Washington Press Club Foundation

Ethel Payne: Interview #3

September 17, 1987 in Washington, DC

Kathleen Currie, Interviewer

Ethel Payne - September 17, 1987 Tape 1 of 2

September 17th, 1987
Listen to audio

Ethel Payne - September 17, 1987 Tape 2 of 2

September 17th, 1987
Listen to audio
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[Begin Tape 1, Side A]

Payne: Where do we start?

Currie: You had said, before we got on tape, that you were a shy person.

Payne: Oh, yes. I said I was a shy person, and basically, I guess, I am, because I am very sensitive about my relationship to other people. I'm very sensitive. I never really intend to hurt people, as I don't like to be hurt myself. But in the business of my trade, journalism, you can't always deal with—it interferes with the business that you're going about of getting a story, so you have to learn to put that aside sometimes. I guess I've always been described as a tough-minded person, and I am, but I have always approached my subject with the idea that I'm dealing with not the person's character or personality per se, but about what he or she is doing to make the story worthwhile. I mean, why is this particular individual the subject of an investigation for a story? So you try to make that individual as comfortable as possible, relax them as much as possible before you approach the question. I've learned not to apologize. I don't start out saying, "I hate to ask you this, but I just need to know." That's bad. You just go right straight to it, go right straight to the heart of the matter. Sometimes you upset people a little; you're bound to. But if the particular person that you're interviewing has some trust in you and knows you by reputation as a person that does his business well, as ethically as possible, then you have a much better chance of getting what you want in your interview with this person.

So getting back to the original question, I'm shy, but I'm also shy about hurting other people.

Currie: How did you cope with your shyness in order to do your job?

Payne: I learned when I came to Washington, in other words, in a very competitive field, and that if I was going to succeed at all, I would have to learn to be as aggressive and tough as the rest of the persons in the pack. Although I was more or less an outsider, yes, I was, and I also was in the position of being on a periphery. When I say periphery, I mean that weekly newspapers weren't regarded too seriously, whether they were white or black. They just weren't supposed to be in the same league as the major media. So the best you could do, most of them could do, was be there as a nuisance value. They were there, but it was sort of like the cat looking with disdain at the mouse, you know It would not be worthwhile doing anything with. So you had to overcome that. You had to let the people in the press know that you were there for the same reasons that they were there. You were there to do a job, and you were going to do a job, and you had to more or less fight your way in. I had to overcome practically three things: first, as a woman; second, as a Negro; and third is from what they called a minor press—not a minority press, a minor press. So I had those three things to overcome.

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Currie: When we talked before, I asked if you ever faced any conflicts in going after stories. Did you ever get information from someone you were interviewing that you felt was sensitive, that you needed to be guarded about?

Payne: Well, if they spoke freely, then it was on the record. But if they said to me, "Can we go off the record?" or "This is off the record," then I had to accept that. Sometimes I would be able to weave around that by describing a particular set of circumstances around that which the reader could get through, you know. But you had to obey.

One of the things that irritated me at first, but then I overcame that, was that I always felt that blacks who were in key positions in the government or whatever it might be sometimes ignored the black press and gave preferentia! treatment to the white press. That used to annoy me no end! Oh! I used to get furious about it. And I would protest about it. I would protest vigorously about it. Sometimes they would apologize for it. But I knew that behind it was the need for them to not only get maximum exposure to the larger media, but that it was sort of a recognition factor, the fact that if they could get into the Washington Post or the Daily News then, or whatever it was, that they had sort of a pride. I had to fight for the integrity of the black press as well as my own personal dignity. It took a good while to do that, to earn that kind of respect. Pretty soon, I think, I was able to overcome most of that.

Then when I built up a bank of contacts, that began to come through very well. They would call me. I had one source in the Defense Department; he was just excellent—James Evans. He was wonderful. He would call me and alert me to something that was going on, and tell me about it, and he would give me some other sources. He was one of my best sources.

Currie: Who was James Evans?

Payne: James C. Evans was the civilian assistant—that was his title—to the Secretary of Defense. He was a black man, but he was there particularly to evaluate and to have a liaison with the blacks in the military as well as blacks in the civilian work force. He was sort of the filter through which news about blacks and their participation in defense, so he was an excellent source.

Currie: You ended your second interview saying that you had not the money, but the freedom in working for the black press.

