Washington Press Club Foundation

Ethel Payne: Interview #6

October 13, 1987 in Washington, DC

Kathleen Currie, Interviewer

Ethel Payne - October 13, 1987 Tape 1 of 2

October 13th, 1987
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Ethel Payne - October 13, 1987 Tape 2 of 2

October 13th, 1987
Listen to audio

Ethel Payne - October 13, 1987 Tape 1 of 1

October 13th, 1987
Listen to audio
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[Begin Tape 1, Side A]

Currie: Last time we talked, we had taken you to 1978, which was a pivotal year for you.

Payne: Yes.

Currie: That was the year that you—

Payne: A year of decision.

Currie: In more ways than one.

Payne: Yes. That was the year that my contract ran out with "Spectrum" after six years, CBS "Spectrum." So I had to make some decisions, because that was a nice chunk of income wiped out. What happened was that the producer that I had worked with for six years, Morrie Robinson, died from cancer, and he was sorely missed, because he was a very wonderful person to work with. So that meant, with his passing, a new managerial level took over, and, of course, they weren't attuned to me, nor was I to them. So it meant that they just had a whole change of line-up. That ended my association. I don't have any regrets, because it was six years of a very enjoyable experience, and I particularly liked it because it gave me a forum for presenting my views to a vast audience. I think even today, people come up and say, "Oh, we miss you. We miss you, because we enjoyed your opinion."

Currie: That was also the year that you had a parting of the ways with the Chicago Defender.

Payne: Yes. I made up my mind that the relationship, after 20 years, more than 20 years, we'd just come to a parting. It was a friendly, amicable parting. There was no bitterness. But I knew that I had to strike out for myself, and so I decided that I would move back to Washington. I didn't accomplish it until 1980, June of 1980, largely because I went on a Ford Foundation fellowship. I went on a Ford Foundation fellowship to do a study of America's black colleges, so that took up a good 18 months or more. So that was what I was doing in the interim.

Currie: How did you go about deciding to make a living after that?

Payne: Well, I knew the Washington scene very well, and I could continue to write about that, what was happening in Washington. It just seemed a natural base for me, anyway, because even when I went back to Chicago earlier, I found myself constantly flying in and out of Washington, because whenever there was a major news story, I wanted to be on the scene, so I spent a great deal of time going back and forth. I knew the Washington scene. I had known it since 1953. So it was a natural thing for me to move back to Washington, and it worked out, because I soon set up my own

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syndicate for distributing my columns, and that's what I do now. That's the major thing.

Currie: So you self-syndicate?

Payne: Yes.

Currie: How did you go about doing that?

Payne: I wrote letters and I made contacts. In fact, many people came and asked me, and then I was asked to do a number of special magazine pieces. And all of that came together to help me, you know, re-establish my base here.

Currie: What are some of the papers that you write for?

Payne: Mostly the weekly press. The weekly press, that means the black press. But I also do some pieces for other weekly press; sometimes I do a guest piece for some of the suburban newspapers. Once in a while, they ask me to do something like that. But mainly, my papers that I serve are in California and Florida, all up and down the East Coast, Philadelphia, and Chicago, and Ohio. Those are the main places where my columns appear.

Currie: How many times a week do you write a column?

Payne: Once a week.

Currie: I imagine you've seen a lot of changes, then, because we're now in 1987.

Payne: Yes.

Currie: What's the difference in journalism now than when you started?

Payne: Well, of course, a lot of changes are because, in the first place, the way the news is handled now is quite different from what it was then. Most of it was quite parochial, but it's a broader base of news now. Even if it's local, it still has to have some kind of a national or even international slant to it, because that's the kind of world that we live in. And we're just one big neighborhood; the world is one big neighborhood. You have to be attuned. Maybe what's happening in Iran is now of consequence to the smallest town that's involved in it, because the fight between Iran and Iraq means that it affects oil prices and our fuel supply. Whether we know who the Ayatollah was, that's not the important thing. Who is the president of Iraq or the ruler of Iraq? But it's important to know the significance of the gulf war and why the U.S. has a presence there, and why other countries have been reluctant to come into it. Japan, for example, is still getting the largest benefit of the U.S. presence there, because Japan doesn't have to put out any money for a military presence. The U.S. is protecting the oil that comes through there. We need to know all about that. So nothing is really remote anymore; it's all a part of the whole fabric.

Currie: I'd like to go back a little bit now and ask you to talk about your life, with an eye to sort of summing up the major impacts of various things on your life. Maybe we'll go back to your early days with your family and your mother, your grandfather.

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I think what I'd like to do now is go through some of your memorabilia, with an eye to getting you to sum up your life. For example, I think you talked earlier about what an impact your mother had on your career.

Payne: My mother, she assumed the dual role of parenting after my father's sudden death, and so it was a struggle to keep the family together. Life was pretty bleak, you know, because we had to do without so many things. I was kind of a dreamer; I was kind of a maverick in my own way. I was restless with what was taking place in my school life. I was bored in some respects. My mother kept pounding into me that it was important for me to concentrate, and it was important for me to develop what talents I had. She recognized that I had a talent for writing; she recognized that I had a talent for reading. I was very, very perceptive about small details, and I could take small details and weave them into a colorful pattern of words. So she encouraged me in that. That was quite profound.

