- Kimberley Guillemet
- May 1, 2022
Charlotta Amanda Spears Bass was born on February 14, 1874, to Hiram and Kate Spears in either Sumter, South Carolina or Little Compton, Rhode Island. Upon graduation from high school, she enrolled in Pembroke College, a women's college which is now part of Brown University. When she was twenty years old she began working for the Providence Watchman, a local Black newspaper, and remained there for about ten years.
Bass later moved to Los Angeles, California and began working for $5 a week as an “office girl” at a newspaper that was then called The Eagle. The paper’s office was nestled on Central Avenue, the “Black belt of the city” as The Eagle described it — a neighborhood full of churches, clubs and Black-owned businesses, and home to the West Coast jazz scene.
When the editor John J. Neimore became ill, he asked Bass to take over the operations of the newspaper. Shortly after Neimore's death, Bass learned that "this Black-founded newspaper was owned by a white man, who offered his support only if [she] would become his 'sweetheart.'” Rather than take him up on his offer, Bass borrowed $50 from a local store owner to purchase the deed, becoming the first African-American woman to own and operate a newspaper in the United States. She renamed the newspaper The California Eagle due to increasing social and political issues in the region.
Early on, Bass hired an experienced editor from The Topeka Plaindealer, J.B. Bass, who served as the managing editor of the paper. He would soon become her husband. As joint publishers, they grew The California Eagle into the most widely circulated Black newspaper on the West Coast with a circulation of 60,000.
The newspaper served as a source of both information and inspiration for the Black community, which was often ignored or negatively portrayed by the predominantly white press. It illuminated Black life in a way that was not illuminated in other papers, covering issues such as housing rights, labor rights, voting rights, and police brutality. It is also credited as pioneering multiethnic politics through its advocacy of Asian-American and Mexican-American civil rights in the 1940s.
Bass entered politics in the 1940s, running for the Los Angeles City Council under the slogan “Don’t Fence Me In” — the title of a popular song of that era that she repurposed to condemn housing discrimination. She had been a longtime Republican, but voted for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, in 1936. She later denounced both parties for neglecting Black and women’s rights. She helped found the Independent Progressive Party of California in 1947, and pitched an unsuccessful bid for Congress in 1950.
Bass sold the newspaper in 1951 and co-founded Sojourners for Truth and Justice, a Black women’s group. In 1952, Bass became the first African-American woman nominated for Vice President, as a candidate of the Progressive Party. She was the running mate of lawyer Vincent Hallinan and their bid was launched on a platform of “peace and prosperity.” Though Bass did not win, she made history.
Bass retired to what was then a Black resort town southeast of Los Angeles, Lake Elsinore. During her retirement years, she maintained a community library in her garage for the young people in her neighborhood. It was a continuation of her long fight to give all people opportunities and education.
Considering the sum of her career as she was completing her autobiography, Forty Years (1960), Bass wrote: “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 is the only kind of life: In serving one's fellow man one serves himself best …”
To learn more about Mrs. Bass’ tremendous life and legacy, please visit: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/obituaries/charlotta-bass-vice-president-overlooked.html, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotta_Bass, and https://laist.com/news/la-history/charlotta-bass-first-woman-of-color-to-run-for-us-vice-president. To view footage of Mrs. Bass, please visit: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/charlotta-spears-bass-first-black-woman-vp-nominee-epkd15/15441/.
- Kimberley Guillemet
- Apr 1, 2022
Ella Fitzgerald was born on April 25, 1917, in Newport News, Virginia. She was the daughter of William Fitzgerald and Temperance "Tempie" Henry. Her parents never married and her father left her mother shortly after she was born. She began her formal education at the age of six and was an outstanding student. Starting in third grade, she danced and performed for her peers on the way to school and at lunchtime.
In 1932, when Fitzgerald was fifteen, her mother died from injuries sustained in a car accident. Her stepfather took care of her until April 1933, at which point she moved to Harlem to live with her aunt. Fitzgerald soon began skipping school and her grades suffered. She worked as a lookout at a bordello and with a numbers runner. When the authorities caught up with her, she was placed in foster care and then a reformatory in New York.
During 1933 and 1934 she sang on the streets of Harlem, until she had her big break on November 21,1934, when she made her debut in one of the earliest Amateur Nights at the Apollo Theater and won first prize. She later said, "Once up there, I felt the acceptance and love from my audience. I knew I wanted to sing before people the rest of my life."
In January 1935, Fitzgerald won the chance to perform for a week with the Tiny Bradshaw band at the Harlem Opera House. Although the program director, Chick Webb, was reluctant to sign her because she was a 'diamond in the rough’, he offered her the opportunity to test with the band when they played a dance at Yale University. Met with approval by both audiences and her fellow musicians, Fitzgerald was asked to join Webb's orchestra and gained acclaim as part of the group's performances at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom.
Throughout the ‘30s and ‘40s, Fitzgerald continued to win singing contests, work with bands, and record hit records. Her first million-seller, a novelty tune called "A-Tisket, A-Tasket," became a major hit on the radio and was also one of the biggest-selling records of the decade.
Despite her success, Fitzgerald faced discrimination as during that era, band singers were mostly blond, sophisticated and had mainstream physical features. Fitzgerald was often called “awkward and gawky” and in the words of one newspaper writer, "a big, light-colored gal." This superficial criticism notwithstanding, no one could dispute that Fitzgerald had impeccable timing and perfect pitch. In fact, band musicians would tune their instruments to her voice. Endlessly inventive, only on one record did she sing the same way twice. There was no sad edge to her voice — Ella Fitzgerald had listeners smiling by the second note.