Payne: Oh, that's one of the joys to this day. I'm going to die poor. [Laughter.] But at the same time, I have never regretted it, because I've enjoyed enormous freedom, much more freedom than I would have had I been in the majority media. I don't think I could have existed, because of my own character and personality and everything else. I admit that I am biased about anything I see as an injustice; I just get personally very, very indignant about what I see as injustice. I couldn't express myself the way I do in the black press; I couldn't do that, say, if I were on the Washington Post or the New York Times. I'd have to do the story according to what that particular policy was and what the editor or whoever it was, my superior, would instruct me to do, and it would not be me. This way, I'm expressing myself, and I have been. I think that's the value of being in the type of press where you can write what you feel is right and just, but still, you work within the parameters of good reporting as much as possible.

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Currie: How much did you say you made?

Payne: I think I started out with a salary of $6,000 or something, way back there in 1953, maybe. I don't remember what it was, but it wasn't much money. But in those days, you could get by.

Currie: Was that an average salary for newspaper reporters? How did that compare?

Payne: Well, you can't call it average, because it didn't compare with the general wage scale for newspaper reporting. Remember we were almost—what do you call it?—a Mom and Pop store operation. He didn't have the money; the paper didn't have the money that the Chicago Tribune had. So they couldn't afford to. Besides, I just loved writing. I really loved it; I enjoyed it. I enjoyed going after a story, and that was compensation. I lived at home, so I didn't have to have the overhead expenses that I would ordinarily. I didn't have to pay rent and gas and light and all the rest of that.

Currie: When you were first working.

Payne: Yes, when I was first working. Then two years later, when I moved to Washington, that was another story. I was on my own then, really, so to speak.

Currie: How did you manage that?

Payne: How did I manage what?

Currie: Being on your own without a lot of money.

Payne: Oh, well, they gave me an increase, and I had to have an expense account, so that was added on to it.

Currie: Did they pay for the place where you lived?

Payne: Yes. They got me a place. They got me a place, and they paid for my rent. Then, of course, as my salary scale moved up, I assumed that.

Currie: So you were working out of your apartment and it was like a bureau?

Payne: Yes.

Currie: You said that some of the reporters, at least on the Defender and in other black press operations, supplemented their income.

Payne: They supplemented their income by what we called "hustling." That meant that certain people would pay you to write a favorable story for them, or you went out and sought people. Photographers would take pictures and get a little tip on the side, you know. Really, I have to say this. It was a survival tactic, because you were on a shoestring budget, as I said, and you had to work to supplement. I never did it, because I detested it. I didn't like it. So I just moved along on my little bit of money and made do with that, but I never, never took money from anyone. Never. Because it's just not my cup of tea. I maintained my independence, and I began to be known as that type of individual. And thank goodness, after I moved to Washington, I didn't have to do it. I mean, I was away from that kind of thing.

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Currie: How did the editor react? Or did he know that people were getting paid to write stories?

Payne: Oh, I think they knew, but they looked the other way.

Currie: Why would they do that?

Payne: Because the budget was so tight, and they knew that if somebody was making it on their own, and if they didn't go too far with it, that was to their advantage, too, because they didn't have it, or either they just weren't willing to put out enough money to make the difference.

Currie: Did political writers do this? You mentioned that society writers did a lot of this.

Payne: Yes. That was a lucrative field for that kind of thing. Some political writers did it, but I didn't choose to. It's just not my nature.

Currie: You were talking about how your independent nature sometimes got you in trouble.

Payne: Yes. [Laughter.] What happened was that Mr. Sengstacke and Mr. Martin, who was the editor-in-chief, knew that I had a flair for editorial writing, too. So they asked me to take over the editorial chores, which I did, and enjoyed doing it. I followed very closely what was happening in Washington in the efforts to get a civil rights legislation. This is back in 1957, and trial efforts were going on to get some civil rights legislation. That's when Lyndon Johnson was the Majority Leader. Everett Dirksen, I think, was the Minority Leader. Everett Dirksen was a very powerful man. He was a Republican from Illinois. They used to call him Mr. Honey Tonsils, because he was such a great persuasive orator. He had enjoyed friendships on both sides of the aisle. He was very highly respected. He had a major role in this civil rights legislation, but he sided with the southern Democrats, and the southern Democrats at that time were far more powerful than they are today, even. They just had a lockhold on the civil rights legislation. Everett Dirksen sided with them on a very important key issue, and, of course, they would resort to the filibuster, even, to kill the legislation.

So in one of my editorials, I took after Everett Dirksen, and I said that he was lying down with dogs and getting up with fleas, or something. I said something very strong about him. When it came to his attention, he was furious. He called John Sengstacke, and he protested. He said, "Whoever that is, you need to get rid of them!"

So John Sengstacke came to me. He said, "What did you write that editorial about Dirksen for? Why did you say all those nasty things about him?"

