INT: What was it like during the '20s, '30s, '40s. ABR: Well, you have to understand the climate of the situation at that time. There was no communication of any sort to inform black people of their rights, of the wrongs or the evils. There was no radio. There was no television. There was -- the only resources that we had for communication was black newspaper. And this is -- was handed down from the days of Frederick Douglass. And we've always had that kind of medium. But now you have to understand the history of black people. Comin' out of slavery, they didn't know how to read. They didn't teach 'em how to read. Comin' into Louisiana in the '20s and the '30s, you're talkin' about people with limited education and you're talkin' about injustice that had been handed because they didn't know how to read or -- or write. INT: Why were black papers important in Los Angeles? ABR: We were isolated from all the major cities in terms of where black people lived. We were at the bottom of, ah, the map in terms of communication. It took us four days and three nights to get here on train. They didn't have no planes. They didn't have no, ah, horse and buggy. They didn't have no automobiles. So we had to rely on the trains. And the greatest percentage of black people came here by train. They (black newspapers)-- it was important from the point of information educating black people of their rights, educatin' -- black people is the system of denying and the only way that we could do this was through publication of a newspaper. INT: How were black people treated in white papers in LA? ABR: Black people were ignored. They were --they was non-existent. The only time that blacks were, ah, ah, ah, not ignored is when they -- when they come and turn it of a negative, ah, behavior. "Black Men Rape White Women." "Black Man Killed White Man." That was a headlines of the Times. Or they wouldn't have said "black men", they would have said "Negro Kills White Man." "Negro Rapes White Women." And so consequently we said, "Well, that isn't true." You see, we knew who was doin' the rapin' and the killin'. So I imagine when -- when Mrs. Bass started the --Mr. Bass and Mrs. Bass started the newspaper, they were adressin' themselves to those injustice and those, ah, ah ... lies, I call them, about black people bein' animals, you know, bein' criminals. INT: What was Charlotta Bass like? ABR: She was a good-lookin' woman, very intelligent woman, and knew exactly what she wanted to do with that newspaper. But when her husband died, she ... lost her right arm because I think Mr. Bass was a backbone of Mrs. Bass, but Mrs. Bass was the intellectual. And she could put it in the sense of understandin' the white behavior and also understandin' the black behavior. INT: How did she lose her right arm? ABR: I meant that when, ah, Mr. and Mrs. Bass was runnin' the paper, it was one of the most popular papers in California, in the whole State of California. And remember that the black people wasn't literary -- literate as it is today. And when you -- when you understand, ah, the conditions that that newspaper had took on in terms of getting information and communication with black people, it was very popular. In fact, it was the only one. INT: You can't explain to me what California was like? ABR: Yeah, because, see, you're askin' me in 1997 what California was like in 1930. The climate was entirely different. We didn't have no (Laughs) means of communication other than, ah, black publication. There was no means of communication of the injustices to the mass number of black people, although they knew they was sufferin' from discrimination, injustice, no jobs, and they were bein' refused just on the basis that they were black. And then they didn't have no outlet. They couldn't go to no white newspaper and say, "Hey, look, you know ... ABR: When Mrs. Bass started The California Eagle, she started with the thought of it's gonna be a crusading newspaper to crusade in behalf of black people. INT: Could black people go to white publications? ABR: No, no, no, not really, because they had no business with the white publication, other then to tell 'em to quit writin' them goddamned lies about black people and black women. Black people could not go to white publications, magazines, newspapers, et cetera, in order to deal with the problems of racism. INT: Tell me about Bass' friendship with Robeson. ABR: Well, I wasn't very close to -- to Mrs. Bass, other than I knew her as a publisher. I knew, ah, her association with Robeson because of my experience in -- in the newspaper, because Robeson was a celebrity and we had an opportunity to interview him and talk to him and what-not. But we didn't ask -- we didn't ask him about his politics. INT: Did her friendship with Robeson affect her paper? ABR: Well, yeah, in the sense that the, ah, white publication and the powers that be identify Robeson as a left winger or communist. Now we didn't even know how to spell that word when, ah, Robeson was comin' to Los Angeles to make pictures. But with his association with Mrs. Bass, they labeled him as a communist and Mrs. Bass and their friendship developed not on the basis of -- of he was --what his politics was; on the basis of the fact that he was a very outstandin' talent, a outstandin', ah, actor and singer. INT: Did she lose advertising? ABR: Certainly, I can only tell you this, that because of her friendship with Robeson, all of a sudden her resources ceased. INT: Why? ABR: (Sighs) Any ... person that ... didn't conform with the status quo of white agenda, any person that didn't respond to that agenda was called somethin' -- a communist, a rebel, a crazy. Mrs. Bass was no communist, she wasn't no rebel, and she wasn't crazy, and she was a good friend of Robeson because they liked each other. But the agenda that indicted Robeson as a communist said anyone that flocked together ... is a member of the party. INT: Tell me about the jobs you did at The Sentinel. ABR: Well, we started as ... in the circulation. We started sellin' the newspaper, because when I arrived, we come to the conclusion that we should put a price on The Sentinel. It was a throw-away. It was a shopper, what we called. INT: What was your job? ABR: My job was circulation, sports editor, society editor, and crime reporter, and whatever -- and janitor. And we did all these things because they didn't have any money to pay for these different kinds of slots that I was holdin' down. And I wasn't the only one. You know, I wasn't the only one doin' these kinds of things. I was contributing to each one of those departments. INT: What was the pay? ABR: (Laughs) The