The other influence was my grandfather, my maternal grandfather, George Washington Austin. That's my grandfather.

Currie: Do you want to hold the picture?

Payne: Yes, that's Grandpa Austin. Grandpa Austin was a former slave, who came to Chicago early in the 1900s. He had come from Evansville, Indiana, because as a slave, he grew up in the Bowling Green area of Kentucky, and then following the emancipation, they moved to Indiana, where he and my grandmother were married there. He was quite a colorful character. He was the first politician in the family. [Laughter.]

Currie: In fact, in your article, Laughing with Life, you talk about him.

Payne: Yes.

Currie: You said he campaigned for James Blaine?

Payne: Yes, the first Catholic.

Currie: You wrote this "Essay on Aging," which I think you wrote five years ago, and you talked about your grandfather being a supporter of James Blaine.

Payne: Yes. James Blaine was a Republican and a Catholic, and actually, he was, I guess, one of the—well, Al Smith, of course, came later. Yes, he came later. But James Blaine was a Catholic. My grandfather campaigned for him, so we say that Grandpa was very, very, very—shall we say modernized, in that he had a viewpoint that religion shouldn't enter the picture. He was defeated, of course. Grover Cleveland won that election. But Grandpa campaigned in Evansville, Indiana, for James Blaine.

Currie: You talk in this essay about your grandfather being a little man.

Payne: Small! We used to say he weighed about 119 pounds soaking wet.

Currie: And you relate an anecdote where he one time came home with a little liquor on his breath.

Payne: Well, that was during the campaign. He had been campaigning so hard. In those days, they had the torchlight parades, and Grandpa was away from home. His job was as a waiter at one of the hotels, but he had taken time out to campaign. My

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grandmother was pregnant with her ninth child, George was away, and a distant relative came by, and she said, "Josey, if you never see your husband again, he was last spotted going around the corner, hollering, 'Hurrah for Blaine!'"

So the next morning, when he came home, he was a little tipsy. The legend—well, I don't know; my mother said I made this up, but I think it's a great story, that my grandmother turned him over her knee and spanked him good. [Laughter.]

Currie: You seem to have a lot of strong women in your family.

Payne: Yes. [Laughter.]

Currie: That leads to another subject. You were one of how many daughters?

Payne: There were six of us, five girls and one boy. I was the fifth child, but the fourth daughter. My brother was ahead of me.

Currie: I see. Do you think that being a girl in the family was an advantage or a detriment?

Payne: Oh, it gave us, I guess, a sort of sense of—I guess we were probably on the verge of feminism then, the feminist movement. At least I was, because I was very aggressive. The first stirrings of it. My older sisters were geared to conformity, but I had the first stirrings of the feminist movement.

Currie: Was there a difference in the way that your sister were raised and you were raised, and the way your brother was raised?

Payne: Well, they were older. They were older, so, naturally, they—and when my father died, they were just on the verge of going into teaching. The oldest sister was a very fine seamstress, and she worked in a very wealthy shop that catered to very wealthy clientele in Chicago. So she was quite fashion conscious.

Currie: But do you recall that there was a difference between the way your mother treated your brother and the way she treated her daughters?

Payne: No. My brother, well, of course, he was pinned in between women, but he never really enjoyed good health. He was always sickly, and so he, naturally, I think he must have had some rebellion against the fact that he was dominated by women all around him. But he had to conform to that. He later dropped out of school and went to work as a messenger for one of the insurance companies in Chicago. I think he was acutely conscious of the fact that there was an educational disparity between him and the older sisters, who had managed to go to college, local colleges. I think it bothered him a little bit.

Currie: Also, you showed me once a photograph of you as a very young child, five years old.

Payne: That was the time there was a great flu epidemic in Chicago, and I became quite ill, and was ill for quite a long time. My mother suddenly realized that I might pass away, I might die, so she said she was very disturbed because she didn't have any photograph of me. I don't know how it happened, but anyway, she didn't have a photograph of me. So there was a photography shop up on 63rd Street, about five blocks away, so they bundled me up and rushed me up there to have that picture taken,

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so my mother would have something in case I passed. When people see it now, they become hysterical, because I look like anything but dying in that picture. [Laughter.]

Currie: What do you think you look like?

Payne: A chubby little girl. [Laughter.]

Currie: You said that people look at it and they get hysterical.

Payne: You can see I was pretty healthy-looking, don't you think?

Currie: You look very serious.

Payne: Solemn, but I was pretty healthy-looking.

Currie: Also, we have a picture here of—

Payne: One snowy winter day.

Currie: In Englewood.

Payne: Yes. My brother and I are standing in front of the house.

Currie: What memories do you have of your house in Englewood?

Payne: 6210 South Throop Street. Oh, it was a spare house, but there was a lot of warmth and love in that house, and there were always extra people in the house. There were some good days and some bad days. I remember when we were doing a general housecleaning, and I broke a mirror. And my mother was so concerned about it. She followed the old folk ways, so in her mind, it was bad luck. So we wrapped the mirror up in newspapers, and my older sisters and I got on the streetcar, and we went down to the Chicago Reiver. [Laughter.] I turned my back to the river and tossed the broken mirror over my shoulder, so that there wouldn't be any bad luck in the house. That was just an old wives' tale. [Laughter.]