Influenced by her work with Dizzy Gillespie'’s big band, she pioneered “scat” singing and incorporated it as a major part of her performance repertoire. While singing with Gillespie, Fitzgerald recalled, "I just tried to do [with my voice] what I heard the horns in the band doing."
She also began appearing on television variety shows. She quickly became a favorite and frequent guest on numerous programs, including "The Bing Crosby Show," "The Dinah Shore Show," "The Frank Sinatra Show," "The Ed Sullivan Show," "The Tonight Show," "The Nat King Cole Show," "The Andy Willams Show" and "The Dean Martin Show."
Dubbed "The First Lady of Song," Ella Fitzgerald was the most popular female jazz singer in the United States for more than half a century. In her lifetime, she won 13 Grammy awards and sold over 40 million albums. Her voice was flexible, wide-ranging, accurate and ageless. She could sing sultry ballads, sweet jazz and imitate every instrument in an orchestra. She worked with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman and many more. She performed at top venues all over the world and packed them to the hilt. Her audiences were as diverse as her vocal range. They were rich and poor, made up of all ethnicities, all religions and all nationalities. In fact, many of them had just one binding factor in common - they all loved Ella Fitzgerald.
To learn more about Ms. Fitzgerald’s tremendous life and legacy, please visit:
http://www.ellafitzgerald.com/about/biography, https://www.npr.org/2010/03/29/125170386/ella-fitzgerald-americas-first-lady-of-song and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_Fitzgerald. To view footage of Ms. Fitzgerald, please visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myRc-3oF1d0.
- Kimberley Guillemet
- Mar 1, 2022
Claudette Colvin was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on September 5, 1939. Colvin and her younger sister were raised by their great aunt and uncle, Mary Anne and Q. P. Colvin in King Hill, a poor Black neighborhood in Montgomery. Colvin attended the segregated Booker T. Washington High School, where she was a good student and a member of the NAACP Youth Council.
On March 2, 1955, 15 year-old Colvin was riding on the public bus on her way home after school. She was seated at the front of the “colored section” of the bus which began on the row behind the “white section.” The bus operated under the rule that if the bus became so crowded that all the "white seats" in the front of the bus were filled such that white people were standing, any African Americans seated nearest to the “white section” were expected to give up their seats to allow the white passengers to sit down.
If there were no free seats in the “colored section,” African Americans were expected to stand in the aisle.
When a young white woman got on the bus that afternoon and was left standing in the front, the bus driver commanded Colvin and three other young Black women in her row to move to the back. Even though only one seat was needed, Blacks could not sit on the same row as whites so all four young ladies were ordered to move. Colvin’s three companions moved; Colvin did not.
Eventually, the bus driver summoned the police. Upon seeing Colvin, one of the officers responded, "That's nothing new . . . I've had trouble with that 'thing' before." The officers then ordered Colvin to move, but she refused, saying, "It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, it's my constitutional right." Colvin felt compelled to stand her ground, later recalling, "History kept me stuck to my seat. I felt the hand of Harriet Tubman pushing down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth pushing down on the other—saying, 'Sit down girl!' I was glued to my seat."
The police officers forcibly handcuffed Colvin, arrested her, and dragged her from the bus. Colvin later said, "Mine was the first cry for justice, and a loud one."
The police officers who took her to the station made sexual comments about her body and took turns guessing her bra size throughout the ride. One of the police officers sat in the backseat of the patrol car with her as they rode to the station causing her to fear that he would sexually assault her. After being held in jail for hours, she was bailed out by her pastor, who told her that she had “brought the revolution to Montgomery.”
Colvin was charged with disturbing the peace, violating the segregation laws, and battering and assaulting a police officer. She was tried in juvenile court, convicted on all three charges and sentenced to “indefinite probation.” When Colvin's case was appealed to the Montgomery Circuit Court on May 6, 1955, the charges of disturbing the peace and violating the segregation laws were dropped, although her conviction for assaulting a police officer was upheld.
This event took place nine months before the NAACP secretary Rosa Parks was arrested for the same offense. Colvin did not receive the same attention as Parks because as Colvin later stated, she did not have “good hair”, she was not fair-skinned, she was a teenager, and she got pregnant. The leaders in the Civil Rights Movement were very mindful of the public perception of protesters and tried to ensure that only the most sympathetic and “appealing” protesters would receive media attention. Civil rights leaders felt that Colvin’s status as an unwed teenage mother made her an inappropriate symbol for a test case. Colvin became one of four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, which ruled that Montgomery’s segregated bus system was unconstitutional.
Colvin had difficulty finding and keeping work following her participation in the Browder v. Gayle case and was branded a “troublemaker” by many in her community. This led to Colvin and her son Raymond leaving Montgomery to move to New York, where she became a nurse's aide, retiring after 35 years of service.
In 2021, Colvin applied to have her juvenile record expunged. The District Attorney supported her motion, stating, "[h]er actions back in March of 1955 were conscientious, not criminal; inspired, not illegal; they should have led to praise and not prosecution.” The judge ordered that the juvenile record be expunged and destroyed in December 2021, stating that Colvin's refusal had "been recognized as a courageous act.”
To learn more about Ms. Colvin’s tremendous life and legacy, please visit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudette_Colvin, https://www.biography.com/activist/claudette-colvin, and https://www.npr.org/2009/03/15/101719889/before-rosa-parks-there-was-claudette-colvin. To view footage of Ms. Colvin, please visit:
