Before Kamala Harris, There Was Charlotta Bass: Remembering First Black Woman to Run for VP in 1952

Senator Kamala Harris is the first Indian American and first Black woman to be nominated for vice president on a major party ticket, but, as many historians have noted, Harris is not the first Black woman to run for vice president.

That distinction belongs to the journalist and political activist Charlotta Bass, who was the editor of The California Eagle for nearly 30 years, one of the country's oldest Black newspapers, which covered women's suffrage, police brutality, the Klu Klux Klan, and discriminatory hiring and housing practices.

Bass joined the Progressive Party ticket in 1952 on an antiracist platform that called for fair housing and equal access to healthcare.

Bass's exclusion from the public narrative signals a tendency to "sideline Black radical politics," says author and historian Keisha Blain.

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