I said, "Because he's a no good son of a bitch."

And he looked at me and smiled, and he said, "Yes, but remember one thing. He's our son of a bitch." [Laughter.]

Currie: It's still funny in the second telling. [Laughter.]

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Payne: Now, he meant by that that there was a friendly relationship with Everett Dirksen. If the paper needed something in the way of some kind of favor or something, you'd go to Everett Dirksen, and he and Everett Dirksen were on friendly terms. So therefore, of course, he didn't fire me, but he just reminded me of that relationship.

Currie: So it wasn't a serious threat to your job.

Payne: No. He just wanted to caution me, I think. That was the only time. I really can't think of another time that he even came close to censoring me.

Currie: Really?

Payne: I didn't pursue it, because I think I had made my point, and I think that the very fact that Everett Dirksen reacted so angrily had touched a sensitive spot. So therefore, he had been sent a message, you know. So there was nothing else to do; I'd made my point. And that was it.

Currie: Also, if we could go back a little bit to the other interview, there are a couple of things I wanted to follow up on. You had said in the other interview that there was a tradition of rewriting at the black press.

Payne: Yes.

Currie: What was that?

Payne: Let me tell you and explain the reason for that. Because the black press had such limited resources, not enough writers, not enough people to do investigative reporting, they depended a lot on reading what the daily papers were saying, and then taking that and rewriting that. That was common practice, and everybody knew it, but to me it was very distasteful. I didn't like it. It was very abhorrent. I have always been a stickler for getting the news on your own. I was always a stickler for the original, not the warmed over. I don't like warmed over hash. It seems to me that the business of journalism is to do your own thing and do it as independently as you can. I'm a great follower of Frederick Douglass' and his admonition to "agitate, agitate, agitate." So therefore, I found it quite distasteful, but at the same time, I recognized, I did recognize why it was done, because of the very limited resources of the paper. So therefore, it was not for me to question. Personally, I did my own thing. If there was a story to be done, I did it, and I had my own ideas. I think I produced more creative things than anybody else on the staff. That's the reason why they chose me to go to Washington. So some evils you have to tolerate because of the nature of the circumstances, the climate.

Currie: Do you know if that was common practice?

Payne: I think throughout the whole black press.

Currie: At one point in the other interview, you were talking about it being difticult for women in the press corps.

Payne: Yes. Male chauvinism was alive and well. That was a gender thing, not a race thing. That was a gender thing.

Currie: How did that work?

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Payne: Well, I can remember that aggressive people like Sarah McClendon were almost ostracized and rebuked at times by some of her male peers. I think May Craig stood out because she was a senior member of the White House press corps, and she was highly respected in her own right. But I think Sarah took the heat a lot of times. There was another person—oh, she was from the Denver Post, I believe. Oh, she was just regarded as—she was really regarded with great disfavor because she was called a "pushy bitch." But she would push and shove, and she'd go after her stuff. You could feel it. There was always that haughty air about males in the press corps. They had names and reputations. It was almost like they were holier than thou.

Eric Sevareid to me typified that. He was a well known name, and he acted the role. He acted the entire role. At one time, he rebuked Sarah in public, and he was doing pieces for CBS. He was on CBS. I had just been invited to come on board the CBS "Spectrum" program, so I took him to task about his treatment of Sarah. I said, "Let him drown in his own pomposity." I got volumes of letters about that. [Laughter.]

Currie: Supportive letters?

Payne: No, not all of them. [Laughter.]

Currie: I asked this before. Do you think you were ever denied a story because you were a woman?

Payne: I think you were ignored to a great extent, as much as possible, and sometimes I used to get so frustrated because I couldn't get to the source of something. I don't think I was that much of a threat to the general press, except on occasions, when they decided that a particular angle was of interest to them. So therefore, when you went after it, you were just given short shrift. They would tell you that either something wasn't available or, "We've already dealt with that." You were just put aside. So that frustrated you, too.

Currie: In the last interview, we talked about the Eisenhower press conferences. In the fifties, when you came to Washington, it was a segregated city.

Payne: Very much so.

Currie: How did that affect your ability to do your job?

Payne: It was the first year of the Eisenhower Administration, and one of his campaign promises had been to issue an executive order ending the ban on public accommodations in the city of Washington. So he did sign an executive order to that effect, but you know, it's hard to overcome years of practice, a pattern of practice. So I found it difficult to sometimes get around and to get into places. Hotels, they were still clinging to the old traditions.

Currie: Let me turn the tape.

