Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to part two of Cool People Who
Speaker 2: Did Cool Stuff of an episode. Part two of the
Speaker 2: episode I'm your host, Margaret Kildroy put all the right
Speaker 2: clauses together in the right order. This is an episode
Speaker 2: I have a guest christ and conger.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 2: You know how a podcast. You've been doing it for
Speaker 2: a very long time, and I made you feel self
Speaker 2: conscious about it in part one, so I figured i'
Speaker 2: just double down on it now.
Speaker 3: You know what that was all on me, Margaret, I
Speaker 3: have been doing it a long time and I should
Speaker 3: not be ashamed of it.
Speaker 2: I know it's one of the jobs that's easy to
Speaker 2: feel ashamed of because it doesn't have a good reputation.
Speaker 2: But I believe in us.
Speaker 3: I believe in US too.
Speaker 2: I sounded sarcastic, but I wasn't.
Speaker 3: I was sincere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I was too. I just sounded sarcastic. You
Speaker 2: are the host of two podcasts on Ladylike and Conspiracy Comma,
Speaker 2: She wrote, Yes, the comment is essential, Yeah, no, I
Speaker 2: otherwise you could get confused with the other. I actually
Speaker 2: don't know if there's other podcasts called Conspiracy w but
Speaker 2: this they're probably not. No, what are they about.
Speaker 3: So well, my kind of just general obsession is women.
Speaker 2: Gender.
Speaker 3: Feminism's plural.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, here for the plural.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh, it's got to be plural.
Speaker 2: Even more important than that comma.
Speaker 3: Exactly and unladylike is more focused on kind of culture
Speaker 3: and especially now this just intense hyper gendered feminist backlash,
Speaker 3: like algorithmically, like just chaotic time that we're.
Speaker 2: In, like like tradwife stuff.
Speaker 3: You mean, oh, tradwife stuff. But also, I guess they're
Speaker 3: technically in the femisphere. I've spent the past couple of
Speaker 3: weeks in the more of the hardcore like pink pilled
Speaker 3: world of life, like female dating strategists and cell.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Oh, I know about fem cells a
Speaker 2: little bit, but I don't know about female dating strategists.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, they look smax. I guess that's actually just
Speaker 2: called what society does to us. Never mind, we've been
Speaker 2: forced to looks max since the concept of women was created.
Speaker 3: I'm sure they advocate looks maxing. But their whole thing
Speaker 3: is that it's all very like grounded in like manisphere
Speaker 3: kind of bio essentialism stuff. So it's all about cultivating
Speaker 3: your feminine energy and presenting yourself as feminine in order
Speaker 3: to basically manipulate men into paying for your life. It's
Speaker 3: not like sugar.
Speaker 2: Baby, it's like literally what the manosphere people claim or
Speaker 2: the in cells claim. Yes, whoa.
Speaker 3: And there's also like a fascinating kind of anti capitalist
Speaker 3: feminist whige that they wrap it up in of like, yeah,
Speaker 3: working is bullshit, we shouldn't have to pay for our lives.
Speaker 3: But also they'll advocate for things like UBI universal basic income,
Speaker 3: but only for women because men are such pigs they
Speaker 3: have to work. Well yeah, and they just don't deserve anything.
Speaker 3: So yeah, anyway, that's where I've been.
Speaker 2: This is fascinating. This is like such a mix of
Speaker 2: all kinds of things.
Speaker 3: It is, and then there's the reactionary feminism piece of it.
Speaker 2: It's just yeah, yeah, this is a fun story to
Speaker 2: tell on air. I was like kind of cougar bait
Speaker 2: when I was a teenager, and the first time an
Speaker 2: older woman at a bar explained to me that she
Speaker 2: could get me drinks by just going up to a
Speaker 2: random man and being like, will you buy me two
Speaker 2: drinks and then have them buy her two drinks so
Speaker 2: that she would come back and give to me one
Speaker 2: I'm like seventeen. In this story, I was kind of
Speaker 2: like mind blown about, Like I was trying to think
Speaker 2: through every step of how complicated this was from a
Speaker 2: feminist position.
Speaker 3: You know, she's now a thriving like TikToker. Yeah, probably
Speaker 3: in the hemisphere.
Speaker 2: I wish her well, she's fine. I think I don't know.
Speaker 3: She's selling courses online. It's fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, someone's gotta sell courses about how to sell courses online.
Speaker 2: That's actually what we've been moving to a Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: How to start Cool Zone Media. It's a paid podcast only,
Speaker 2: and you have to pay for every episode. We're ready
Speaker 2: to announce this.
Speaker 1: Right, I don't want to do that, No, thank you.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to come up with an acronym that uses MLM,
Speaker 2: but I'm failing, so instead let's talk about the podcast topic.
Speaker 1: Yay.
Speaker 2: So this is part two of a two parter on
Speaker 2: Charlotta Bass, who I have not called Charlotta Base this
Speaker 2: entire time.
Speaker 1: I believe proud of you.
Speaker 2: I promised I would by accident because Bass, I had
Speaker 2: to spend so long learning as a kid that that
Speaker 2: was pronounced not the way you think it is, And
Speaker 2: I never really went fishing very well. I always left
Speaker 2: fish she was fake because I went fishing a lot
Speaker 2: and I never caught anything, So I don't think about
Speaker 2: bass the fish. This is part two about her. None
Speaker 2: of that is about her. She is living in an amazing life.
Speaker 2: She has scared away to KKK. She is running a
Speaker 2: place with her wife guy and just kind of doing
Speaker 2: cool shit and getting investigated by the FEDS for doing it,
Speaker 2: which means we get to talk about not friend but
Speaker 2: recurring character of the pod, the Red Scares. Do you
Speaker 2: know there's been more than one of them?
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 2: I'm not surprised you knew that, but yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean not to brage, but it was something that
Speaker 3: I learned recently, though.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, because they all kind of get conflated together.
Speaker 2: And then there's the like much less talked about but
Speaker 2: rather dramatically important Lavender Scare, where like this is my
Speaker 2: favorite of them. The reasoning behind the Lavender Scare when
Speaker 2: they fired all the gay people and the queer people
Speaker 2: from the federal government, was because it's shameful to be
Speaker 2: gay in a homophobic society. That means that you could
Speaker 2: be blackmailed by the Soviets, and you're like, well it
Speaker 2: seems like the obvious solution here is that no one
Speaker 2: get in trouble if they're blackmailed, Like you've created the
Speaker 2: argument for yourself. If you don't get fired for being
Speaker 2: a lesbian, there's not a problem. They can't blackmail you exactly. Anyway,
Speaker 2: we have these things called red scares in the United States.
Speaker 2: We've had two major ones, and we're probably entering a
Speaker 2: third right now. Suddenly federal repression ramps up against anyone
Speaker 2: suspected of being anti capitalist. Basically, that's like kind of
Speaker 2: what it comes down to. They'll use other terms, but
Speaker 2: they mean a pretty broad sense anyone who's against the
Speaker 2: American economic system. The first Red scare was kind of
Speaker 2: like the First World War. It seemed like a huge
Speaker 2: deal at the time, but the second one kind of
Speaker 2: stole its thunder. Like I always like the meme of
Speaker 2: like the time traveler goes back to the World War
Speaker 2: One and is like, oh shit, this is World War One.
Speaker 2: The person's like, wait, what, there's another one after this?
Speaker 2: How can there be? The Red Scare probably felt like that.
Speaker 2: And also both these red scares map to world wars,
Speaker 2: which doesn't make me feel good about us entering a new.
Speaker 4: One, Margaret, I had not even connected those dots who
Speaker 4: history doesn't repeat, it rhymes and comes back to the
Speaker 4: same refrains, you know, So I don't think we're doomed.
Speaker 3: Well in Red Scare was post war.
Speaker 2: Yeah, both of them come immediately after World wars. So
Speaker 2: if we're having a Red Scare now, maybe we just
Speaker 2: will skip the World War hey, or you know other alternatives.
Speaker 2: The first Red Scare was nineteen seventeen to nineteen twenty,
Speaker 2: and it was in response to the rise of socialist
Speaker 2: revolutions across the world, and in particular it is a
Speaker 2: response to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and the primary
Speaker 2: target of the Red Scare, at least as I've read
Speaker 2: about because my own biases, but most of what I've
Speaker 2: read implies that this is true, was the Russian immigrant community. Basically,
Speaker 2: they were like, oh, y'all are secret communeanists, and many
Speaker 2: of them were leftist revolutionaries the people who were targeted
Speaker 2: for this, but most of them were anarchists who the
Speaker 2: Bolsheviks were in a war against in Russia. So a
Speaker 2: great number of the anarchists who were arrested and deported
Speaker 2: back to Russia were then imprisoned and or killed by
Speaker 2: the Bolsheviks because Bolsheviks were in the middle of a
Speaker 2: bloody civil war against all of the other leftists that
Speaker 2: initially supported their revolution, so that the first Red Scare sucked,
Speaker 2: but the second Red Scare was lasted longer and had
Speaker 2: further reaching consequences for the world and for American society.
