Before Palin, Before Ferrarro, There Was Charlotta Spears Bass

Cynthia King, History News Network

- Though partisans continue to debate the merits and demerits of Sarah Palin’s candidacy, the fact is that she is the first female vice presidential nominee for the Republican Party. This is also true of Geraldine Ferrarro for the Democratic Party in 1984. But even Ferrarro cannot lay claim to being the first female vice presidential nominee on the national ballot.

That honor goes to Charlotta Spears Bass who ran for Vice President of the United States on the Progressive Party ticket in 1952. Bass was also the first African American female to run for the office. Her candidacy did not cause a media sensation. In fact she was virtually ignored by most news outlets. An exception is Time magazine’s brief scoff that the Progressive Party’s platform is the usual “shocking pink,” and dismissal of Bass as “dumpy,” “domineering,” and “husbandless.”

But Bass was use to criticism by mainstream powers. Before entering politics, she frequently irked city officials in Los Angeles by organizing direct action campaigns against the city’s discriminatory employment and housing practices. For over thirty-five years, she used the power she wielded as owner and editor of the California Eagle, at the time one of the oldest African American newspapers on the West Coast, to motivate her readers to fight racial injustice. She ran for local political office twice but lost both times.

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