Currie: Was it part of the tale that you had to throw it in the river?

Payne: Yes, get rid of it.

Currie: Do you think it worked?

Payne: Well, maybe it did. Who am I to say? It was all part of the struggle of keeping together, keeping alive, keeping the wolf from the door.

Currie: Looking back on your life, what do you think the greatest impact of the way you were raised, your childhood, had on your later career?

Payne: Very religious, stern upbringing, very highly moralistic household. My mother drummed it into us day and night that we had certain codes of conduct to live up to, and a lot, a lot of prayer. My mother was great for calling the family together and holding prayer sessions. I guess that was her lifeline, because it was just hard in those days, and particularly growing up in a segregated area. So that is the way she

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kept the family together. I don't practice it, I confess, now, but I think I still have that strong basic upbringing of my childhood.

Currie: That belief in prayer? How would you characterize it?

Payne: I'm not really a very religious person, but I do have a very strong code of conduct about life and living and service to your fellow individuals, your fellow man, your fellow community. And that's what I've always based my life on.

Currie: How do you think that this upbringing affected your career in journalism?

Payne: Like I said, it was my mother's strong influence and her insistence that I do something with the talent that I had that led me into it. See, I think I said to you before that I really am a frustrated lawyer. I wanted very much to become a lawyer, because I had an idea that I wanted to champion the rights of poor people, underprivileged people, not realizing that I was poor myself. But I really wanted to do that. I thought that law was the way to do it. But, of course, there were two things. My academic background was not that good. but I did apply to the University of Chicago Law School, and they just simply did not—I don't know how many women they accepted, but I know they did not accept any blacks at that time. So when the opportunity came for me to go into journalism, I really saw that as an alternative to the practice of law, because I found that there were many parallels between the two professions, at least the type of law that I would have liked to have practiced. If I had had the opportunity to go to law school, I would have focused on civil rights and civil liberties. But I found that going into journalism, particularly where you could be independent and voice your own views, that that served the same kind of purpose that I would have liked to have done in the law.

Currie: Are there any regrets about your chosen path?

Payne: None whatsoever. It's been a great experience. I've had a box seat on history, and I've been able to chronicle some of the major events that have made a change in society, made a change in the law. So at least I've been a witness to that, and I've participated to the extent that my writings may have helped to influence some of that change.

Currie: I know we talked earlier about your first overseas assignment.

Payne: Yes. That was in 1955. One morning, I was lying in bed in my Washington apartment, and I got a call from Chicago, from the publisher of the Chicago Daily Defender, and he asked if I would be interested in going to Bandung. I was sleepy. I said, "Bandung who?"

He said, "Bandung, Indonesia." And he said, "You know, there's a great world conference going on there, and we need someone to cover that. We think that you could do it." So I immediately came to life, and he said, "Yes, come out to Chicago, and we'll talk about how you should approach this."

So I went back to Chicago, and we sat down with the editors of the paper, and we mapped out a way. Then we decided that since I was going to be over in that area of the world, that I should come back and make some reports from other stops. So that's why we laid out an itinerary for me to visit India, Ceylon, Pakistan, and then come on up through Europe and report from there. So in all, I reported from nine countries as a result of that trip.

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Currie: From the Chicago Defender, there is a picture of you with—it looks like a big ad for your series.

Payne: Yes, a promotional thing.

Currie: What is "The World"?

Payne: Well, it was the first conference of color, of the colored people of the earth, which meant black, brown, yellow, red, and so forth. It was exclusively a conference of the colored people of the world to discuss their conditions and to issue a manifesto, so to speak, of what they expected their responsibilities and their role would be in the shape of the world. So the conference was significant. There were 29 countries altogether that came, and they really represented two-thirds of the earth's population.

It was of great, great significance to the Western world, the so-called Western world, because they were excluded from it. But they sent, naturally, observers there, and they had swarms of reporters there. But I think there was a growing feeling that this was a threat of some kind, and so we never really got the full essence of that conference. Today, as I look back and I go through research sources, I seldom come across any relevant material about that conference, which I think probably was one of the most significant conferences that's ever been held, an international conference.

Currie: When you look at this photograph of yourself, how old were you then?

Payne: Well, I must have been about 30 at the time. See, I got a little late start. I must have been about 30.

Currie: Maybe a little older.

Payne: Yes.

Currie: What do you think? Because if you started—I think you were 38 when you started in journalism.

Payne: I was in my thirties, I know.

Currie: What do you think when you look at the photograph of your younger self? What was that woman like?

Payne: I wish I looked like that now! [Laughter.] Yes.

Currie: What was this younger woman like?

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

Currie: What did you learn as a journalist from covering this conference?

Payne: I think the significance of covering that conference was to get the viewpoint of the many things that make up a global village, so to speak, what the people of Asia and Africa, how they fit into a mosaic of the whole population of the earth, what their concerns are, what their problems are, how they view the world, how they go up against the dominant powers that control the world, the industrial might of the world.