Speaker 2: It gets all the attention these days. It is generally
Speaker 2: seen as centering around nineteen forty seven to nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: seven or so, but the famous House Committee on on
Speaker 2: American Activities was actually founded all the way back in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty eight. So even while the US was allied
Speaker 2: with the USSR and the war against Germany, anyone who
Speaker 2: is too anti fascist was suspect and under constant investigation, like,
Speaker 2: for example, one of our recent episodes. Two of our
Speaker 2: recent episodes were about the blues musician Howe He Ledbetter
Speaker 2: Akay led Belly, and Alan Lomax, the guy who like
Speaker 2: kind of recorded almost everybody and is the reason Americana
Speaker 2: like exists. And they're leftists. They're pretty far left. They're
Speaker 2: bout as left as you go without being like I'm
Speaker 2: a card carrying communist right, and they are hard at
Speaker 2: work on the American war effort. Honey Ledbetter's like old
Speaker 2: is dirt, and he's like, I'm going to join World
Speaker 2: War two and they're like, no, you're not, Bud. He's like,
Speaker 2: but I want to kill them Nazis. And Alan Lomax,
Speaker 2: who was doing work for the State Department, like creating
Speaker 2: propaganda so that people were willing to go fight, he
Speaker 2: eventually actually did. He was like, I'm tired of being deferred,
Speaker 2: put me in coach and try to get himself shipped
Speaker 2: off to war. And then instead they shipped him off
Speaker 2: to the propaganda department of the army. And they're both
Speaker 2: under investigation. They are literally doing anti fascist work for
Speaker 2: the US government, and the US government is like, oh,
Speaker 2: a little too anti fascist. I'm onto you. You know,
Speaker 2: only supposed to be a little anti fascist in this country.
Speaker 2: They ever heard of the premature anti fascists. No, this
Speaker 2: is one of my favorite weird tidbits of history. And
Speaker 2: I also had to bring up the Spanish Civil War
Speaker 2: somehow on this episode. So the Spanish Civil War from
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty six to nineteen thirty nine. Margot's favorite subject
Speaker 2: of history was this doomed effort to stop Franco from
Speaker 2: taking over Spain. And the Americans who went to go
Speaker 2: fight were mostly leftist of various types communist, socialists, fewer anarchists,
Speaker 2: but like in general, the left went to go fight right.
Speaker 2: And when they came back, because they lost that war,
Speaker 2: it went really badly. A lot of them died. They
Speaker 2: were labeled as premature anti fascists, as if it was
Speaker 2: like a ideological like a mental disorder of ideology.
Speaker 3: What does it even mean.
Speaker 2: They were anti fascist before the United States was anti fascist,
Speaker 2: so they weren't trusted. So these are the people who
Speaker 2: have already fought Germany and Italy, like literally have already
Speaker 2: been in a shooting work as Germany and Italy went
Speaker 2: and supported the fascists, whereas the democracies did not come
Speaker 2: and support the democracy in Spain. And that's why Spain
Speaker 2: fell the fascism is that the UK, America and France
Speaker 2: both were like, oh, we don't know these guys, not us,
Speaker 2: you know. And so the people who had already fought
Speaker 2: Germany and Italy they were like not trusted. They were
Speaker 2: the premature anti fascists. Makes no sense, I know, but
Speaker 2: it makes it not surprising that the government decided that
Speaker 2: the California Eagle was a threat to national security even
Speaker 2: before the war ended, because they were not afraid to
Speaker 2: be critical of the US government during World War II.
Speaker 2: There they were calling out the hypocrisy of the US
Speaker 2: government for using segregated military units. And they're supposedly anti
Speaker 2: racist war. For example, by the time the Allies live
Speaker 2: France and they're like the Allies were like hanging out
Speaker 2: in France, French people, especially black French people, were just
Speaker 2: aghast at the racism that the US soldiers faced. They
Speaker 2: were like watching it being like, y'all, do what what's
Speaker 2: happening in your country? Because not that France is like
Speaker 2: the least racist country that's ever existed, but being less
Speaker 2: racist than America is really easy to do at this
Speaker 2: particular time. And if you want to hear more about that,
Speaker 2: you should listen to our episodes about Josephine Baker, the
Speaker 2: black pop star of France who helped finance and house
Speaker 2: the French Partisans and had like a whole menagerie of
Speaker 2: like I think she had like a tiger or whatever
Speaker 2: in her like mansion. While she's like letting the partisans
Speaker 2: like make Molotov cocktails there. So she's great, she sounds fun. Yeah, no,
Speaker 2: she's fucking awesome. And so later the Eagle is going
Speaker 2: to get called a Soviet paper. It was not a
Speaker 2: Soviet paper, but trained World War two because it was
Speaker 2: critical of the US government. You know who else is critical?
Speaker 2: This isn't an that transition. You know who else is
Speaker 2: critical of the US government, The German and the Japanese.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say us.
Speaker 2: Yes, name a government. I'm not critical of, darry you Rojeva.
Speaker 2: So they get accused of being financed by the German
Speaker 2: in the Japanese government. Right, they're like, ah, you're secretly
Speaker 2: fascists because you're too far left during World War two.
Speaker 2: This math I know. And in nineteen forty three, the
Speaker 2: Post Office like sued because they wanted to refuse to
Speaker 2: mail the paper. They were like, we don't want to
Speaker 2: mail this. This is like seditious propaganda. I literally have
Speaker 2: the word sedition tattooed on my hands. This is my
Speaker 2: own fault. But the Justice Department actually said no, we're
Speaker 2: not going to ban them. We do have free speech
Speaker 2: in this country. That Bill of rights. This does some
Speaker 2: good for us. It's stop some stuff, so one correct
Speaker 2: decision was made, I know. But the Eagle wanted victory
Speaker 2: in Europe. They fought for what they called the double
Speaker 2: V campaign, victory for the black people in the military
Speaker 2: I think, including military victory, and also for black people
Speaker 2: at home. And of course this was a personal matter.
Speaker 2: They had skin in the game. Charlotta's nephew, John had
Speaker 2: moved to LA to take over the family business. Like
Speaker 2: her husband's dead at this point, I guess I forgot
Speaker 2: to write that, and it might come later in the script.
Speaker 2: He dies in nineteen thirty four or something like that.
Speaker 2: She's running the paper by herself. Her nephew comes out
Speaker 2: to LA and she's basically being like, hey, learn how
Speaker 2: to do a paper. You're going to take this over.
Speaker 2: I'm going to retire at some point, you know. So
Speaker 2: John moves to LA and then he fights in World
Speaker 2: War Two and he's killed. As soon as the war ended,
Speaker 2: they were no longer fascist pawns. They were Communist Party pawns.
Speaker 3: Dun dun, duh.
Speaker 2: I know, much like our sponsor, the Communist part. No,
Speaker 2: I don't think I would love now I'll get in Theoretically,
Speaker 2: we don't have any political sponsors but we do have
Speaker 2: sponsors and you can listen to them if you want.
Speaker 2: And we're back. So the FEDS interviewer they like take
Speaker 2: her in or like a EU communist have you ever
Speaker 2: heard of communism? And I don't know. I'm going to
Speaker 2: make up what they said, but it's just annoying crap.
Speaker 2: They tailed her. They showed up to every single speech
Speaker 2: she gave. I think for the rest of her life.
Speaker 2: Oh god, they're going to tailor until she dies. In
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties, like they read every issue of the
Speaker 2: paper that she puts out. Her FBI file was five
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty three pages long. As regards the second
Speaker 2: Red Scare, it is structurally different than the first one
Speaker 2: in certain ways because I'm really not trying to defend
Speaker 2: the Red Scare, but trying and explain it. A thing
Speaker 2: that I think people misunderstand is that to be part
Speaker 2: of the Communist part with like a capital C and
Speaker 2: a capital P in this particular time, the Communist Party
Speaker 2: of America, which is legal, but it's not an independent organization.
