An early feminist, Charlotta Bass conquered gender and race stereotypes through her words, and most importantly through her deeds. Unlike many female journalists of her day, because she was the owner of a newspaper, Bass did not have to rely upon a man for a job. In fact she hired several men, including the man who would eventually become her husband. Retaining her maiden name professionally for over ten years after her marriage to Joseph Blackburn Bass, Charlotta Bass was very much his partner in business and in life.

Refusing to pit the struggles for racial and gender equality against one another, Bass was a pioneering woman who saw them as bound together and thus fought for rights at the intersection of both. For example, Bass led a battle to gain access to the war industries for black women workers who were excluded because of their race and their gender. In addition to leading numerous civil rights organizations with largely male memberships, Bass also supported black women's organizations like the Sojourner Truth Club, a Los Angeles group dedicated to improving working conditions for black women workers. At the national level, she joined with prominent African American women, including Shirley Graham DuBois, Beah Richards, and Eslanda Robeson to form the Sojourners for Truth and Justice, an organization that issued a call in 1951 for black women to descend on Washington, D.C., to demand that the government protect the civil rights and civil liberties of its black citizens and live up to the ideals it espoused abroad.

Bass regularly used her columns and speeches to recognize the historical contributions of black women throughout the world and to call on other black women to follow this example and join her in leading the Los Angeles community in battles to end inequality and injustice.

This quote comes from her August 27, 1942, "On the Sidewalk" column:

"WOMEN! WOMEN! WOMEN! Particularly Negro Women, this call comes to you! It is up to us to DO something about our position in the body politic of this nation. Let us be aware that we have a glorious history in our land...Many are the stories of heart rending courage that the Negro women of the slave period have handed down to us...They were the mothers of a hundred rebellions, all of which our standard history texts have conveniently forgotten. Yet black women have a tradition which they must not forget and which they must not fail."