of this platform is interesting to read out today. Quote
never before have so few owned so much at the
expense of so many. Ten years ago, Franklin Delano Roosevelt warned,
quote the liberty of a democracy is not safe. If
the people tolerate the growth of private power to a

(43:27):
point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state, that
in essence is fascism. The platform also says, quote both
parties are champions of big business. The Republican platform admits it.
The Democratic platform attempts to conceal ito. And I'm like,
I could have written that, Like, well, no, I wouldn't
say it now because now the Republican Party is just

(43:48):
the fascist party. But like I could have written that
ten years ago, you know, I know, like why didn't
we listen? I know, but no, political history is uncomplicated.
In addition to calling for one world government, they have
a whole plank in there about how America needs to
recognize and finance Israel, and we opposed any attempt to
interfere with Israel and its sovereign right to control its

(44:10):
own immigration policy. They did, however, want Israel to be
a single state that is multi ethnic and multi religious,
that is like both Jewish and Arab. And also this
is a few years after the end of the Holocaust,
and it's basically about like it's contextually different. It looks
funny in history, That's what I'll say about it. Yeah,

(44:30):
So her becoming a progressive in nineteen forty eight did
not slow down the government's obsession with her. People very
incorrectly decided that willing to be friends with the Communists
meant takes orders from the Communists and accuse the Progressive
Party of being affront for the Communist Party. I actually
spent a little while today being like, what was it though,

(44:51):
And I don't think it was.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
Now.

Speaker 2 (44:54):
So you ever okay, well, you'd run a conspiracy? Have
you ever done the like conspiracy stuff around red Scare
and around like foreign agents and all this stuff.

Speaker 3 (45:02):
I'm not to that degree, okay, because I do think
it might tie my brain into a permanent pretzel.

Speaker 2 (45:12):
Yes, I live as a pretzel. It's very complicated fox
with my head. It also didn't help that she was
perfectly fine staying friends with two of the most blacklisted
people in America who are both black, the labor singer
Paul Robison and the theorist W. E. B. Dubois. And
she found herself blacklisted too, which is why the NAACP

(45:33):
ripped up her card. The Iota Phi Lambas Society of Toledo, Ohio,
which had given her honorary membership in their sorority. They
revoked her membership because she's terrible commune or whatever that. Again,
her FBI stalkers are like, nah, she's not a communist,
and the NAACP kicks her out and it makes running

(45:56):
a newspaper hard. The numbers on her newspaper are going down,
and I don't know, I only have two points on
the graph I have. In the nineteen twenties it peaked
at sixty thousand people, and that by like nineteen fifty
one when she sells the paper, it's like two thousand
dish people. So it's like a really dramatic fall. But
I don't know what that curve looks like.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
I would imagine too that like for this paper and
this woman who's obviously so focused not just on like
the journalism of it all, but she's she's a community organizer,
you know, totally so yeah, and then to have community ties.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
Turn on her, Yeah, I must have been heartbreaking. Like
you've spent decades working for the NAACP and then they're
just like, no, we don't like that. You think that
the USSR is an anti racist place, so fuck you. Like,
according to everything I have read, she did this in
nineteen fifty I believe everything I have read is wrong,

(46:58):
and that she did this in nineteen forty nine. In
nineteen forty nine, she traveled to Paris and Prague for
the Defenders of the Peace Committee of the World Congress.
The reason I believe this happened in nineteen forty nine
is because those of the year that Paris and Prague
held the Defenders of the Peace Committee for the World Congress.
I think this is one of the problems with Like,
she wrote an autobiography that is hard to get a hold of,

(47:20):
and I have not read most of the writing about her,
including some academic writing. Most of it is sort of
pop journalism, which is what I do. I can't disparage
pop journalism. There's a lot of loose timeline stuff, you know. Anyway,
I get really annoyed by that thing. I used to
be like, I don't even care about names and dates.
Now I'm like, they got the date wrong.