Speaker 2: The USSR was a rigidly hierarchical country, and through commontern
Speaker 2: Communist International, they extended that control to the official communist
Speaker 2: parties of various other countries, So Americans in the Communist
Speaker 2: Party at the time were beholden to Stalin's orders, which
Speaker 2: had some pretty embarrassing consequences. The one that's come up
Speaker 2: a bunch on this show is how I learned about
Speaker 2: this is that during the lead up to World War Two,
Speaker 2: anti fascists of every kind were like, we got to
Speaker 2: get the US into this war. It's the only way
Speaker 2: we're going to stop Germany. US can turn the tide.
Speaker 2: We got to do this right, and that included the
Speaker 2: Communist Party. They're like, we got to get in this war.
Speaker 2: And then the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact was signed, which was
Speaker 2: when Stalin became allies with Germany. So the ussrre suddenly
Speaker 2: allies with Germany and the Communist with the capitals distinguished
Speaker 2: from communism as an ideology position turns on a dime,
Speaker 2: and suddenly fascism isn't the enemy. Or in Germany you
Speaker 2: had this thing where like the real fascists of the
Speaker 2: social Democrats is what the communists were saying, Right, don't
Speaker 2: worry about the Nazis. They're not a big deal. Okay,
Speaker 2: I have my timeline a little bit, someone's gonna be
Speaker 2: really mad about that my timeline. But in the US,
Speaker 2: they stopped pushing for America to get into the war,
Speaker 2: some of them, many of them were like, this is nonsense.
Speaker 2: I'm much more interested in anti fascism than I am
Speaker 2: into listening to with Stalin has to say, and kept
Speaker 2: doing that work, and I applaud those people. So the
Speaker 2: Red Scare was ostensibly about hunting out these foreign agents
Speaker 2: beholden to a foreign power which did exist. That's not
Speaker 2: really what it was about, though, and that's what matters, right,
Speaker 2: So I think it's worth understanding their rationale behind it,
Speaker 2: or what they present as their rationale. But what they
Speaker 2: did is hunt people about ideology, not political affiliation. People
Speaker 2: were accused of political affiliation in order to slander them
Speaker 2: and get them blacklisted for ideological reasons. Anyone who is
Speaker 2: kind of lefty is now getting blacklisted at all. And
Speaker 2: this is why the reds Care is relevant to us today.
Speaker 2: I believe the government doesn't really believe that Antifa. Anytime
Speaker 2: I say that word here, I have air quotes. Anyone
Speaker 2: can hear them in my voice. Probably they probably don't
Speaker 2: believe that it's a specific foreign organization with representatives in
Speaker 2: the US, even though they picked a couple like groups
Speaker 2: overseas that do anti fascist work and call them ftos. Right,
Speaker 2: they don't believe that antifa is a specific organization with
Speaker 2: a membership list here, but they'll say those things because
Speaker 2: it gives them legal tools with which to repress anyone
Speaker 2: left of Trump, which these days includes centrists like the
Speaker 2: establishment Democrats, you know, progressives like the DSA, or the
Speaker 2: center right groups like pre Trump Republican Party, the Rhinos. Right,
Speaker 2: all of these people to the left of Trump can
Speaker 2: now be disparaged by you know, everyone's being accused of
Speaker 2: financing ANTIPHA because it's convenient way to its hack people
Speaker 2: for ideology, similarly to how people like Charlotta Bass were
Speaker 2: accused of being members of the Communist Party, despite the
Speaker 2: fact that this was untrue. The FBI agents knew it
Speaker 2: was untrue, thought it was stupid, and didn't want to
Speaker 2: do it anymore, but it was a convenient way to
Speaker 2: silence political opponents. That's my rant about Red Scarce.
Speaker 3: I've been like following on everywhere like uh huh uh,
Speaker 3: because I think you're totally right, like, especially with the
Speaker 3: not to fully derail no that's right. But with the
Speaker 3: is it the national security like threat assessments? Yeah, the
Speaker 3: White House does now where it's like, actually the threat
Speaker 3: is all like left wing extremist ideology and stuff.
Speaker 2: It's just like what right like trans ideology that's yeah yeah,
Speaker 2: yeah yeah, And it's just like every single study put
Speaker 2: out by the federal government prior to like two years ago,
Speaker 2: it's like right wing political actors to commit x f
Speaker 2: pinentially more violent crime and terrorism. And the red scare
Speaker 2: was really effective at getting people to comply in advance,
Speaker 2: but it did not catch Charlotta Bass or the California Eagle,
Speaker 2: or honestly, as far as I can tell, the black
Speaker 2: newspapers all across the country to give into fear. They
Speaker 2: were all investigated, like black newspapers all over the country.
Speaker 2: This wasn't just the California Eagle, right, but they just
Speaker 2: didn't give into fear. Like at one point we're gonna
Speaker 2: talk about later. Sure, a lot of Basque goes in
Speaker 2: probably nineteen forty nine, but all the history books in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty, but they're wrong. It went to this peace
Speaker 2: conferences in Europe that were put on by the USSR.
Speaker 2: And we're like kind of sketchy and she comes back
Speaker 2: and they're like, give us your passport, and she's like, no,
Speaker 2: she just doesn't give the government her passport. And I
Speaker 2: don't know what happened after that. I'm so annoyed. I
Speaker 2: found one sentence in all of the things I read
Speaker 2: that was like and then she came back and the
Speaker 2: insisted she give her the passport and she didn't do it.
Speaker 2: I'm like, and then what happened.
Speaker 3: That's like her response to the Klan last episode of like,
Speaker 3: I know these guys, let me find my gun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in those cases the FEDS, So instead of
Speaker 2: like I'm going to find my gun, it's just like, nah,
Speaker 2: I can't do it. I'm not gonna let you. You know,
Speaker 2: she's clearly not afraid to jail. She doesn't go to
Speaker 2: jail as far as I can tell, because institutions cave
Speaker 2: to the red scare. And it's happened now too with
Speaker 2: like Palestinian resistance movements in the US, and like prematurely
Speaker 2: people are complying ahead of actually taking it to any
Speaker 2: kind of fight. As soon as a threat is raised,
Speaker 2: institutions comply in advance, which is how fascists take over
Speaker 2: democratic countries. Is they ignore the rule of law in
Speaker 2: order to get away with shit, and she's just not
Speaker 2: having it. And it also isn't stopping her from doing
Speaker 2: her work, so it's not just her work. Now becomes
Speaker 2: I fight the red scare. She is doing organizing community
Speaker 2: organizing that has like nationwide impacts. In fact, the biggest
Speaker 2: like this is a thing that her and the people
Speaker 2: around her paper accomplished. Comes in nineteen forty five, during
Speaker 2: the middle of all of this stuff, you heard a
Speaker 2: red lining. Oh yeah, red lining is a form of
Speaker 2: housing discrimination. Actually, this party didn't know. I just knew
Speaker 2: it was like people can't move into certain neighborhoods and
Speaker 2: all this horrible shit. You know, I hadn't done more
Speaker 2: of a deep dive about it. It's a form of
Speaker 2: housing discrimination based on bank loans. And one of the
Speaker 2: things I didn't know about it that I should have. Actually,
Speaker 2: I think I've probably read this before. A lot of
Speaker 2: redlining came out of that usually positive moment, the New
Speaker 2: Deal under Franklin.
Speaker 3: Roosevelt starting to ring a bell.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's how I felt for me. Well, as a conger,
Speaker 2: that is how you would respond. That's I'm going to
Speaker 2: do this to Molly now too, and she's not going
Speaker 2: to get it.
Speaker 1: No, she'll probably get it. She's mall, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2: She probably has like a book about Congress.
Speaker 3: Sorry, future Mollie.
Speaker 2: So the New Deal, well, it's created by Franklin Roosevelt
Speaker 2: created the Federal Housing Authority, which worked good idea, bad deployment,
Speaker 2: and probably racist underpinions from the beginning. It worked to
Speaker 2: get affordable housing loans into the hands of people and
Speaker 2: just like in general, like business loans and help people
Speaker 2: get by, right, so people could own their own houses
Speaker 2: and have the American dream or whatever, so that white
Speaker 2: people could have those things. Because the FAHA basically decided
Speaker 2: that they only wanted to loan money to people with
Speaker 2: trustworthy assets, and houses in minority neighborhoods are not trustworthy
Speaker 2: assets because of the circular reasoning of racism. Well, those
Speaker 2: people are poor, so we can't help them build wealth.
Speaker 2: Maps were drawn up and they were color coded, and
Speaker 2: certain areas were no go areas for affordable loans, not
Speaker 2: just housing loans, right, because if you're like, well, I
Speaker 2: own a house, can I get a loan? Usually I
Speaker 2: own a house means like, yeah, you can get a loan, right,
Speaker 2: because you have an asset that can seize, so that's
Speaker 2: all a bank needs to loan you money. But no,
Speaker 2: you're redlined. You are on the wrong side of a
Speaker 2: color coded map. Even if you meet the financial requirements
Speaker 2: for a loan, you could be rejected for where you lived.