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Those are the larger problems that faced the people at Bandung. They make up the vast majority of people, but they have, as one historian noted, probably one-sixth of the power of the world. And it was a coming together to kind of sort of flex their muscles, to assert themselves, and to be recognized. And it was on the verge of independence for many countries. For example, the African countries that attended were still under colonial rule, but two years later, began the first independence, and that was Ghana. From then on, you just had this burgeoning of independence, political independence, that is. Unfortunately, the political side of it has not kept pace with the economic or the technological skills, so these countries still are largely dependent upon the industrialized countries.

Currie: Was that the first time that you had to cover a story with so many angles?

Payne: Absolutely. It was quite a challenge to me, very much of a challenge. It was my first exposure to a broader landscape of people and personalities and ideologies. You had to deal with the religious aspect; you had to deal with the political ideologies, the tribal differences, a whole range of things that I had never dealt with before. So I had to try to understand what was happening there.

Currie: Did you have to deal with language differences?

Payne: Well, there were language differences, but proportionately, there were English translations. They did have English translations, yes.

Currie: How did you go about learning how to get your stories?

Payne: I guess there's an amusing side to this. I guess I was lucky, shall we say, just plain lucky. There is a pendant there, I think, among my memorabilia. That has a great deal of significance. It's a piece of ceramic put together by my sister, who was very talented in that way. And she made this locket, and she just added these squiggles in black. I loved it. I loved the piece. I wore it with my press credentials. I wore it around my neck all the time.

When I got to the conference, there was an elaborate system set up for the press that was covering, but they knew that they were going to face a very critical press and some very hostile press, perhaps. So they had three sets of credentials, and I was cleared for the three. But in the meantime, I found that I was able to move in and out of the conference site itself, and that I was able to get into some of the sessions that were closed to the rest of the press. I just accepted it as a matter of fact.

One day, as I was walking to the conference site, the late Chet Huntley, who at the time was representing the Los Angeles Times, fell in step with me, and he was just almost distraught about the way the conference was proceeding, because at the conference, you had people like Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was at odds with our government. He was from Egypt. You had Chou En-Lai from China. Of course, China was still closed to the rest of the world. You had Nehru from India, who chaired the whole conference. You had U Nu from Burma, and you had a man from Ceylon, named Sir John Kotelawala. These were all people that the West really did not really understand or knew much about, and so the conference was seen as a threat to some people.

That was what Chet Huntley was expressing to me. He said, "I don't want you to be taken in by this propaganda." And I just laughed and moved on as we got near the conference site. No one challenged me. They had a circle of Indonesian soldiers

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guarding the conference, and I just walked through, as usual. They lifted their rifles and let me through. And when Chet Huntley stepped up, they brought the rifles down and pointed at him, and he became very indignant. He wanted to know why this was, and he was fuming and fussing, and they were still jabbing at him, you know. I was on the other side. It suddenly dawned on me, well, really, I was a part of that whole conference. I was a person of color, and I think they had been particularly lenient with me, or tolerant or whatever.

I never realized what the significance that locket played until an interpreter came and tried to settle the dispute. Chet was angrily protesting that I had been let through, and he had not been let through. So after a long period of talking, the interpreter came up to me and said, "Aren't you a member of the Saudi Arabian delegation?" [Laughter.] Here I was in Western attire. The Saudis, you know, are not known to favor women to that extent, you know, to allow them that much freedom. But they interpreted it, because they thought it was Arabic writing. So I treasure that little piece of ceramic now, because that seemed to be my passport to getting into the conference. It was quite a hilarious moment.

Currie: It got you in, where other reporters didn't get in.

Payne: Yes.

Currie: You subsequently went on a number of foreign assignments.

Payne: Yes. Two years later, it was Ghana, when Ghana became independent in 1957.

Currie: What were some of the significant foreign assignments that you have had? Wasn't Bandung the first?

Payne: Really, technically, it was called the Asian-African Conference, but it became known as the Bandung Conference.

Currie: I know we talked about the Nigerian civil war in the other tape.

Payne: Yes. That came later.

Currie: What were some of the other foreign assignments?

Payne: Well, let's see. I covered one of the World Council of Churches meetings in Uppsala, Sweden.

Currie: You also, I believe, were with the first group of journalists to go to China.

Payne: Yes, that came in 1973.

Currie: How did that happen?

Payne: Well, you know, Richard Nixon went to China in 1972, and he was credited with opening that country to the Western world. Then after that, people began clamoring to get in. They had barred journalists from coming in, Western journalists. Then a few months after Richard Nixon had been there, then they decided that they would let small groups of journalists in. That was one of the first groups that got in. There were just eight of us that went.

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Currie: Do you remember who else went?

Payne: The other woman in the picture is Susan Sontag, who is well known as an intellectual writer. Her parents had been in China, and she likes to say that she was conceived in China. [Laughter.] But she was born in the United States. There's a gentleman in there who is a prominent editor of a number of health magazines; he's made quite a fortune off of that. One of them was a man who was the editor of the Arkansas Gazette. And there was a fellow from the Knight Ridder newspapers. Some of them I don't recall now, but there were just eight of us. I was invited purely on the fact that at the time I was broadcasting for CBS, and many of them had heard my voice. I was recommended for that.

Currie: Do you know who recommended you?

Payne: I think someone in the State Department.

Currie: What did you learn from that trip?