[End Tape 1, Side A; Begin Tape 1, Side B]

[At this point, Ms. Payne had to make a telephone call to a source. She invited me to keep the tape recorder on and also explained a little of her reporting method.]

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Payne: Is Mr. Zin there? This is Miss Payne. I called him on Monday in regards to a certain piece that I wanted, and he was to get back to me by today. I have not heard from him, and I'd like to know. Thank you.

Currie: Got to stay on these people?

Payne: Now, what I'm after is that secret memo that has come into the possession of United Mineworkers from the Shell Oil Company. In it is a blueprint for how to deal with the black community in America in order to improve the image of Shell in the face of the boycott that TransAfrica has instituted. They're saying in that memo that they should go after black ministers in the community and woo them, among other things. So I want the memo, and I knew that the UMW had it. But when I called there on Monday and told them that I had heard about this memo, then they wanted to know my source, and said, "No, I'm not at liberty to give that, but I do know you have it." And they acknowledged that they did. But then he said that he had promised it to another news media, and I said, "Yes, but I have important readership. It's of great interest to black readers."

He said, "Yes, I know. We'd like to cooperate, but I don't think I can release it until I give it to the other person."

I said, "This is Monday, and I'd like it by Thursday." So this is a follow-up to it.

Currie: I see. Now, what if he doesn't give it to you?

Payne: Well, then I'll write that. This is my second call.

Currie: So you know the gist of what's in the memo?

Payne: Yes. I know enough to put it into a story.

Currie: So you can write the story. It's whether or not he cooperates with you.

Payne: That's right.

Currie: That's interesting.

Payne: That's of extreme interest, of extreme interest, because what it means is that Shell is going to run a shell game—trying to run a shell game on black leadership.

Currie: How did you get tipped off about that?

Payne: Go off the record for a minute. [Tape interruption.]

Currie: I think we're going to go back to the fifties.

Payne: Okay.

Currie: We were talking about Washington in the fifties, being segregated, and we were talking about how that might have affected you doing your job. For example, I had heard at one point that the galleries at the House and Senate were segregated, that the bathrooms in the galleries were.

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Payne: I didn't experience that myself. I never ran into that. They may have been. Like I was telling you before, I know that way back—way back—the story goes around that Thurgood Marshall was speaking about that the other night, that Mrs. Wilson, the wife of Woodrow Wilson, went to the post office, and she saw black men and white women working side by side, and she became incensed at that. So she had her husband order the post office to segregate the workers and to make separate bathrooms. And she personally took signs and went and put them on doors—white and colored. That's the first lady of the land did that. So I don't know anything about that.

I do know that Simeon Booker, who was the first black hired at the Washington Post—and that's been way back, too—that he was given a separate bathroom, and that's one of the reasons why he left the Post.

Currie: He had his own bathroom?

Payne: Had his own bathroom. That was at the Washington Post.

Currie: I think you were describing, too, that when you went to apply for credentials at the House and Senate galleries, you got kind of a—

Payne: I really got a cold reception, as if, "What do you need this for? Why are you here?" But I had White House press credentials, so there was hardly any reason for them to turn me down, but I don't think they liked it at all.

Currie: Why didn't they like it?

Payne: Because it was almost—well, it was an all-white preserve, in the first place, and it was almost an all-white male preserve. It was an old boys network, and they didn't want any stray critters trespassing through there. "What are you here for?" You know. You get that. It's unspoken, but you feel it. I know sometimes I would go up there when there wasn't really any hard news to cover, but I'd just go so it would be a practice that they would see me. Then at one time, one of them came up to me and said, "Well, I don't think there's anything here that you'd be interested in. It's not in your arena."

I said, "What is my arena?"

"Well, uh, ah, I just didn't think it was of any interest." You know, like that.

I said, "Well, who are you to tell me what my arena is? How do you get off with that?" And I just stared him down. I never had any more trouble out of him, but that was gratuitous, and it was nasty, and it was a put-down. So you had to encounter those kinds of things. You had to encounter male chauvinism, you had to encounter the fact that you were black, you were a woman, and you were from a minor press. So you were just like some little flea wandering in. They just didn't like to be annoyed that way.

Currie: How did that treatment make you feel?

Payne: Well, at first, it makes you feel slightly made put down as an inferior thing. Then you get angry, you get real angry. And that's when I got so angry with him, I'd tell him, "Who are you? What is my arena'? How do you know what my arena is? How do you know what I want?" Give him a real, real cold stare. You had to go

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through that. Not pleasant, never was pleasant. I don't go up to the [Capitol] Hill like I used to. I have my credentials, but I don't go up there, because I've just changed my pattern of living. My lifestyle isn't quite the same; I'm not out on the hustings, so to speak, as much as I used to be. But I have the right to go, and if I choose to go, I expect to be treated with respect.