Speaker 2: But somehow it got worse than that because it wasn't
Speaker 2: just black and other minority neighborhoods that were redlined. It
Speaker 2: was places that black people were seen to be moving to.
Speaker 2: What do you mean, like the neighborhoods. Yeah, so if
Speaker 2: there's a neighborhood that's like starting to have black people
Speaker 2: move to it, uh huh, it can get red lined, right.
Speaker 2: So now you have incentivized racism from white people who
Speaker 2: didn't need more incentives. They had enough, but now you've
Speaker 2: given them more reason because instead of there goes the
Speaker 2: neighborhood meaning like I have to hear Spanish, or there's
Speaker 2: black people around, or I'm afraid there'll be more crime,
Speaker 2: or these usual racist reasons that are garbage. It's also
Speaker 2: I won't be able to get a loan if black
Speaker 2: people move to my neighborhood.
Speaker 3: So it's literally like dragging down all of the asset value. Yeah,
Speaker 3: around them, that's wild.
Speaker 2: So to solve this, the FAHA was like, oh, sorry,
Speaker 2: to solve it for white people, they were like, just
Speaker 2: create racist agreements in all of your deeds to say
Speaker 2: that you'll never sell to a black person. Problem solved.
Speaker 2: These are called racial covenants. Very few positive things are
Speaker 2: called covenants, which is a shame.
Speaker 3: Sounds very biblical.
Speaker 2: I know, covenant is a cool word. I like words
Speaker 2: like that. Not usually good, unfortunately, and best as I
Speaker 2: can piece together. The thing I read talks about the
Speaker 2: racial covenants is coming from the FAHA and the red lining,
Speaker 2: but I've read other stuff about racial covenants going back
Speaker 2: at least decades earlier, So I think that this is
Speaker 2: a common practice that the FAHA was like, Aha, this
Speaker 2: common practice, This is how you can solve the problem.
Speaker 2: Racial covenants are illegal as hell now, and they're illegal
Speaker 2: partly because of the California Eagle, or rather the people
Speaker 2: who worked on it, which again sixteen year old from
Speaker 2: Texas is like, I'm going to go start a paper
Speaker 2: leads to racial covenants are illegal in the United States. Like,
Speaker 2: never think that your actions don't have impacts for good
Speaker 2: and bad.
Speaker 3: And I had even forgotten about the sixteen year old
Speaker 3: because Charlotta is so incredible.
Speaker 2: Right, totally yeah, yeah, And I'm not sure to give
Speaker 2: him the credit, but rather say we're all part of
Speaker 2: this lineage, right of people doing this shit. So the
Speaker 2: California Eagle, the paper is constantly exposing these terrible new
Speaker 2: laws and practices that they come into being. And Bass
Speaker 2: created an organization called the Homeowner's Protective Association, which does
Speaker 2: not sound like it would be good, but actually in
Speaker 2: this case is good to fight against them. So the
Speaker 2: reason is the Homeowner's Protective Organization. There's a man named
Speaker 2: Lauren Miller, and he had been an editor at The
Speaker 2: Eagle in his twenties and thirties, which I think corresponds
Speaker 2: to the actual nineteen twenties and thirties. I think he's
Speaker 2: born right around the shurt of the century. He's the
Speaker 2: city editor, but he left the paper to become what
Speaker 2: NPR described as the legendary and DOUAACP lawyer. And there
Speaker 2: was a neighborhood. See I told you I'm coming back
Speaker 2: to specific la stuff. Sophie. There's a neighborhood in Los
Speaker 2: Angeles called sugar Hill, Sophie, is that a thing people
Speaker 2: still know. I don't know anything about Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: No, not really.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, sugar Hill was real cool. It didn't last
Speaker 2: very long because of racism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say, I don't think that
Speaker 1: it's commonly known as that anymore.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no it's not. It's been gone since the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties. Yeah. I was gonna say they destroyed it
Speaker 2: to build the Iten or the ten or whatever you
Speaker 2: call it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like West Adams.
Speaker 2: Yes, which I read and then didn't put in the
Speaker 2: script because West Adams is a nonsense word to me.
Speaker 2: It has no signification because again, what do you said?
Speaker 1: Sugar Hill. There's like a there's a bar in Portland
Speaker 1: that I went to my friend. She asked me to
Speaker 1: go with her too.
Speaker 3: Way.
Speaker 1: It was like a singles mixer.
Speaker 2: Huh. And the bar is called sugar Hill.
Speaker 1: And it's called sugar Hill. The drinks were good, the
Speaker 1: vibes were weird.
Speaker 2: Huh. I wonder if it's named after the same thing
Speaker 2: the sugar Hill was named after. I also wonder which
Speaker 2: is a Harlem neighborhood that was important in the Harlem Renaissance,
Speaker 2: sugar Hill. Sugar Hill in Los Angeles, I don't know
Speaker 2: as much about. Sugar Hill in New York was a
Speaker 2: wealthy black neighborhood and that scares the piss out of
Speaker 2: white supremacy and white people, and sugar Hill only lasted
Speaker 2: fifteen to twenty years. It lasted from the nineteen forties
Speaker 2: to the nineteen sixties because it had to fight systemic
Speaker 2: racism in order to exist, and it also was destroyed
Speaker 2: by another sort of systemic racism because in the nineteen tens,
Speaker 2: rich white people started leaving that neighborhood to move to
Speaker 2: Beverly Hills, and most of the houses had racial covenants.
Speaker 2: But the sellers and buyers they're all like kind of
Speaker 2: like rich Hollywood folks, and they're like, I don't really
Speaker 2: give a shit about thought, so they don't. So they're like, ah,
Speaker 2: I know, my deed says I can't sell to a
Speaker 2: black person, but like no one's checking, you know, So
Speaker 2: they sell houses to black people because they're not horrible monsters.
Speaker 3: And I imagine these are nice houses that cost a
Speaker 3: lot of money, so they're also making money off of.
Speaker 2: It, totally right. Yeah, yeah, they're like, I'm sorry, I
Speaker 2: want to sell to the rich person and it happens
Speaker 2: to be that Los Angeles is one of the places.
Speaker 2: Oh you're asking earlier about Los Angeles is a place
Speaker 2: of it's nice for black people. Some of it is
Speaker 2: that the center of the entertainment industry is going to
Speaker 2: have a higher percentage of like wealthy black people than
Speaker 2: other places. Right, although that's less true in the nineteenth
Speaker 2: century than the early twentieth century, I believe, but I
Speaker 2: am not as certain about that. So all kinds of
Speaker 2: black performers of various sorts, actors and singers and shit
Speaker 2: start moving in, and then also black professionals, doctors and
Speaker 2: folks like that are moving into these like they're called mansions.
Speaker 2: And then you look at pictures, you're like, ah, modern,
Speaker 2: large suburban house. When I imagine like La mansion, I
Speaker 2: imagine something much bigger than what these are. But they're
Speaker 2: still large, wealthy houses. You know. But by the early
Speaker 2: nineteen forties, the racist white people in the neighborhood were
Speaker 2: really mad about the fact that all these black people
Speaker 2: were moving there. They started putting up signs like the
Speaker 2: sign I saw a photo of was in the window
Speaker 2: and it says, we want white tenants in our white
Speaker 2: community with little American flags on it, and it's one
Speaker 2: of those things that, like, twenty years ago, you'd be like, man,
Speaker 2: old timey people were so weird, and now you're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I could see people doing that now too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that looks like a MAGA sign. Okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Hattie McDaniel, the first black person to ever win
Speaker 2: an oscar, bought a mansion in sugar Hill and she
Speaker 2: used to host parties there all the time. It sounded
Speaker 2: like they were coolest shit, I bet. And the white
Speaker 2: neighbors sued Hattie and some of her other black neighbors
Speaker 2: for having broken the racial covenants by daring to have
Speaker 2: bought things with money, like the money's no good here thing.
Speaker 2: It's just like, I'm sorry. I thought we live in
Speaker 2: a society where we determined value by these little coin
Speaker 2: which isn't a good system, but theoretically.
Speaker 3: The length to go to to file a lawsuit for
Speaker 3: someone owning, oh, just.
Speaker 2: Owning the home. Yeah, like that's wow. I'm sorry that
Speaker 2: your house isn't as nice as hers. Fuck you, Sorry
Speaker 2: she didn't invite you to the party. Yeah you're a trip.
