By Garry Blanson
First of all, I just want to say that It’s a shame how Black People are having to go back and perform “deep research,” in order to learn about past “HISTORICAL EVENTS” as big as Charlotta running for Vice-President, George Hamlet being the first Colored Man to hold the office of Mayor of Monroe, Robert Patterson’s Million Item Store in Monroe, in the early 1900s, or the lynching of Warren Eaton at “The Colored Knights of Pythias Hall, at 1101 Desiard St. in Monroe!”
By the way, not only was I born and raised in Monroe, Louisiana, but I attended local public schools as well as Northeast Louisiana University in 1983. Never-the-less, if it wasn’t for the research I did back in 2021, I probably still wouldn’t know about “The Congress of Racial Equality sit-ins that took place in downtown Monroe, in the summer of 1964.” Neither would I have known about how 22 Black students were arrested at a Ouachita Parish Library in Monroe, because it was against the law for Negroes to go inside or sit inside a “WHITE’S ONLY” public library!
Well, I said all that to say, “If Governor Jeff Landry and Louisiana Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley won’t let teachers at the schools in our Black communities teach our Black children about the “True American History” that was deliberately left out of the school history materials & books, then the Black citizens of Louisiana must take it upon ourselves to teach our Black children!!!
Now that I got that off my chest, let me tell you more about Charlotta Amanda Spears Bass. In addition to her running for Vice-President in 1952, Charlotta served as Co-President of the Los Angeles Chapter of Marcus Garvey’s group, the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Surprisingly, during the same time period that she worked with the NAACP, Charlotta also held the office of Director of the Youth Movement for the NAACP. Interestingly, one of the members of the NAACP Youth Movement was a young Negro girl by the name of Lena Horne.”
In 1912, when John Neimore, the Negro owner of a newspaper called, “The Owl” died, Charlotta’s name was etched in the history books as the first Negro woman to own & operate a newspaper in America! Also, during the worst times of the Great Depression in America, Charlotte engineered a Civil Rights campaign known as,”Don’t buy where you can’t work!” All throughout her adult life, Charlotta helped establish groups and worked with groups to acquire rights and defend the rights of Negroes in America. One of the final groups she helped was The Sojourners for Truth and Justice Organization, where she served as the National Chairlady, in 1952. After nearly 70 years of dedicated service to her people and her community, Charlotta Amanda Spears Bass departed her life here on earth, on April 12, 1969, in Los Angeles, California.