Speaker 3 (47:39):
They're just rounding up.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
Yeah, Because like in my mind, anytime I read an
unfamiliar term while I'm researching someone, I go look that
term up, right, And so I just read things that
are like and then she went to the Paris and
Prague Defenders of the Peace Committee of the World Congress,
and everyone is just assumes they know what that means
because it's in the name that it's a Defenders of

(48:01):
the Peace Committee of the World Congress. But here's the
messy part that was put on by the Soviet Union.
It was a propaganda thing. It was not a like
world international thing. It was to be like, isn't the
Soviet Union great? Shouldn't you all become communists? I don't
think I'm being conspiracy minded when I say that, that's

(48:22):
just like who financed it and made it happen, And
like journalists went and they were like, there was no
informal speeches. Everything was carefully prepared, like you know, that
is the USSR's way. It's like as very authoritarian society.
Paul Robison, the singer, is amazing voice. He went and
he gave a speech at it, and he got his
passport confiscated by the US government for years. And she
went to the USSR as part of this on a

(48:44):
carefully controlled guided tour, and she wrote about her time
in the USSR. I think she spent ten days there. Quote.
I will never forget the moment when I first realized,
standing there in the Great Georgian University, that there is,
in very truth, not even a semblance of racial exclusiveness
in Russia. The example which the Russians are setting in
this field will have an effect in every country in
the world, including her own. This isn't her saying like

(49:07):
I am now a Bolshevik, right, She's like, I want
America to be good. I want America to be not racist.
I do think that there's a lot of propagandizing in
the degree to which people say that the USSR was
anti racist, But it certainly was not as racist as
the United States, except, of course, the fact that people

(49:28):
had their ethnicity on their identity card, and then there
was a whole lot of ethnic cleansings that they did.
It's complicated. I don't like either government. That's my Cold
War take.

Speaker 3 (49:36):
Well, when she had been writing about like what she
was shown and what she was effectively allowed to see as.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
Well totally, so I'm not like she did anything wrong.
So she sees this and this is a thing that
like some black Americans had gone over to the USSR,
Paul Robinson would go over a lot, and doing the
research for this episode changed my opinion about Paul Robison
in a negative way. Is specifically because he he observed
Jewish people being killed for being Jewish intellectuals, including his friends,

(50:04):
and he didn't say anything about it because he hated
America so much which is legit on record. The FEDS
would be like, what do you think of Stalin? And
he's like, I'm not here to talk about Stalin. You
people killed sixty to one hundred million black people when
you like, you know, enslaved us and brought us over here.
Stalin's Russia's problem. I'm not here to talk about that.
And I'm like, all right, as legit, yeah, fair point.

Speaker 1 (50:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
But other people, including some black people are his friends with,
were specifically like, like, what the fuck is complicated? He's
a complicated man. I don't know enough about him to
make sweeping statements. I have you picked up on that
I had complicated feelings about the Cold War because I
don't like either side of it, because I don't like authoritarianism.

(50:48):
This did not make her a communist, but also it
wouldn't be wrong or illegal if she was. During all
of this, It's still not illegal to be a communist.
We ostensibly a free speech in America, you know, Yeah, as.

Speaker 3 (51:00):
Far as I'm aware, the actual like political platforms and
agendas that like Communist Party members in the US were
talking about like sounded kind of similar to like the
progressive totally platform that you just described.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's actually a really good point though,
because the Communist Party isn't necessarily being like overthrow the
United States West, some of them are. I don't know,
it's complicated, it's complicated, but I think again, she says
what she's about. I have never seen a single thing
that makes me think that this woman was like sneakily

(51:38):
believed something other than the thing that she spent her
entire career every week for forty years writing her column.
I think she had her column the entire time every
week in which she says what she believes. You know,
so like it's just nonsense to be but like, yes,
she doesn't hate communists, She's not going to throw them

(52:01):
under the bus. And eventually she had to retire from
the newspaper business. She finally did this in nineteen fifty one,
at seventy seven or so years old. Or seventy years old,
who knows that one might not be the historian's fault.
That's the record keeping of people that no one cares
about in the US South. When I say no one

(52:23):
cares about, I mean like large institutions, no matter what
job you do. Seventy seven is a reasonable age to
be done with it. She's not a slacker here. I
only point that out because I've read things that kind
of implied she quit because of the pressure of the
Red scare and that she couldn't handle it anymore. I
don't believe that, because she's immediately running for office in

(52:46):
ways that are like just attracting more attention to her.
She moves full time into politics to hit back at
these motherfuckers. And she sells the newspaper.