Speaker 2: Yeah totally, I wonder why. And Lauren Miller, the legendary
Speaker 2: NAACP lawyer, who had been an editor at the California Eagle,
Speaker 2: stepped up to represent everyone, and they won. Racial covenants
Speaker 2: were clearly against the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Speaker 2: Within three years, in nineteen forty eight, the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: cited this nineteen forty five case as precedent when they
Speaker 2: ruled that racially restrictive covenants were unconstitutional nationwide. It still
Speaker 2: took twenty more years for there to be legislation passed
Speaker 2: out lawing the practice, but in nineteen forty five everyone
Speaker 2: got to keep their mansions. Except racism will always find
Speaker 2: a way. Systemic racism is really good. Like I think
Speaker 2: most white racists are just ignorant. But it's just like
Speaker 2: the degree to which well, I think most of them
Speaker 2: are bad hearts, but the degree to which you have
Speaker 2: to like not understand history, like having money isn't enough.
Speaker 2: That's like what happened with reconstruction. Like whenever people are like,
Speaker 2: all right, we'll play the same game as you all,
Speaker 2: and they're like, oh wait, you're doing really well in
Speaker 2: that game. We changed our mind. We changed the rules.
Speaker 2: It's like playing a fucking board game with a seven
Speaker 2: year old. You know, and they're like changing the rules
Speaker 2: of the game as you're playing it. So the other
Speaker 2: famous destroyer of black prosperity, another form of systemic oppression
Speaker 2: reared its head. White neighborhoods didn't want highway expansions to
Speaker 2: go through them, so sugar Hill was bulldozed. Oh sugar
Speaker 2: Hill is now the ten again. Like you said, like,
Speaker 2: your money's no good here. Even their property value didn't
Speaker 2: save them.
Speaker 3: These rich mansions would not save them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess they got eminent domain doubt. Like, if
Speaker 2: there's going to be a group of people that would
Speaker 2: be hard to fuck with with systemic racism, you think
Speaker 2: it would be the like black Oscar winners who live
Speaker 2: in the wealthy neighborhood. You know, one would think. But no,
Speaker 2: it because in order to put in the tent anywhere
Speaker 2: else they would have had to take out the fraternity
Speaker 2: and sorority row at USC.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: Well, so we have to destroy a black neighborhood instead,
Speaker 2: And other Black and Latino neighborhoods were destroyed for making
Speaker 2: the ten two. I'm not trying to like woe is
Speaker 2: me the rich people, but I think it's really telling,
Speaker 2: Like you were saying that wealth didn't stop them, because
Speaker 2: systemic racism is worse than that. And if you want
Speaker 2: to see before and after photos of these houses and
Speaker 2: what's there now? In my sources list, there's a link
Speaker 2: to a site called Segregation by Design that has a
Speaker 2: lot of before and aftershots and stories about like the
Speaker 2: first black woman doctor in California and a famous psychologist
Speaker 2: and their families that grew up in these houses that like, yeah,
Speaker 2: are gone, but do you know what isn't gone? Do
Speaker 2: you know what's here now? Capitalism, that's right, and products
Speaker 2: and services that support our show.
Speaker 3: You gotta have the products and services.
Speaker 2: I know, what would we do without them?
Speaker 1: Probably not have places to live.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a big one for me. I'm really fond
Speaker 2: of feeding my dog and having shelter. Yeah, it's been
Speaker 2: a decent chunk of my life with a van as
Speaker 2: my house. Pretty into these products and services. Enter back
Speaker 2: and Lauren Miller, the legendary end of LCP Lawyer. We'll
Speaker 2: be back in this story soon enough and back at
Speaker 2: the Eagle. But first he had to go set precedent
Speaker 2: to bring down one of the most racist practices in
Speaker 2: American economics with the racial covenants. But shar Alata Bass
Speaker 2: did organizing outside of just running a newspaper or the
Speaker 2: circulation of sixty thousand people. As if that wasn't enough,
Speaker 2: she worked with an organization started by Marcus Garvey, recurring
Speaker 2: hero ish figure of the POD, called Universal Negro Improvement
Speaker 2: Association in the nineteen twenties, fighting against discrimination and segregation.
Speaker 2: I read one thing that I really liked that was
Speaker 2: talking about how wanna shar a Lotta. Bass's strengths is
Speaker 2: that she both worked with the moderates and the more radicals,
Speaker 2: like she was just like kind of a whatever it
Speaker 2: takes kind of girl, where she's like working with Marcus Garvey,
Speaker 2: but also the NAACP, who are much more liberal. Although
Speaker 2: that said later the NAACP is going to rip up
Speaker 2: her membership card after she gets blacklisted by the government
Speaker 2: for being a terrible communist or whatever. So NAACP has
Speaker 2: a lot of wins in history, but has also a
Speaker 2: lot of embarrassing moments, especially during the Red Scare in
Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties. She coined or popularized the slogan don't
Speaker 2: buy where you can't work, which was just the like
Speaker 2: one of the best slogans you've ever that's a planes
Speaker 2: talker right there, right Like. By the nineteen forties, she
Speaker 2: was director of the youth movement of the NAACP. She's
Speaker 2: probably in her late sixties at this point. She was
Speaker 2: also really good at running unsuccessfully for public office, starting
Speaker 2: with a bid for city council in the nineteen forties.
Speaker 2: I don't think her failing. She's also gonna run for
Speaker 2: Congress at one point fail, like her not succeeding in
Speaker 2: the nineteen forties. As for punning for Congress as a
Speaker 2: black woman, like, I'm not, Yeah, this is not a
Speaker 2: slight to her.
Speaker 3: This would be a different country if she had won.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, There are so many moments in this especially
Speaker 2: coming up, that are like, oh, wow, it would be
Speaker 2: so much better off a certain thing had happened different.
Speaker 2: But also the thing that I always trying to remember
Speaker 2: is that like the wins that she did have also
Speaker 2: dramatically improved things, you know. And now she had been
Speaker 2: a lifelong Republican, which makes sense because everyone should remember
Speaker 2: the Democrats and Republican meant opposite things from about the
Speaker 2: eighteen sixties to the nineteen sixties. She lived through the
Speaker 2: entire many decades in which the Republican Party was the
Speaker 2: more reasonable and less racist party in American politics. The
Speaker 2: ideological switch between the Democrats and the Republicans started in
Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties with the New Deal and was definitely
Speaker 2: in placed by the Civil Rights era, so in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty eight, so she didn't really leave the Republican Party.
Speaker 2: The Republican Party left her, you know. And she left
Speaker 2: officially in nineteen forty eight to help create the independent
Speaker 2: Progressive Party of California, which soon joined the nationwide Progressive Party,
Speaker 2: which is like really annoying to research because there's been
Speaker 2: so many parties called the Progressive Party, but usually at
Speaker 2: different times. So if you look up like Wallace nineteen
Speaker 2: forty eight, you get different thing than if you look
Speaker 2: up the Progressive Party of what's that other Roosevelt? Teddy,
Speaker 2: he also.
Speaker 1: Had one what's that other Roosevelt?
Speaker 2: Okay, So I've like always kind of assumed that old
Speaker 2: Roosevelt Roosevelt one was like not the best man or whatever, right,
Speaker 2: But like I've read now so much stuff basically about
Speaker 2: how he's so much better and everyone came after that.
Speaker 2: I'm like all confused, Wait about two or one or
Speaker 2: number one? So he's better than number two. No, sorry,
Speaker 2: number two is better than number one, but number one
Speaker 2: is better than Okay, Like probably any politician working today
Speaker 2: in the traditional Democratic or Republican parties in terms of
Speaker 2: like non imperial whatever. I'm not getting into Teddy Roosevelt.
Speaker 2: I read a long thing about it, but the thing
Speaker 2: I read was from the nineteen forties, and I cannot.
Speaker 3: I won't Roosevelt bait you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I don't know enough about it. It's like
Speaker 2: the fun thing I'm sure you've never had to run
Speaker 2: into this with your job, is that, like, in order
Speaker 2: to understand anything, you have to understand everything, but you
Speaker 2: can't understand everything, so you have to like try, and
Speaker 2: it's impossible, and it's one of the most brilliant and
Speaker 2: rewarding things you can do, is to try and understand
Speaker 2: these things. But like it's too much, there's too much stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that's also part of what makes it fun.
Speaker 2: I know. The Progressive Party was the DSA of its day,
Speaker 2: but instead of trying to push for change with an
Speaker 2: existing party, which is the DSA strategy today, of trying
Speaker 2: to have the Democratic Party actually represent the Democratic voters,
Speaker 2: the Progressive Party ran as a third party which was
Speaker 2: much more the style at the time. And but nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty two she's going to be its vice presidential candidate.