Payne: It was probably one of the most exciting experiences I ever had, because I felt like when we crossed the border and went into that, we closed the door on one society and entered into a totally different society that few people knew about or understood. You see, China was still very much under the austerity that had been imposed by Mao Tse-tung. And shortly thereafter, there occurred the Red Guards. You remember that period where they instituted their own revolutionary standards, and China was in the throes of change. So it was significant that we were allowed to come in. Of course, we were regimented and programmed, but that was because they were very fearful and reluctant to open the doors completely. Richard Nixon had put sort of a crack in the door, but they still weren't ready for full acceptance into the Western way of doing things. And Mao himself was going through some period, because he had to have been the father, so to speak, of the revolutionary movement when he instituted the long march 25 years before. But he wanted to keep it a very pure society, with no disruptions. So it was very difficult in those days.

Currie: What kind of stories did you write about China?

Payne: First of all, I was impressed, because it being the largest nation in the world, there had been a great, great problem of feeding those people. Movies had been done about it. My interest was in how they were taking care of the food and the health needs of that population. I was impressed by the fact that they had largely conquered the hunger situation, and that they had advanced on a vast program of networking to take care of the health needs of people, combining the primitive with the modern types of medicine. So those were the most significant things to me.

Currie: You were writing for the Defender at that point, too?

Payne: Yes.

Currie: Did you write columns for them about China?

Payne: I wrote columns; I wrote special pieces, special articles.

Currie: And you did something for "Spectrum" on China, too?

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Payne: Oh, yes. But they didn't have—you know, it was a curious thing. The CBS people wanted very badly for me to do some broadcasting from inside China, but either they didn't have the technology or the equipment, or else they used that as an excuse, but I did my first major reporting from Hong Kong, after I crossed the border again.

Currie: What were the differences in working in an electronic media and working in the print media, which you had been doing for so many years?

Payne: It was much more demanding, the electronic media, because you had to do an instant, on-the-spot analysis and summary. You used much fewer words to get your point across. The one thing I learned about it is the economics of wordsmanship, because where you tended to string things out, you had to learn how to compact them to three sentences, three phrases, brief descriptions. So that was a challenge.

Currie: During this time, too, I remember we talked about your personal life a little bit, because that had an impact on your professional life. You described a series of apartments as cracker boxes, and you said you never really settled in anyplace.

Payne: No, no. I didn't have time to; I was too busy pursuing stories, and even to make a semblance of a real lifestyle that I could really call my own. So I lived in a series of small apartments, and just sort of camped out.

Currie: How would you organize your life?

Payne: Well, it was pretty hectic, because there was so much going on. I was trying to cover so many events at one time. I found that the best way for me, as a one-person operation, was to cultivate enough contacts that I could use the phone and save some of the leg work. So that's where I built up a resource bank of people who would call me, or else I would call them and get some background. But I was really working around the clock, because if something was taking place on Capitol Hill or some government agency that was of urgent importance, I had to be there. I couldn't very well substitute just the telephone contacts; that was to help me assimilate the facts that I had found and get some additions to it, some interpretation of it.

So it was a pretty rugged existence. I know that most of my stuff went out by mail, and I would find myself going down to the post office at weird hours in the morning. In those days, the cabs were much cheaper, and I used cabs to get around. Pretty soon, my habits began to attract the attention of a number of cab drivers who had formed sort of a benevolent, protective association for me. [Laughter.] I'd be out until two and three o'clock in the morning. Somebody would be riding around, and they'd spot me coming out of the post office, and they'd say, "Come on, get in. It's time for you to go home." [Laughter.] So I had that kind of a unique and enjoyable relationship with the cab drivers of Washington.

Currie: There was a funny anecdote you told Jacqueline Trescott in the Washington Post. I think this sort of says something about where your priorities were. You had invited Richard Nixon over to your house.

Payne: Yes. In 1958, we had about 35 people in the press corps who had accompanied him to the independence ceremony at Ghana, when Ghana became independent. It was known as the Gold Coast, and then it became Ghana. Nixon headed the official delegation. So on the spur of the moment, on the anniversary of that trip, Simeon Booker, who was the Washington bureau chief for the Johnson Publishing Company, said, "Why don't we get together?" I had just moved into another apartment on Belmont Road,

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Northwest, and it was larger, roomier, but I didn't have anything in that apartment. I had just moved in with my books and my newspapers and other junk. It so happened that it was in a building that had a huge foyer, and that played a significant role. The owners of the building lived on the fifth floor. Simeon said, "Where should we have the gathering? We want to do a little bopping and a little boozing."

So somebody said, "Well, let's have it at Ethel Payne's."

I said, "Well, I don't have anything in the apartment."

They said, "Well, that's fine. We can boogie on the floor." [Laughter.] So what happened was that at Simeon's insistence, I had just dropped a note to the Vice President and Mrs. Nixon, saying that we were going to get together, and if they cared to, they could come by. Well, I never dreamed that they would accept. That following Tuesday—this was going to be on a Saturday that we were going to get together—I got a call from the Vice President's office, who said, "The Vice President and Mrs. Nixon will be happy to attend the party." Well, I panicked! I just absolutely panicked. I didn't have anything in that apartment.

So what I did was I rushed down to the Hecht Company, and I went to the manager. I said, "I've got a problem."

He said, "What's your problem?"