Speaker 3 (52:55):
This is her late seventies pivot.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
Yeah, Yeah, her late seventies pivot is now she's a politician. Yeah.
And when she sells her newspaper, she sells it to
Lauren Miller, the legendary NAACP lawyer, who had been an
editor there for years. And when she sold the paper,
she wrote about leaving in her personal column on the sidewalk.
She wrote, quote, after more than forty years, I have

(53:17):
tried to serve my people in my country as a
good neighbor and as an editor for Negro Liberation, I
feel that I must now take time to regain my health,
to learn more about what is happening in the world,
and decide how I can be most useful in the
years ahead. So Lauren Miller takes over the paper and
he ran it well and he kept up at Spirit.
But in nineteen sixty three, twelve years later, he was

(53:40):
appointed as a California Superior Court judge, and he had
to sell the paper and it was bought up by
a group of fourteen investors and they ran it into
the ground within six months. Sucks and the paper died
in nineteen sixty four, again running twenty one time as
long as the Confederacy and Bass. She ran as vice

(54:04):
president in nineteen fifty two under the Progressive Party, probably
seventy eight years old, on the ticket with a guy
named Vincent Helenan. And they weren't fools. They knew they
weren't going to win the nineteen forty eight campaign. They
gave it their all, right because this was a popular guy,
had been a vice president during the war. They weren't
going to win. Their campaign slogan was win or lose.

(54:27):
We win by raising the issues.

Speaker 3 (54:29):
Smart.

Speaker 2 (54:30):
Yeah, no totally. Because I was reading it, I was
like what and then I read I was like, oh, yeah, no, no,
she was thinking about this. You know, she knew she's
doing She's one of the most experienced activists this world
has ever seen. And they came in third out of
eight candidates, which means nothing. Never won votes for the
main two candidates, so they only elected ones with one

(54:51):
hundred and thirty five thousand and seven votes, and she
lived for sixteen years. After that, she retired to a
black resort town called Lake Elsinore, California, where she opened
a reading room for Black and Jewish history in her garage,
where she also helped people register to vote. She got
active in the campaign against apartheid in South Africa, and

(55:14):
she wrote about herself quote, it has been a good
life that I have had, though a very hard one,
but I know the future will be even better. And
as I think back, I know that it is the
only kind of life. And serving one's fellow man one
serves himself best. And like that's her political position, just whatever,

(55:35):
she fuck all the rest, you know.

Speaker 3 (55:37):
Like trying to make life better for people.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
Yeah, that's how you have a good life.

Speaker 3 (55:42):
And it sounds like she did not have kids, did she? Oh?

Speaker 2 (55:46):
I don't think so. Oh that's interesting. Nothing I read
implied she had kids. She also got married at thirty
six thirty seven, which still have kids. My great grandmother
was when she had her one kid, and I was
around that same time period. No, that's interesting. I hadn't
even thought of that because there's people who trek back

(56:08):
their lineage to her. But I think in a like
niece way. Like there's like people who are like, I'm
the third grand niece of this lady. So I guess
she didn't have kids.

Speaker 3 (56:18):
Well, yeah, because she had the nephew right who came out. Yeah,
totally as well. Yeah, so she failed as a woman,
just utterly. I'm glad you laughed, because otherwise what have
people thought?

Speaker 2 (56:28):
I was serious child free icon, especially for like then right,
like and one of eleven kids. That is breaking a
generational curse. I am not pro or anti natal. People
should do whatever they want. That has been my long
standing belief and will be till I die.

Speaker 3 (56:44):
To be the middle child and your number six.

Speaker 2 (56:47):
Yeah, that's the ultimate middle child energy. But this is
not middle child energy behavior.

Speaker 3 (56:54):
No.

Speaker 2 (56:55):
No, she is not getting overlooked. Even her brother, who
ran three businesses, is like not in history books except
as the guy who gave her a place to stay
fucking dope. And she had a stroke in nineteen sixty six,
and then she died of a brain hemorrhage on April twelfth,

(57:17):
in nineteen sixty eight or nineteen sixty nine. Why would
sources disagree about the year that she died? What they
do at ninety five years old or ninety six or
ninety one?

Speaker 1 (57:28):
Hey plus ninety well done?

Speaker 2 (57:30):
Yeah, and she died after fighting like fucking hell and
refusing to let the red scar stop her and like
just cool as hell. My sad final note that maybe Okay,
I was like, there's a society named after her at university,
the USC Annenberg. Annenberg must be the name of the

(57:50):
campus has the Charlotta Bass Journalism and Justice Lab, And
I was like, sick they have all this information about her.
But that school got two hundred million dollars from in
video and is all in on AI. And the Charlotta
Bast Journalism and Justice Lab describes itself on his website
as quote the West Coast's first AI powered black media
archive and experimental storytelling space.

Speaker 1 (58:12):
The Annenberg is USC School for Journalism and Communication.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
Okay, so I wasn't able to use them as a source.
AI isn't good sources.