Speaker 2: But in nineteen forty eight, the party existed to support
Speaker 2: the presidential run of Henry Wallace. This is the guy.
Speaker 2: Have you heard of this guy? You have to look
Speaker 2: on your face.
Speaker 3: Is this like the super arch racist Wallace?
Speaker 2: WHOA, I don't think so.
Speaker 3: The George Wallace That's what I'm thinking of. Never mind
Speaker 3: George wwas the Alabama governor who was like segregation.
Speaker 2: Now, okay, yeah, yeah, no, how could you possibly get
Speaker 2: George and Henry Wallace the two most English sounding names
Speaker 2: that have ever existed mixed up?
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm glad Charlotta is not in league somehow with
Speaker 3: George Wallace.
Speaker 1: No, no, George Wallace is the really scary eyebrow guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, Well the thing I was expecting to
Speaker 2: have to cover but didn't end up happening. And she's
Speaker 2: actually very anti segregation. A lot of people in like
Speaker 2: kind of her position at the time weren't necessarily pro segregation,
Speaker 2: but weren't really like trying to fight against it either,
Speaker 2: because there is like also a like attempt to try
Speaker 2: and insulate black society right from like racist white people.
Speaker 2: So I was expecting to have to cover that, but
Speaker 2: I don't because she was actually very explicitly anti segregation
Speaker 2: the entire time ahead of her time in a way
Speaker 2: that's an oversimplification anyway. Henry Wallace, who didn't wag his
Speaker 2: finger in that particular way. He had been vice president
Speaker 2: for almost the entirety of World War Two. This is
Speaker 2: the fun thing about vice presidents. No one remembers them.
Speaker 2: Do you know he had a I do remember his name?
Speaker 2: Do you know he had a Native American vice president?
Speaker 2: And like I want to say the twenties or thirties. No,
Speaker 2: I think he was a piece of shit who like
Speaker 2: privatized all the indigenous lands and was like, I don't
Speaker 2: remember enough about him to talk shit. No one remembers
Speaker 2: vice presidents. That's the rule. I'm looking forward to not
Speaker 2: knowing who JD. Vances. Oh God, yes, he was dropped,
Speaker 2: not vance, but Henry Wallace was vice president during World
Speaker 2: War Two for most of it, all but seven months
Speaker 2: or something of it. And he was dropped from the
Speaker 2: nineteen forty four ticket as vice president because everyone knew
Speaker 2: Roosevelt's health was bad. And they needed a more electable
Speaker 2: vice president, whereas like Wallace is lefty, and so they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's like the same problem that Lincoln fucked up with
Speaker 2: and ended up with a horrible racist as his vice president,
Speaker 2: and then he got shot to his name I don't
Speaker 2: remember because I refused to remember Voce Ohl. That guy
Speaker 2: got into a president, so I should remember his name. Anyway,
Speaker 2: they picked a more electable guy to be vice president
Speaker 2: instead of Wallace, so he was dropped from the ticket.
Speaker 2: Then Roosevelt died eighty two days into his fourth term
Speaker 2: in office. That's the other thing people got about Hi.
Speaker 3: That is so wild.
Speaker 2: Four terms in office. I understand why sometimes people call
Speaker 2: him the dictator. He was not. He's still probably my
Speaker 2: favorite president, which is a low bar. He did a
Speaker 2: lot of racist shit. Anyway, Truman ends up president, not Wallace,
Speaker 2: whereas Wallace would have been president. And Wallace is like,
Speaker 2: at least by nineteen forty eight running on this incredibly
Speaker 2: progressive campaign, so that could have been what had happened. Right,
Speaker 2: This is that moment of like the world could be
Speaker 2: really fundamentally different, because specifically Wallace doesn't want a fucking
Speaker 2: cold war. He's like they were our allies, why are
Speaker 2: we having a war with them? Which is a reasonable
Speaker 2: argument to make. So he ran as a third party
Speaker 2: candidate nineteen forty eight, which didn't work. The party's idea,
Speaker 2: the Progressive Party. This is now what Bass has thrown
Speaker 2: her weight behind. The party's idea is basically, both of
Speaker 2: the existing parties are corrupt and we shouldn't be doing
Speaker 2: this cold war nonsense. And also, let's just have diplomatic
Speaker 2: ties with Russia and work with the UN and stop
Speaker 2: doing Jim crow bow and let more refugees in and
Speaker 2: build housing for the homeless and do universal health care.
Speaker 3: Sounds good.
Speaker 2: I know, I'm like, all right, I can say no notes,
Speaker 2: but I'm gonna have some notes in a moment. Some
Speaker 2: of this platform is interesting to read out today. Quote
Speaker 2: never before have so few owned so much at the
Speaker 2: expense of so many. Ten years ago, Franklin Delano Roosevelt warned,
Speaker 2: quote the liberty of a democracy is not safe. If
Speaker 2: the people tolerate the growth of private power to a
Speaker 2: point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state, that
Speaker 2: in essence is fascism. The platform also says, quote both
Speaker 2: parties are champions of big business. The Republican platform admits it.
Speaker 2: The Democratic platform attempts to conceal ito. And I'm like,
Speaker 2: I could have written that, Like, well, no, I wouldn't
Speaker 2: say it now because now the Republican Party is just
Speaker 2: the fascist party. But like I could have written that
Speaker 2: ten years ago, you know, I know, like why didn't
Speaker 2: we listen? I know, but no, political history is uncomplicated.
Speaker 2: In addition to calling for one world government, they have
Speaker 2: a whole plank in there about how America needs to
Speaker 2: recognize and finance Israel, and we opposed any attempt to
Speaker 2: interfere with Israel and its sovereign right to control its
Speaker 2: own immigration policy. They did, however, want Israel to be
Speaker 2: a single state that is multi ethnic and multi religious,
Speaker 2: that is like both Jewish and Arab. And also this
Speaker 2: is a few years after the end of the Holocaust,
Speaker 2: and it's basically about like it's contextually different. It looks
Speaker 2: funny in history, That's what I'll say about it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So her becoming a progressive in nineteen forty eight did
Speaker 2: not slow down the government's obsession with her. People very
Speaker 2: incorrectly decided that willing to be friends with the Communists
Speaker 2: meant takes orders from the Communists and accuse the Progressive
Speaker 2: Party of being affront for the Communist Party. I actually
Speaker 2: spent a little while today being like, what was it though,
Speaker 2: And I don't think it was.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: So you ever okay, well, you'd run a conspiracy? Have
Speaker 2: you ever done the like conspiracy stuff around red Scare
Speaker 2: and around like foreign agents and all this stuff.
Speaker 3: I'm not to that degree, okay, because I do think
Speaker 3: it might tie my brain into a permanent pretzel.
Speaker 2: Yes, I live as a pretzel. It's very complicated fox
Speaker 2: with my head. It also didn't help that she was
Speaker 2: perfectly fine staying friends with two of the most blacklisted
Speaker 2: people in America who are both black, the labor singer
Speaker 2: Paul Robison and the theorist W. E. B. Dubois. And
Speaker 2: she found herself blacklisted too, which is why the NAACP
Speaker 2: ripped up her card. The Iota Phi Lambas Society of Toledo, Ohio,
Speaker 2: which had given her honorary membership in their sorority. They
Speaker 2: revoked her membership because she's terrible commune or whatever that. Again,
Speaker 2: her FBI stalkers are like, nah, she's not a communist,
Speaker 2: and the NAACP kicks her out and it makes running
Speaker 2: a newspaper hard. The numbers on her newspaper are going down,
Speaker 2: and I don't know, I only have two points on
Speaker 2: the graph I have. In the nineteen twenties it peaked
Speaker 2: at sixty thousand people, and that by like nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: one when she sells the paper, it's like two thousand
Speaker 2: dish people. So it's like a really dramatic fall. But
Speaker 2: I don't know what that curve looks like.
Speaker 3: I would imagine too that like for this paper and
Speaker 3: this woman who's obviously so focused not just on like
Speaker 3: the journalism of it all, but she's she's a community organizer,
Speaker 3: you know, totally so yeah, and then to have community ties.
Speaker 2: Turn on her, Yeah, I must have been heartbreaking. Like
Speaker 2: you've spent decades working for the NAACP and then they're
Speaker 2: just like, no, we don't like that. You think that
Speaker 2: the USSR is an anti racist place, so fuck you. Like,
Speaker 2: according to everything I have read, she did this in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty I believe everything I have read is wrong,
Speaker 2: and that she did this in nineteen forty nine. In
Speaker 2: nineteen forty nine, she traveled to Paris and Prague for
Speaker 2: the Defenders of the Peace Committee of the World Congress.