I said, "The Vice President is coming to a party we're having on Saturday evening, and I don't have any money, and I don't know when I'm going to be able to pay for this, and I don't have any furniture."

He said, "Well, I think we can help you out." So he sent somebody out, and they did a little inventory of what I needed, and the next day, the truck rolled up with furniture, dishes, everything.

Currie: You really didn't have anything!

Payne: I didn't have anything. I was taking my time about trying to get something, but the Hecht Company stocked that place. Of course, later on I paid for it. But that's how I did it.

The next-door neighbor in the apartment, she said, "Well, since you all want to use the apartment for talking and getting together and sharing some drinks, why don't I have the food over here?" So she opened her doors. She had the food layout over in her apartment. Then we had a little band come in, and they set up in the foyer, and we moved the coat rack out there, and it turned out to be a whale of a party. All 35 of those people came. Even one U.S. senator came. When the Nixons arrived, they had—he came in. Somebody took a picture of them coming in, and he had under his coat a bottle protruding. It turned out that that was a bottle of 119—I have the bottle upstairs; it's never been opened—119 proof whiskey that had been bottled just for him, and he was bringing that as his contribution to the party. We never opened it. It said on it "The President's Choice." That's what the label said. [Laughter.] When we talked about it, we said, "There's something significant about the label," and it turned out it was prophetic, because he did become President later.

Currie: You've covered Presidents from Eisenhower on through to Reagan.

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Payne: Yes.

Currie: What changes have you seen?

Payne: Each one had his own particular style of governing. Each one had something distinctive. I like to say, very briefly, that Eisenhower was the reluctant President. He was drafted, you know, because he was a great war hero, and he was popular. The Republicans figured that he was just their gift. So I think he got to like it a little better, but I don't think he really had an instinct to go after the presidency. You know he beat out Senator Robert Taft for the nomination. Well, it was all programmed thereafter, a Madison Avenue thing. But there was something unique about his presidency, in that he really had no major international problem to confront him, except the U-2 thing that came later. But he didn't have the wars and the conflicts such as Jack Kennedy confronted immediately as he came into office. He was confronted with the Cuban crisis.

Currie: What were the differences as a reporter covering these different Presidents?

Payne: Eisenhower was the first and, I guess, almost the last President that I can remember who held press conferences on a regular weekly basis. You always knew that on a Wednesday or a Thursday, there was going to be a press conference. I think he had more press conferences than any other President. Jack Kennedy had a few. Well, he did, he had good rapport with the press. Make no mistake about it. I don't know whether it was because of his charisma or what, but he enjoyed a good relationship with the press. It was not so with other Presidents who followed. Lyndon Johnson had a kind of rough time with the press, although he tried to cultivate the press.

Currie: Did he try to cultivate you?

Payne: Well, see, I had taken time out to work with the Democratic National Committee for a brief period, and yes, he got to know me because of my association with the people at the Democratic National Committee.

Currie: Then covering Nixon, you had covered him as Vice President.

Payne: Yes. When Nixon came into office, he remembered me, and he invited me to go on Air Force One when Whitney Young died suddenly. He was an outstanding civil rights leader. So he asked me to accompany him in the plane to Lexington, Kentucky, for the funeral services of Whitney Young. That was an opportunity to see how Air Force One really worked.

Currie: Of course, Richard Nixon has a pretty bad reputation among most press.

Payne: Yes, but I seem to have had a closer personal relationship with him than any other President.

Currie: Do you know why that is?

Payne: I think it was because of the Ghana thing. We were pretty close together during the Ghana trip.

Currie: The Ghana trip was—

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Payne: That was in 1957. We were kind of a closely knit group following him around. I remember we made one side trip up to a village in the hills to one of the Ashanti chiefs, and we could hear the talking drums as we approached. When we got up there, the old chief, when he sat—I can't describe the magnificence of some of those chieftains, because they had ebony skin which is oiled so that it would look like satin, and gold, gold, gold. I never saw such gold in my life as they wore. Gold around ankles, gold around their arms and everything. Because Ghana had been named the Gold Coast. So a lot of gold came out of there, and these chiefs were very powerful people. He had an interpreter, whom they called the linguist. This person had been educated in America, so he spoke very beautiful English. Nixon began this dialogue with him, and he said he was very happy to be there, because he was the first American high-official to visit that country. There was an exchange, and the interpreter said, "We welcome you, but you're not the first American to come. Adlai Stevenson was here." Well, the old chief broke out—

[End Tape 1, Side B; Begin Tape 2, Side A]

Payne: Nixon said, "Him Democrat, me Republican."

To which the old chief replied, "That's okay by me." [Laughter.]

And then there was a ritual, tribal dances and performers, and the old chief looked over and saw me. I stood out in the group. The story goes that the African chiefs prefer heavy women. So he looked over and saw me, so he beckoned to some of the women, and they began to draw me in the circle. There I was in the circle, dancing, so I got teased about that. They said maybe the chief wanted to acquire me as one of his wives. [Laughter.]

Currie: Did he ever say anything?

Payne: No, no. That was just a ceremonial visit. We left, of course.

Currie: Did the chief give you the artwork?