Currie: Also, you were talking before about at one point you took the civil service exam for a librarian.

Payne: Yes. That was a personal thing that happened to me. That was back in—oh, dear, it was so far back, I can hardly remember. I had not yet really come on board in Washington. I took the exam because it was open, and I just wanted to see how the civil service worked. I passed it; I was in the top category of that particular class. And with it came an announcement of a vacancy in the Justice Department. Well, I thought I would look into it and inquire about it. I was eligible for it. So I happened to be in Washington at the time they were fighting for passage of a Fair Employment Practices bill, so I went over to the Justice Department, and I walked in. There was a woman sitting at the end of the hall, a receptionist, and I told her that I was there. I had called ahead and asked to see the person in charge of personnel for the library. So I handed her this slip that said what my status was. She got up from the desk, and she went down the hall, and she stayed quite a few minutes. Then she came back, and she said in a very sweet southern drawl, "Mr. McPherson will see you now."

I took the elevator up to the fifth floor, and just as the door opened, there was a Mr. McPherson standing there. I guess he identified himself as Mr. McPherson. He said, "I'm glad to see you. You've come about the job. Well, I'm sorry to say that I can't give it to you."

I said, "Why not? Here's my qualifications."

He said, "Yes, you are at the top of the grade here, but I simply just couldn't hire you. Now, if you were Mordecai Johnson's daughter, I might be able to do something."

Currie: Mordecai Johnson?

Payne: He was then president of Howard University, happened to be a fair skinned man, and his daughter was fair skinned.

So I looked at him just straight, and I said, "Mr. McPherson, am I correct? Is this the United States Department of Justice?"

And he said, "Yes, I know how you feel."

I said, "But I don't understand. What's the rationale for this? I'm fully qualified. How can you dare stand here and tell me that you can't give me the job because I'm a Negro?"

He said, "Well, I'm sorry, but that's just the policy." And then he said to me, "I'm sorry that this is the way it is, but you know, the receptionist had told me that you were downstairs, and she said to me, 'There's this woman down here, this Negro woman down here, who wants to see you, but I'm sure you don't want her, because she's a Negro.'"

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And I said, "Well, this is astonishing. You know, it's ironic that I'm down here to speak on behalf of the Fair Employment Practices bill, and the first rebuff that I get is from the U.S. Department of Justice." I said, "Thank you for your time," and I walked away. But you know, I mean, well, it's still hard to rationalize that today. It still puzzles and angers me, and it's hurtful. Perhaps I never would have taken the job if it had been offered to me; I don't know. Maybe I wouldn't have been interested in working in government. But the principle of it was that I was qualified, that there was a vacancy, and that I was told flatly that I could not have the job because I was black. And that's the insidiousness of racism. That was a personal experience that I'll never forget.

Currie: At that point, were you working?

Payne: I was working for the Defender, but I had come down with a group of people to lobby for a Fair Employment Practices bill.

Currie: Had you considered getting out of journalism?

Payne: No, I had not at that time, you know, but I had taken the examination, and I had taken it maybe a year or so ago. When I got the notice of it, then I thought, "Well, let me look into this." I may have and I may not have. A lot of my friends were going into it. But I also knew that I might be going into a dead-end thing, because we knew, we all knew, there was another unwritten policy that blacks were relegated to positions between GS-1 and GS-5, and that was as far as you could go. If you stayed there ten years, if you stayed there 40 years, you were still going to be in between 1 and 5; you couldn't go up to a 7, you couldn't go up to 11, you couldn't go any higher, not in the higher grades. That was reserved for whites. No matter what your qualifications were. There used to be a joke around Washington that there were more Ph.D.'s in the post office than there were in the universities, because there were so many blacks who had graduated with master's degrees, some with Ph.D.'s, who couldn't get jobs. The only jobs they could get were in the postal system or in some lowly government position.

Currie: Was the press corps at that time segregated in any way?

Payne: The press corps itself?

Currie: Yes. For example, as you covered the White House press conferences, was there a section for blacks?

Payne: Oh, no. No, no, no indeed. No, no, no. No, I never experienced anything like that. You came. I'll tell you what. There was a section reserved. The front rows were reserved for big, the giants, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the wire services, the TV networks. Those were the preferred positions. Yes, there was a class distinction. There was a class distinction, but the rest of the seats were on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Currie: I think that perhaps we can stop for now, because the next thing we'll get into will be your foreign assignments, which I know were important for you.

Payne: Yes.