Speaker 2: The reason I believe this happened in nineteen forty nine
Speaker 2: is because those of the year that Paris and Prague
Speaker 2: held the Defenders of the Peace Committee for the World Congress.
Speaker 2: I think this is one of the problems with Like,
Speaker 2: she wrote an autobiography that is hard to get a hold of,
Speaker 2: and I have not read most of the writing about her,
Speaker 2: including some academic writing. Most of it is sort of
Speaker 2: pop journalism, which is what I do. I can't disparage
Speaker 2: pop journalism. There's a lot of loose timeline stuff, you know. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I get really annoyed by that thing. I used to
Speaker 2: be like, I don't even care about names and dates.
Speaker 2: Now I'm like, they got the date wrong.
Speaker 3: They're just rounding up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Because like in my mind, anytime I read an
Speaker 2: unfamiliar term while I'm researching someone, I go look that
Speaker 2: term up, right, And so I just read things that
Speaker 2: are like and then she went to the Paris and
Speaker 2: Prague Defenders of the Peace Committee of the World Congress,
Speaker 2: and everyone is just assumes they know what that means
Speaker 2: because it's in the name that it's a Defenders of
Speaker 2: the Peace Committee of the World Congress. But here's the
Speaker 2: messy part that was put on by the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2: It was a propaganda thing. It was not a like
Speaker 2: world international thing. It was to be like, isn't the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union great? Shouldn't you all become communists? I don't
Speaker 2: think I'm being conspiracy minded when I say that, that's
Speaker 2: just like who financed it and made it happen, And
Speaker 2: like journalists went and they were like, there was no
Speaker 2: informal speeches. Everything was carefully prepared, like you know, that
Speaker 2: is the USSR's way. It's like as very authoritarian society.
Speaker 2: Paul Robison, the singer, is amazing voice. He went and
Speaker 2: he gave a speech at it, and he got his
Speaker 2: passport confiscated by the US government for years. And she
Speaker 2: went to the USSR as part of this on a
Speaker 2: carefully controlled guided tour, and she wrote about her time
Speaker 2: in the USSR. I think she spent ten days there. Quote.
Speaker 2: I will never forget the moment when I first realized,
Speaker 2: standing there in the Great Georgian University, that there is,
Speaker 2: in very truth, not even a semblance of racial exclusiveness
Speaker 2: in Russia. The example which the Russians are setting in
Speaker 2: this field will have an effect in every country in
Speaker 2: the world, including her own. This isn't her saying like
Speaker 2: I am now a Bolshevik, right, She's like, I want
Speaker 2: America to be good. I want America to be not racist.
Speaker 2: I do think that there's a lot of propagandizing in
Speaker 2: the degree to which people say that the USSR was
Speaker 2: anti racist, But it certainly was not as racist as
Speaker 2: the United States, except, of course, the fact that people
Speaker 2: had their ethnicity on their identity card, and then there
Speaker 2: was a whole lot of ethnic cleansings that they did.
Speaker 2: It's complicated. I don't like either government. That's my Cold
Speaker 2: War take.
Speaker 3: Well, when she had been writing about like what she
Speaker 3: was shown and what she was effectively allowed to see as.
Speaker 2: Well totally, so I'm not like she did anything wrong.
Speaker 2: So she sees this and this is a thing that
Speaker 2: like some black Americans had gone over to the USSR,
Speaker 2: Paul Robinson would go over a lot, and doing the
Speaker 2: research for this episode changed my opinion about Paul Robison
Speaker 2: in a negative way. Is specifically because he he observed
Speaker 2: Jewish people being killed for being Jewish intellectuals, including his friends,
Speaker 2: and he didn't say anything about it because he hated
Speaker 2: America so much which is legit on record. The FEDS
Speaker 2: would be like, what do you think of Stalin? And
Speaker 2: he's like, I'm not here to talk about Stalin. You
Speaker 2: people killed sixty to one hundred million black people when
Speaker 2: you like, you know, enslaved us and brought us over here.
Speaker 2: Stalin's Russia's problem. I'm not here to talk about that.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, all right, as legit, yeah, fair point.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But other people, including some black people are his friends with,
Speaker 2: were specifically like, like, what the fuck is complicated? He's
Speaker 2: a complicated man. I don't know enough about him to
Speaker 2: make sweeping statements. I have you picked up on that
Speaker 2: I had complicated feelings about the Cold War because I
Speaker 2: don't like either side of it, because I don't like authoritarianism.
Speaker 2: This did not make her a communist, but also it
Speaker 2: wouldn't be wrong or illegal if she was. During all
Speaker 2: of this, It's still not illegal to be a communist.
Speaker 2: We ostensibly a free speech in America, you know, Yeah, as.
Speaker 3: Far as I'm aware, the actual like political platforms and
Speaker 3: agendas that like Communist Party members in the US were
Speaker 3: talking about like sounded kind of similar to like the
Speaker 3: progressive totally platform that you just described.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's actually a really good point though,
Speaker 2: because the Communist Party isn't necessarily being like overthrow the
Speaker 2: United States West, some of them are. I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's complicated, it's complicated, but I think again, she says
Speaker 2: what she's about. I have never seen a single thing
Speaker 2: that makes me think that this woman was like sneakily
Speaker 2: believed something other than the thing that she spent her
Speaker 2: entire career every week for forty years writing her column.
Speaker 2: I think she had her column the entire time every
Speaker 2: week in which she says what she believes. You know,
Speaker 2: so like it's just nonsense to be but like, yes,
Speaker 2: she doesn't hate communists, She's not going to throw them
Speaker 2: under the bus. And eventually she had to retire from
Speaker 2: the newspaper business. She finally did this in nineteen fifty one,
Speaker 2: at seventy seven or so years old. Or seventy years old,
Speaker 2: who knows that one might not be the historian's fault.
Speaker 2: That's the record keeping of people that no one cares
Speaker 2: about in the US South. When I say no one
Speaker 2: cares about, I mean like large institutions, no matter what
Speaker 2: job you do. Seventy seven is a reasonable age to
Speaker 2: be done with it. She's not a slacker here. I
Speaker 2: only point that out because I've read things that kind
Speaker 2: of implied she quit because of the pressure of the
Speaker 2: Red scare and that she couldn't handle it anymore. I
Speaker 2: don't believe that, because she's immediately running for office in
Speaker 2: ways that are like just attracting more attention to her.
Speaker 2: She moves full time into politics to hit back at
Speaker 2: these motherfuckers. And she sells the newspaper.
Speaker 3: This is her late seventies pivot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, her late seventies pivot is now she's a politician. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And when she sells her newspaper, she sells it to
Speaker 2: Lauren Miller, the legendary NAACP lawyer, who had been an
Speaker 2: editor there for years. And when she sold the paper,
Speaker 2: she wrote about leaving in her personal column on the sidewalk.
Speaker 2: She wrote, quote, after more than forty years, I have
Speaker 2: tried to serve my people in my country as a
Speaker 2: good neighbor and as an editor for Negro Liberation, I
Speaker 2: feel that I must now take time to regain my health,
Speaker 2: to learn more about what is happening in the world,
Speaker 2: and decide how I can be most useful in the
Speaker 2: years ahead. So Lauren Miller takes over the paper and
Speaker 2: he ran it well and he kept up at Spirit.
Speaker 2: But in nineteen sixty three, twelve years later, he was
Speaker 2: appointed as a California Superior Court judge, and he had
Speaker 2: to sell the paper and it was bought up by
Speaker 2: a group of fourteen investors and they ran it into
Speaker 2: the ground within six months. Sucks and the paper died
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty four, again running twenty one time as
Speaker 2: long as the Confederacy and Bass. She ran as vice
Speaker 2: president in nineteen fifty two under the Progressive Party, probably
Speaker 2: seventy eight years old, on the ticket with a guy
Speaker 2: named Vincent Helenan. And they weren't fools. They knew they
Speaker 2: weren't going to win the nineteen forty eight campaign. They
Speaker 2: gave it their all, right because this was a popular guy,
Speaker 2: had been a vice president during the war. They weren't
Speaker 2: going to win. Their campaign slogan was win or lose.
Speaker 2: We win by raising the issues.