Payne: No, it wasn't the chief. It was some years later that the ambassador of Ghana to the U.S., who was a very, very popular person, he made friends all over the country, and his name was Kojo Debrah. He was a very vivacious person. He liked to meet people, and he traveled around. We became very close friends. When he got ready to leave—he was called home—he had a vast collection of art, and I had admired this one because it was so typically West African. It symbolized the spirit of Africa, I think. This is called "The Gathering of the Chiefs," and it was done by a local artist in oil. He said, "You like this so much, I think you should have it." So all I had to do was pay for the cost of transporting it, and I've had it all these years now.

Currie: When you look back on your life, can you tell me what was the happiest time for you?

Payne: Well, most of the times were happy, except for the time that I went into the South to cover the protest movements. I found myself becoming very personally involved in those events, because I knew that that was a significant moment in history. Somehow you could feel the pain and anguish that accompanied that. I was there shortly after Rosa Parks initiated the whole protest. That was in December of 1955 that she was arrested. So shortly thereafter, I think, I flew down to Montgomery

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and I followed that whole story throughout the period. It went on for almost a year, and out of that grew the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and there were other protests in other cities in the South, in Birmingham and in Georgia and other places. So I covered most of those civil rights stories. Those were not happy times; they were very poignant, very tragic times.

Currie: Why?

Payne: Because it was an evolution that had turned into a revolution of race relations in this country, and it was a significant moment in American history, because, I think, the conscience of America was really at stake. I'll never forget, when Time magazine chose Martin Luther King to be man of the year, and that was back—I don't remember the exact year, but it was either 1957 or 1958. I'll never forget, in the story that accompanied the piece it was said, "He struck where it was least expected, and that was the white Christian conscience of the South." The South is the bible belt of America, and southerners are very proud of their traditions, but they also consider themselves very God-fearing Christians. If ever the Christian ethic is at work, it's in the South. Unfortunately, it hadn't been tested yet in the melting pot of racial relations, but the South was very cognizant of it.

It's strange, because all throughout the Bork hearings, you see this repeated, and it's very interesting to me, because they say in the Bork hearings that one of the reasons why some of these southerners have gone against the Bork confirmation is because they didn't want to reopen old wounds that had healed in the area of race relations. Now, that's very significant that you get so many southerners going along with the opposition, to a man who is supposed to be a true conservative, but they considered his views too extreme, too narrow on the right of privacy, too extreme on the civil rights issue. They don't want to go through that painful trauma that occurred in those years, when the whole thing was bubbling and coming to the surface.

Currie: Do you think the civil rights movement was the most significant story you covered?

Payne: It probably was, if I would pick out one single thing, I think, because it means that I have lived through a period of significant change. The whole pattern of race relations in this country is taking a sharp turn, and I was in it from the inception, and I'm still seeing the effects of it today.

Currie: And you're still covering, essentially, the civil rights movement.

Payne: Yes.

Currie: How did the civil rights movement affect journalists?

Payne: For black journalists, particularly me, I think it made us know that we could not stand aside and be so-called objective witnesses. We were absolutely unable to make the distinction between what is "objective journalism." So I adopted a code of trying to be fair, but I could not divorce myself from the heart of the problem, because I was part of the problem. So I had to learn how to report and not to sensationalize it, to give the essence of the story, and to somehow or other transmit my own views into that total picture.

Currie: Have you seen the status of black journalists change?

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Payne: Greatly. When I came in, I think I was one of two black women in the White House press corps. Now it's routine, almost, to see blacks everywhere in journalism. You see them on the national scene; you see them as anchors; you see them as camera crew people; you see them everywhere throughout. The one missing place is in the managerial level. There's only one black general manager today in television; that's Ron Townsend at WUSA.

Currie: What about women? How has the status of women journalists changed?

Payne: Well, it's still changing. It's still changing. There are many more now than there used to be, and many of them, I think, I knew when they were struggling to get in, when they were coming out of journalism schools. I guess it's a matter of pride to me that they always say now that I helped them to make those breakthroughs, and I'm very glad of that. But there is still some prejudice against women, because we still have that kind of society. We don't have too many women at the highest levels of either the print media or the broadcast media. Exceptions could be Katharine Graham, of course, and the woman in California, I think, with the Times, one of the Chandlers. But you don't have too many women who are really at powerful levels in the news media, certainly not in broadcasting. You have, of course, Diane Sawyer; you have Leslie Stahl, people like that, but you don't really have too many women who control news.

Currie: It's interesting that you said people say that you have made breakthroughs for women. How do you think you did that?

Payne: Myself? Well, I'm a hard worker and always have been. I have tried to maintain the upbringing that I had as a child. I've never accepted any kind of bribe or anything to influence the kind of writing that I do. It just absolutely never crosses my mind to do that. I think because I've kept to a very high ethical standard that probably that has been an inspiration to younger women coming up. They know the kind of work that I do; they know the way that I will analyze and produce that news; they know that I'll take chances, and I have a penchant for going behind the major news stories to get what's really happening behind the development of that story. It's not coincidental that my weekly column is called "Behind the Scenes." My particular forte is going behind the scenes to see. [Tape interruption.]

Currie: You were saying your torte is going behind the scenes.