Speaker 3 (58:21):
Maybe they mean AI archival, like using it to arcat
I don't know why am I trying to explain how
the AI could be okay, Because.

Speaker 2 (58:31):
I'm like, I understand that there are use cases for
large language models, but the ability for me to trust
something that is like structurally incapable of not hallucinating, because
like I spend so much of my job now trying
to only find sources from before like twenty twenty two,
you know, especially like pop sources, like pop journalism sources.

(58:54):
If it's like twenty twenty four later, I'm like, this
is useless to me, you know, which is terrible. Nless
I trust the outlet or I trust the author, and
like I always forget to put like no AI when
I search, and so it always brings up the quick
answer and it's wrong like thirty percent of the time.

Speaker 1 (59:11):
Oh I'm sure, if not more, and.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
Like and so I'm so sad. And again, yeah, maybe
they have something, But I've been reading about how some
colleges have been going all in on AI and specifically
like ways that I don't think are good so.

Speaker 3 (59:27):
Well, and the irony too of like the namesake lab
for this woman who I just keep picturing alone in
this storefront office writing a whole goddamn newspaper by herself. Yeah,
on a typewriter.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
Yeah, totally.

Speaker 3 (59:46):
AI, what the fuck?

Speaker 2 (59:48):
Yeah, running to grab a gun when the klan comes. Yeah,
like yeah, anyway. I also was afraid to put that
in because you know what, if there's any group of
people that was like gonna look at any meetia around
Charlotta Bass and have an opinion, it's them. And if
you're them and you've listened this far, you can tell
me I'm wrong about you all. But it's made me sad.

(01:00:12):
But she didn't make me sad. I got out of
this that you can just say no to these motherfuckers.
When the klan comes and like we like to kill you,
you can be like, nah, that's not that's not my plan.
When the State Department is like, turn over your passport,
you could be like, man, fucking arrest me. You know,
like this is like the ultimate opposite of complying in advance.

(01:00:35):
It's not even complying when the directive comes down. It's
non compliance in a principled way that you can stand
up in front of the entire world and be like, yeah, no,
why would I comply with this? It's nonsense, and I uh,
I like it. I also read that some of the
stuff the movements TH's part of or even her like,
led to a lot of like specific protest tactics. But
I couldn't find more information about that. There's so much

(01:00:57):
more I want to learn about her, And I found
out that one university has like all of her papers
and everything, and like, the problem is that every week
I have like a new subject where I'm like, but
what if I dedicated three years of my life and
wrote a book about this, you know, but someone should.

Speaker 3 (01:01:09):
I'm so impressed and also like the fact that she
remained still kind of hopeful the whole time, like yeah,
and to the very end, just having I don't know,
still having some faith in humanity is kind of incredible
considering like the time period she lived through, the space

(01:01:30):
and time she was moving through as a black woman. Yeah,
and to still get out on the other side and
be like, yeah, life is good and we can still
fight for better stuff is.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
Incredible in her nineties, no, I know, and like, I
know the future will be even better. I'm like, man,
I don't know that I think I'm hopeful for a living,
but like, hope in twenty twenty six is like the
what year it does. I think is like some Mariamkaba style,
hope is a discipline, Like this is a I am

(01:02:06):
committed to believing that a better world is possible as
a in the same way that a soldier is committed
to the idea that every battle is winnable because the
only other option is to expect to die. You know.

Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
Yeah, I'm like, I can hope in her hope that
her hope is right about Yeah, totally.

Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
I could have.

Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
Yeah, we could like zoom out even further, you know,
but like if twenty twenties America is like nineteen thirties Germany,
and I hate to say it, but you know, that's
a thing that is on people's minds, right, the nineteen
forties is worse, nineteen fifties is better. So it's like, nah,
that was kind of grim, But you know, she lived

(01:02:47):
through two World wars.

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
That's the through line right in all of the up
and down is that there were never not Charlata's like
doing that work totally.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
Well, I think that's what we got for you this week.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
My dogs have decided it's playtime.

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
Oh well, it's it's playtime, and everyone should listen to
Christ and Congress podcasts and everyone should already listen to
my podcast. You already do. And everyone should buy Bridget
Todd's book. And that's what I have to say.

Speaker 3 (01:03:23):
Yeah, heck yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
Yeah, it's my pleasure.

Speaker 3 (01:03:30):
Bye Ron, Bye, Goodbye.

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
fool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media,
visit our website foalzone media dot com, or check us
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Margaret Killjoy

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part Two: Charlotta Bass: The Black Journalist Who Refused the Red Scare