In 1950, advocating peace was outlawed in the United States; at least that is how it was treated. While no law prevented peace advocacy, those that criticized US Cold War policy and its ever-increasing military budget and insisted on peace were denounced and harassed and sometimes imprisoned and deported. Charlotta Bass, editor of the California Eagle, one of California’s first Black newspapers, was a vocal peace activist. She denounced US militarization, overseas intervention, and nuclear proliferation in the pages of her newspaper. She also organized with activists across the US and overseas for peace and international controls over atomic weapons. For her efforts, she was harassed and followed by the FBI, she was prevented from traveling overseas, and even in her elder years when she suffered from debilitating arthritis, the FBI considered her a national security threat.
Bass, originally from Rhode Island, moved to California in 1910. She began working for John Neimore’s newspaper the Owl. When Neimore unexpectedly died, Bass took over the paper, renaming it the California Eagle. It was one of California’s earliest Black newspapers. From the beginning, the paper focused on civil rights issues in the growing Los Angeles metropolitan area. Bass combined journalism and editing with social justice activism. She had been a registered Republican for decades, but during World War II, her politics shifted further to the left and she began working with more liberals and leftists, including communists.
She and other liberals grew concerned after the war, as U.S. domestic and foreign policy became increasingly focused on communist containment. She was an early and outspoken critic of Cold War policy and believed it would lead to a state of permanent war. Perhaps more importantly, Bass worried a commitment to anti-communism would be catastrophic for global freedom struggles. She worried anti-communism would empower the United States to silence its critics, specifically in the civil rights movement, and intervene in independence movements in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
In 1948, she became active in Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party run for president. Wallace criticized the Truman administration’s increased militarization, its stand against the Soviet Union, and the wedding of the civilian and military economies. The California Eagle became a major venue for criticizing the containment policy and anti-communist harassment, and for publicizing global peace efforts. By this point, Bass had become a recognized leader among global peace advocates. In 1949, she was invited to attend the Women’s Asiatic Conference in China to encourage the United States to open relations, but she was unable to attend.
In January 1950, President Harry S. Truman announced his approval for building a hydrogen bomb. By that summer, the United States led NATO forces to intervene in Korea’s civil war. Bass and peace advocates around the world worried about the use of nuclear weapons during the war, especially given that U.S. policymakers, including Truman, did not dismiss the possibility. She also argued that U.S. intervention in Korea came even as U.S. officials ignored or enabled racist violence at home.
That year, she was invited to attend the Defenders of Peace conference in Prague. Bass noted that the goal of the attendees was to prevent another world war, and the group hoped the Stockholm Appeal, known pejoratively as the “Ban the Bomb” petition, was the best way to accomplish it. The petition, created in March 1950 by the Partisans of Peace, a group linked to the Soviet’s World Council of Peace, called for international control of nuclear weapons and charging any nation that used them with human rights abuses. Weeks after the start of the Korean War, the petition gained thousands of signatures. When Bass returned home, she used her newspaper to circulate news of the petition and to urge her readers to sign.
Unfortunately, Secretary of State Dean Acheson dismissed the petition as communist propaganda, targeting those that advocated it as enemies of the state. Bass noted that the petition threatened Acheson and the State Department because of its success and its criticism of U.S. policy.
In 1950, while no law prevented peace advocacy, those who criticized U.S. Cold War policy and its ever-increasing military budget were denounced, harassed and sometimes imprisoned and deported.
For her efforts, Bass was harassed and followed by the FBI beginning in 1942. To link her to a larger communist conspiracy, the FBI gathered evidence that included her opposition to restrictive covenants, advocacy for anti-lynching legislation and calls for a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission. Authorities also saw Bass’s connections to activists abroad and the global peace movement as suspicious.
Because of her activism, she was unable to secure a visa in 1949 and was not allowed to attend the Women’s Asiatic Conference in China. She did travel to the Prague conference, but her movements were monitored. After the conference, Bass traveled to the Soviet Union to meet again with some of the Russian delegates she met in Prague. The FBI later questioned her about the trip and ordered her to surrender her passport, which she refused to do.
The FBI added her to its security index, which identified individuals who would be detained during a national security crisis. On a few occasions, FBI agents noted that she was not a communist and tried to close her file. But FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover rejected that conclusion. In 1946, an informant claimed, without evidence, that she was a concealed communist, justifying surveillance that lasted until her death in 1969. Even in her elder years, when she suffered from debilitating arthritis, the FBI considered her a national security threat.
Bass would later write that the United States ignored an important opportunity with the “Ban the Bomb” petition. She insisted that had the country adopted its basic tenets, it would not have devoted so much time and billions of dollars shunning China and the Soviet Union. She and her colleagues had warned that the Cold War, and its first theater of conflict in Korea, was a watershed moment.
Then, U.S. intervention occurred despite widespread opposition, which according to historian Marilyn Young taught American politicians that permission was not needed to fight a war. It also justified a bloated military budget at the expense of social welfare. And it occurred at a time when anti-communists likened social welfare programs to a communist plot, undermining support for popular and necessary social programs.
By accusing peace activists of allying with the “enemy” and expanding the surveillance state to monitor them, the United States became what Bass had warned about: a nation devoted to war while continuing to deny its citizens the dignity of their basic needs. Today, the United States has hundreds of bases overseas and has recently approved the largest military budget in history; meanwhile, millions of Americans have little access to housing, food and health care, and systemic racism persists. On the eve of the Cold War, Bass warned that justice could not exist in a nation committed to war; unfortunately, policymakers did not heed the warning.