Payne: Yes. I think it's important to bring out the kernel, what I call the kernel of the story. How did that story get started? How did it develop? What significance does it have for the clientele that I serve mostly? Blacks are generally outside the circle of power, so they need to know exactly the who, what, why, when of why a particular issue developed, particularly in foreign policy. We know too little about how foreign policy is made, how it progresses. In the Iran Contra hearings that just concluded, much of that was brought out, that the whole American public is not aware of. So I consider that one of the most important areas we have before us now.

Currie: I'd like to ask you what you'd do differently if you had the chance. We talked earlier about when you went to Japan to join the Army Special Services, to become a hostess.

Payne: Yes. The Red Cross had been doing recreational work, and then in 1948, they pulled out. So what they called Army Special Services took over.

Currie: You described leaving a fiance waiting at the dock.

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Payne: Yes, I promised him that I would come back in a year, but it was three years before I got back.

Currie: And you never did.

Payne: No. He went on, and I don't blame him.

Currie: And you never married?

Payne: No.

Currie: You said in an earlier interview—and I didn't follow up on it then, because I wanted to talk a little more—you said you would have liked to have married and had a family.

Payne: Yes, I would have.

Currie: Why do you think you didn't?

Payne: Because I was so engrossed in my work, absolutely, totally immersed. I was married to my work. I think the kind of lifestyle that I lived would not have been compatible in the least with a married life, particularly with my rigid, almost puritanical upbringing that my mother believed in family, family, family. You know, we came out of a milieu where it was a matter of pride for the father, the head of the household, to provide for that, no matter how little it was. And wives weren't supposed to go out and do work; the husbands were supposed to do that, provide for it. But my father was taken away before he could really do it. He died at a very early age. So that forced a change.

But I would like to have been married, yes, and have children of my own, but as I look back on it now, maybe— [Tape interruption.]

Currie: You were saying, "I would have liked to have married, but as I look back on it now—"

Payne: It wouldn't have fit in. It would not have fit in.

Currie: You were saying marriage just wouldn't have fit in.

Payne: No, I don't think so. It wouldn't have been fair to a husband or a family, because if I was going to continue in that pursuit of the news and dispensing of the news, it just wouldn't have fit in.

Currie: So that was a conscious decision that you made?

Payne: It was a conscious decision, yes. I just dismissed marriage as maybe not for me.

Currie: Did you find your other women journalist friends—

Payne: There are many of them that have had that same kind of problem.

Currie: In other words, they decided that the career was so demanding?

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Payne: Yes.

Currie: Did you ever talk about that with them?

Payne: No, I never made an issue of it. I just went ahead, and I was so absorbed in my work, I don't think it even bothered me.

Currie: Do you think that was a decision that women had to make that men did not?

Payne: I would think so, yes. While today you have—I wonder how women juggle that career and family, because many of them are married and have children now. But of course, that whole attitude has changed since I came along. At the time I came along, it wasn't quite acceptable, but now, over 50% of the U.S. population, women make up a major part of the work force in all facets of life. So women in journalism have had to juggle that. Look at Jane Pauley, how she has juggled hers, and the young woman on "Good Morning America." But on the other hand, you have Diane Sawyer, who has never married, and you have Helen Thomas, who married very late, the dean of the White House press corps. So it's a matter of choice, I guess.

Currie: You talked about one of the most difficult periods in your life. What was the happiest period?

Payne: Happiest period? I've had so many happy periods, I really can't single out too many. I know I had happy periods when I've seen successes of others, when I've seen breakthroughs for women and men in all kinds of capacities. I think I was extremely happy when Thurgood Marshall was named Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. I was happy with the 1954 school desegregation, because I thought it was a turning point in American history. The Voting Rights Act was really exciting to me, because I thought that this probably was one of the most earthshaking events in our whole history, when it opened the doors. Of course, as a result of that, thousands of Negroes, thousands of black people have been able to not only participate in the electoral process, but also to become decision makers—mayors, sheriffs, people at the state level. Look at Lieutenant Governor Wilder of Virginia—never thought that that would ever occur. But we have made a lot of progress.

The point of the whole Bork hearing, I think, is that we don't want to see that progress diminished. It's very much like Barbara Jordan said during the Nixon impeachment hearings, she said, "You know, when the framers of the Constitution wrote that document, I was not included in it, but somehow, through legislative process, the 13th, 14th, and all other amendments, I've become a part of that process, so I do not want to see the diminution of that process." That's a very good analogy, because I think that not only do we have to hold on to what we've gained, but we have to fight on for greater inclusion.

Currie: In the last ten years in particular, you've become something of an icon in the black community.

Payne: That's what they call me. [Laughter.] I suppose I am sort of a symbol to many people, because my career has spanned nearly four decades. I think what I've been able to accomplish, if you look around, you see the acquisition of so many tributes. I have so many plaques, I don't know what to do with them. But people have recognized that I have represented them pretty well, and so they pay tribute to me. [Laughter.] I don't like to be viewed particularly as an icon or a national treasure,

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but it helps sometimes when you're going across the street, to ask somebody to help you. [Laughter.]

Currie: As a final question, is there anything in your life that you would do differently?

Payne: I wouldn't change a thing—nothing—because it's been a fascinating adventure. I think that I have not gained materially, but I certainly am rich in experience, and I have gained a great measure of respect. I just would not change a thing. If I had to do it all over, I'd do the same thing.

Currie: Not many people can say that.