About Us

The Charlotta Bass Journalism & Justice Lab is the University of Southern California’s first media studies center that is dedicated to saving, studying and sharing the work of prominent and hidden figures who have been central to Black social justice movements in America. 

We are the academic hub for Black witnessing.

In the prize-winning book, “Bearing Witness While Black: African- Americans, Smartphones and the New Protest #Journalism,” our founding director, Allissa Richardson, explains that Black people have long engaged in the practice of “Black witnessing” to shine a light on the nation’s many systemic inequalities. Black witnessing, as she has defined it, is an innovative process of deploying journalism as a powerful tool for activism. It uses an investigative editorial stance, to get to the bottom of an issue. It hacks the technology of the day — such as smartphones and social media — to create independent news networks. It also leverages the power of Black Americans from various public spheres to distribute that news far and wide, often creating linkages between injustices in the past to those we still see today. 

When people think of the Civil Rights Movement, they often recall the charismatic Southern leaders, like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Charlotta Bass Lab wants to shine a light on the “Kings” of the West.

Black witnessing throughout American history

During each of the nation’s overlapping eras of domestic terror against African Americans — from slavery, to lynching, to police brutality — Black witnesses have created impactful media. Throughout the era of US slavery, Black witnesses like Frederick Douglass printed abolitionist pamphlets, newspapers and a series of self-portraits, which were designed to humanize Black men. 

At the turn of the 20th century, Black witnesses like Ida B. Wells used newspapers to report on lynching. By mid-century, Black witnesses like John Lewis were synchronizing their sit-ins and marches with evening TV news broadcasts, to highlight Jim Crow segregation and Black disenfranchisement. And now, Black witnesses like Darnella Frazier use smartphones to document deadly police brutality. 

Filling an educational gap

Still, during each of these eras, there has been no central clearinghouse through which students, educators and the general public can learn about the journalistic contributions that Black witnesses made specifically on the West Coast. 

Many Black activism archives tend to focus on the East Coast icons of the Harlem Renaissance; the Midwest leaders of the Great Migration; or the Southern icons of the Civil Rights Movement. Yet, Black activists from Washington, Oregon and California have crafted human rights campaigns that often set the agenda for the rest of the nation — for nearly 175 years — from the Gold Rush, all the way to today’s Black Lives Matter movement. 

In the fall of 2022, therefore, Dr. Allissa V. Richardson founded the Charlotta Bass Journalism and Justice Lab at USC Annenberg. She sought to carve out a place within the world’s top journalism school, where students can save, study and share West Coast Black media that changed the world. 

This website is your place to explore the work of prominent and hidden social justice figures — like Charlotta Bass — who used the media of their day to craft powerful campaigns. We are also the place to experiment with new technologies, so that we can capture Black testimonies from this generation. So, dig into our archives. Check out our projects. Inquire about partnering with us. Because now, more than ever, we must preserve Black media history, train the next generation of antiracist journalists, and create spaces where the public can commemorate the newsmaking of traditionally marginalized people.