salary that we made from 1937 to 1940 was like five dollars a week. We could count on five dollars a week. INT: Why'd you do it? ABR: I did it because there was a need to develop the kind of instrument that would educate black people in terms of what they were up against, in terms of crusadin' in their behalf. No jobs, racism ... was probably as rigid as Mississippi in terms of black-and-white. There was places where we lived and where we shopped that we couldn't work. There was places where we lived with sixty to seventy thousand black people had very few places to go, other than the church or some, ah ... INT: What was your status in the black community as a reporter? ABR: You know, when I think of it, I think we were the heroes of the black community because we were the only ones that was able to write and crusade for the things that was in the hearts of black men and women and couldn't say and couldn't do. We were captured by the early commitment of the NAACP, of tryin' to bring justice to black people. We were captured by that imagination and we were also captured by the fact that we had to do somethin' individual and we have to do it collectively. INT: Talk about how your mother would send you the papers. ABR: My mother knew I was in school in -- in New Orleans and she knew that, ah, I was studying negro history and she knew that I needed information and I would write to her and tell her that any time she came across any black publication, to mail them to me. And through her doin' so diligently, I began to read The Pittsburgh Courier, The Chicago Defender, The Michigan Chronicle, The New York Amsterdam News when I was in high school. And that experience led me to newspapers in the South, The Houston Embalmer, The North Carolina -- and that was a good one --and The Daily in Atlanta, Georgia. INT: How did you use those papers in school? ABR: I used the information that I received from the -- the newspapers to describe the things that black people were doin' in those cities and to, ah, let them know that -- that this is the -- we are a part of the kind of history, whereas in New Orleans we only had The Louisiana Weekly, which we had information about the local, but, you see, we were so isolated from the other parts of the country because of no means of -- of -- of communication -- there wasn't no radio and wasn't no TV and no such thing as -- as ... ABR: So Loren Miller took over the ... ABR: The California in 1951. INT: Tell me how that happened. ABR: Loren Miller, ah, was a member of the, ahm, staff of The Los Angeles Sentinel in its beginning. INT: How did Lauren Miller take over the paper from Mrs. Bass? ABR: He bought it. He bought it from a lady that had -- had a note, ah, for Mrs. Bass on the loan and he bein' a lawyer, that he -- he managed to buy it. INT: What do you think would happen when he bought the paper? ABR: (Coughs) I thought (Laughs) ... my thoughts that it was The California Eagle would have a rebirth and take its position in the country as one of the most significant black publications in the country. We had the staff (Coughs), we had the know-how, and we had the experience, but we didn't have a money. INT: What happened? ABR: Loren was a strugglin' lawyer. ABR: The paper went under on our inability to pay our bills because for the simple reason that Loren was tainted by the government and the people that be as bein' a member of the Communist Party. INT: So? ABR: Now to give you the history of how that came about, Loren Miller, Langston Hughes, a couple of other outstandin' writers traveled to Russia to make a picture of black people in the '30s. And when they came back, they were labeled as communists. INT: That came back to haunt Miller? ABR: That came back to haunt Loren Miller and, in fact, it haunted to such a degree that J. Edgar Hoover and company bugged the office ... ABR: Yeah. Government agencies discredit Lauren Miller and they discredit the publication, and being in the position of a government agency, this is like gospel to the rank and file members of the community. If, ah, Chief Parker said, "Well, he's a communist," he's a communist. INT: Tell me about Hoover ... ABR: J. Edgar Hoover, police department, all had a program of discrediting Lauren Miller and the newspaper as a communist organ to whatever they decided to say about it. And then the white publication didn't ignore that. But the advertisers in the publication did that. You have to understand that ... The California Eagle in 1951 was taken on the housing authority, the reality association, and police brutality, three of the most influential agencies in this city that controls the minds of white people. INT: So what happened? ABR: So, as a result, we were unable to generate money, and a publication depends on 40 percent of newsprint and 60 percent of advertising revenue. We were not able to get that and, as a result, you can understand that the demise of the publication was inevitable. INT: How did it feel when The Eagle closed its door? ABR: Like we were ... DIRECTIONAL ABR: When The Eagle finally closed its door for good ... (Laughs) we, the staff ... (Sighs) how can you say (Laughs) when you attend your own funeral? How could you do dat? How could you say that, "Here some of the most brilliant writers, some of the most brilliant people in the journalistic field" -- wasn't thinkin' about their jobs, but was thinkin' about their career that they would never be a group like this that would be able to do the things that we thought we were capable of doing. We were buried. We were dead and it was -- it was a tragedy. It was a loss. And Los Angeles has never recovered from that. We don't have the enthusiasm among people like we had in those days. They talkin' about apathy, they talkin' about ... INT: The black newspapers distributed in the West here? ABR: The Pullman porters were instrumental in bringing the black publication to Los Angeles through they commitment for the extension of communication from one city to the other. And they brought the paper in here ... by, ah, carrier. They were the carriers of the publication from -- for instance, if you runnin' out of Chicago to Los Angeles, sent stacks -- or whoever was the circulation manager for The Chicago Defender would be down at the station to give the, ah, Pullman porter that he knew a bundle of Chicago Defender and the porter would bring 'em to Los Angeles. And the same hold true with New York, same holds true, ah, ahm, Michigan, and this is the first link of exchange of communicating with the other newspapers, because the mailin' of the bulk mailing was prohibitive in terms of funds, money. (END INTERVIEW)