Speaker 3: Smart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no totally. Because I was reading it, I was
Speaker 2: like what and then I read I was like, oh, yeah, no, no,
Speaker 2: she was thinking about this. You know, she knew she's
Speaker 2: doing She's one of the most experienced activists this world
Speaker 2: has ever seen. And they came in third out of
Speaker 2: eight candidates, which means nothing. Never won votes for the
Speaker 2: main two candidates, so they only elected ones with one
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty five thousand and seven votes, and she
Speaker 2: lived for sixteen years. After that, she retired to a
Speaker 2: black resort town called Lake Elsinore, California, where she opened
Speaker 2: a reading room for Black and Jewish history in her garage,
Speaker 2: where she also helped people register to vote. She got
Speaker 2: active in the campaign against apartheid in South Africa, and
Speaker 2: she wrote about herself quote, it has been a good
Speaker 2: life that I have had, though a very hard one,
Speaker 2: but I know the future will be even better. And
Speaker 2: as I think back, I know that it is the
Speaker 2: only kind of life. And serving one's fellow man one
Speaker 2: serves himself best. And like that's her political position, just whatever,
Speaker 2: she fuck all the rest, you know.
Speaker 3: Like trying to make life better for people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how you have a good life.
Speaker 3: And it sounds like she did not have kids, did she? Oh?
Speaker 2: I don't think so. Oh that's interesting. Nothing I read
Speaker 2: implied she had kids. She also got married at thirty
Speaker 2: six thirty seven, which still have kids. My great grandmother
Speaker 2: was when she had her one kid, and I was
Speaker 2: around that same time period. No, that's interesting. I hadn't
Speaker 2: even thought of that because there's people who trek back
Speaker 2: their lineage to her. But I think in a like
Speaker 2: niece way. Like there's like people who are like, I'm
Speaker 2: the third grand niece of this lady. So I guess
Speaker 2: she didn't have kids.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, because she had the nephew right who came out. Yeah,
Speaker 3: totally as well. Yeah, so she failed as a woman,
Speaker 3: just utterly. I'm glad you laughed, because otherwise what have
Speaker 3: people thought?
Speaker 2: I was serious child free icon, especially for like then right,
Speaker 2: like and one of eleven kids. That is breaking a
Speaker 2: generational curse. I am not pro or anti natal. People
Speaker 2: should do whatever they want. That has been my long
Speaker 2: standing belief and will be till I die.
Speaker 3: To be the middle child and your number six.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the ultimate middle child energy. But this is
Speaker 2: not middle child energy behavior.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: No, she is not getting overlooked. Even her brother, who
Speaker 2: ran three businesses, is like not in history books except
Speaker 2: as the guy who gave her a place to stay
Speaker 2: fucking dope. And she had a stroke in nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 2: and then she died of a brain hemorrhage on April twelfth,
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty eight or nineteen sixty nine. Why would
Speaker 2: sources disagree about the year that she died? What they
Speaker 2: do at ninety five years old or ninety six or
Speaker 2: ninety one?
Speaker 1: Hey plus ninety well done?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she died after fighting like fucking hell and
Speaker 2: refusing to let the red scar stop her and like
Speaker 2: just cool as hell. My sad final note that maybe Okay,
Speaker 2: I was like, there's a society named after her at university,
Speaker 2: the USC Annenberg. Annenberg must be the name of the
Speaker 2: campus has the Charlotta Bass Journalism and Justice Lab, And
Speaker 2: I was like, sick they have all this information about her.
Speaker 2: But that school got two hundred million dollars from in
Speaker 2: video and is all in on AI. And the Charlotta
Speaker 2: Bast Journalism and Justice Lab describes itself on his website
Speaker 2: as quote the West Coast's first AI powered black media
Speaker 2: archive and experimental storytelling space.
Speaker 1: The Annenberg is USC School for Journalism and Communication.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I wasn't able to use them as a source.
Speaker 2: AI isn't good sources.
Speaker 3: Maybe they mean AI archival, like using it to arcat
Speaker 3: I don't know why am I trying to explain how
Speaker 3: the AI could be okay, Because.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I understand that there are use cases for
Speaker 2: large language models, but the ability for me to trust
Speaker 2: something that is like structurally incapable of not hallucinating, because
Speaker 2: like I spend so much of my job now trying
Speaker 2: to only find sources from before like twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: you know, especially like pop sources, like pop journalism sources.
Speaker 2: If it's like twenty twenty four later, I'm like, this
Speaker 2: is useless to me, you know, which is terrible. Nless
Speaker 2: I trust the outlet or I trust the author, and
Speaker 2: like I always forget to put like no AI when
Speaker 2: I search, and so it always brings up the quick
Speaker 2: answer and it's wrong like thirty percent of the time.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm sure, if not more, and.
Speaker 2: Like and so I'm so sad. And again, yeah, maybe
Speaker 2: they have something, But I've been reading about how some
Speaker 2: colleges have been going all in on AI and specifically
Speaker 2: like ways that I don't think are good so.
Speaker 3: Well, and the irony too of like the namesake lab
Speaker 3: for this woman who I just keep picturing alone in
Speaker 3: this storefront office writing a whole goddamn newspaper by herself. Yeah,
Speaker 3: on a typewriter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 3: AI, what the fuck?
Speaker 2: Yeah, running to grab a gun when the klan comes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like yeah, anyway. I also was afraid to put that
Speaker 2: in because you know what, if there's any group of
Speaker 2: people that was like gonna look at any meetia around
Speaker 2: Charlotta Bass and have an opinion, it's them. And if
Speaker 2: you're them and you've listened this far, you can tell
Speaker 2: me I'm wrong about you all. But it's made me sad.
Speaker 2: But she didn't make me sad. I got out of
Speaker 2: this that you can just say no to these motherfuckers.
Speaker 2: When the klan comes and like we like to kill you,
Speaker 2: you can be like, nah, that's not that's not my plan.
Speaker 2: When the State Department is like, turn over your passport,
Speaker 2: you could be like, man, fucking arrest me. You know,
Speaker 2: like this is like the ultimate opposite of complying in advance.
Speaker 2: It's not even complying when the directive comes down. It's
Speaker 2: non compliance in a principled way that you can stand
Speaker 2: up in front of the entire world and be like, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: why would I comply with this? It's nonsense, and I uh,
Speaker 2: I like it. I also read that some of the
Speaker 2: stuff the movements TH's part of or even her like,
Speaker 2: led to a lot of like specific protest tactics. But
Speaker 2: I couldn't find more information about that. There's so much
Speaker 2: more I want to learn about her, And I found
Speaker 2: out that one university has like all of her papers
Speaker 2: and everything, and like, the problem is that every week
Speaker 2: I have like a new subject where I'm like, but
Speaker 2: what if I dedicated three years of my life and
Speaker 2: wrote a book about this, you know, but someone should.
Speaker 3: I'm so impressed and also like the fact that she
Speaker 3: remained still kind of hopeful the whole time, like yeah,
Speaker 3: and to the very end, just having I don't know,
Speaker 3: still having some faith in humanity is kind of incredible
Speaker 3: considering like the time period she lived through, the space
Speaker 3: and time she was moving through as a black woman. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and to still get out on the other side and
Speaker 3: be like, yeah, life is good and we can still
Speaker 3: fight for better stuff is.
Speaker 2: Incredible in her nineties, no, I know, and like, I
Speaker 2: know the future will be even better. I'm like, man,
Speaker 2: I don't know that I think I'm hopeful for a living,
Speaker 2: but like, hope in twenty twenty six is like the
Speaker 2: what year it does. I think is like some Mariamkaba style,
Speaker 2: hope is a discipline, Like this is a I am
Speaker 2: committed to believing that a better world is possible as
Speaker 2: a in the same way that a soldier is committed
Speaker 2: to the idea that every battle is winnable because the
Speaker 2: only other option is to expect to die. You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm like, I can hope in her hope that
Speaker 3: her hope is right about Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: I could have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we could like zoom out even further, you know,
Speaker 2: but like if twenty twenties America is like nineteen thirties Germany,
Speaker 2: and I hate to say it, but you know, that's
Speaker 2: a thing that is on people's minds, right, the nineteen
Speaker 2: forties is worse, nineteen fifties is better. So it's like, nah,
Speaker 2: that was kind of grim, But you know, she lived
Speaker 2: through two World wars.
Speaker 3: That's the through line right in all of the up
Speaker 3: and down is that there were never not Charlata's like
Speaker 3: doing that work totally.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's what we got for you this week.
Speaker 1: My dogs have decided it's playtime.
Speaker 2: Oh well, it's it's playtime, and everyone should listen to
Speaker 2: Christ and Congress podcasts and everyone should already listen to
Speaker 2: my podcast. You already do. And everyone should buy Bridget
Speaker 2: Todd's book. And that's what I have to say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, heck yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's my pleasure.
Speaker 3: Bye Ron, Bye, Goodbye.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: fool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website foalzone media dot com, or check us
Speaker 1: out on a podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.