SMNTY Classics: The First Lady of the Black Press

When trailblazing reporter Ethel Payne died, The Washington Post eulogized that had Payne "not been black, she certainly would have been one of the most recognized journalists in American society.” Cristen and Caroline uncover the history and significance of black newspapers in the U.S. and the incredible legacy of one its brightest stars in this classic episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Stephane.
Never told your protection of I Heart Radio. So Samantha,
my question for you is twofold today. Yes, first, did

(00:26):
you ever write for a newspaper, perhaps at your school?
And secondly, have you ever been featured in a newspaper?
So I feel like these questions call out how boring
I am. I just want to go ahead and put
that out there because my other is no, I have

(00:47):
never written for a newspaper. That's never been a thing
that I've ever wanted to do. Journalism was not my thing. Surprisingly,
not surprisingly, I think that's true. So no, I have
not written. I think I definitely did like the journal stuff.
So when we really had the yearly poetry stuff or
any of that, I did literaturely related but not necessarily

(01:08):
journalism related. So thank you for calling out my boring one.
I did get featured a few times, the one Asian
girl in a small town gets your feature. Before I
even came into the US, they had my picture up.
They had kind of a birth announcement except for it's
an adoption announcement, um, and thether just got that clip

(01:29):
as well. Anytime the school does anything I would be featured.
Turned out, I think when I went on my mission
trip for the year, I got featured. But yeah, those
are the times. Well, actually, I feel like this happens
to us a lot because we are from very small towns,
so we have similar experiences in that way, because I

(01:52):
too was often featured I won't say often, but to
me too many times to be featured for pretty boring
things in the newspapers. So I was in there once
because I want an Easter egg hunt, Oh I want.
I was very very competitive, And then I was featured

(02:14):
for funny things like actually it's not really funny, but
it's funny to me. But like when I got swine flu,
they wrote an article about it and they had my
picture and I was like, I think this is illegal,
but anyway, And then when I went to when I
got a job at a house to works, actually it
was during the recession and people were having a lot

(02:35):
of trouble finding jobs, and they reached out to me
and they interviewed me for that, and it was embarrassing
because you know, sometimes you really are just in the
right place at the right time. There's no advice you
can really give. Like my story doesn't apply to most people,
if that makes sense. Like it was just kind of
a random event, but they did a whole article on that,

(02:59):
and that was embarrassed. And then I wanted I wanted
to award in high school Star Student Award and they
did an interview with me and that My friends still
make fun of me with that interview because I was
so like embarrassed and frazzled. They it was embarrassing. Well,
you know what I will say, My partner just got
a phone call from the news broadcast. They're doing a

(03:21):
whole thing about the Wall Street butts stuff and he's
kind of gotten some Reddit fame. Yeah, very excited about
this as it should be. Yes, yes, yeah, yeah. My
my mom's like the sweetest person. And I was recently
like mentioned like literally in one short sentence in Atlanta

(03:44):
magazine and she subscribed to Atlanta Magazine. Well you were
thinking not too long ago you and Lauren for Saver.
Yeah yeah, but it was really short and she subscribed
like a year. But it's very very sweet of her.
And I did work for the high school newspaper a
little bit and that was a fun that was a
fun project that I enjoyed. But for today's classic, we

(04:04):
wanted to talk about somebody who's famous in this world
of press, the first Lady of the Black Press, and
we hope that you enjoy this classic episode. Welcome to
Stuff Mom Never told you from how stupp works dot com. Hello,

(04:28):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline,
and today we're talking about the first Lady of the
Black Press, Ethel Payne. And Caroline. This was personally such
a fascinating and also at times horrifying and disconcerting topic
to dig into, partially because you and I were journalism

(04:51):
majors in college. That's how we met, but not surprisingly,
considering all the factors we're going to talk about in
today's episode, we never heard the name Ethel Payne in
any of our j school classes. Yeah, because by and large,
the Black press as a whole was pretty much invisible

(05:11):
to white readership. So it really ran parallel to the
white press, starting really before the Civil War and petering
out in its strength and numbers in the mid sixties
and seventies. And as you said, Caroline, it was invisible
to the white population back then. But in a lot

(05:32):
of ways too, that's still the case today in terms
of the history and influence of the Black press. I mean,
it was so influential in the civil rights movement even happening,
and also in politically enfranchising black communities around the nation
and really making them uh political force. And Ethel Payne

(05:56):
is one of the shining stars who comes in toward
the end of the Black press is sort of industrial influence.
And when she died, just to give you listeners an
idea of how influential she was, but at the same time,
how much like racism in the United States was so

(06:20):
overwhelmingly powerful in the sense of holding people back as well.
When she died, a Washington Post editorial noted, had Ethel
Payne not been black, she certainly would have been one
of the most recognized journalists in American society. Oh, without
a doubt. I mean this this woman was amazing. She

(06:42):
is amazing, and her legacy is incredible. But the thing
is so few people just in mainstream society know about
her and the incredible influence she had over the civil
rights movement. Yeah, and so in today's podcast, we're going
to talk about Ethel pain, of course, but first we

(07:03):
want to lay some groundwork to position her within this
history of the black press in the United States and
focusing in on the women who helped build that. And
as we're going through this, I think it's important to
keep in mind all of the social movements that were
happening and being promoted within these newspapers as well. And

(07:27):
I'm talking about suffrage and when leading up to civil
rights and like all of all these political issues that
we're still talking about so much even today with the
Black Lives Matter movement um, and how these black presses
were so crucial for enfranchising this people who were otherwise

(07:49):
just cut off in very literal ways that we're going
to talk about in terms of the media, because it's
not like the white press was going to be covered
civil rights. It really took people like Ethel Payne pushing
to get this stuff covered. So let's start in seven.
This is the same year that slavery was abolished in

(08:11):
New York State, and you have two freed black men,
John Russworm and Samuel Cornish who launched the weekly paper,
Freedom's Journal, And this is the first black owned and
operated paper in the United States, and it was started.
The motivation behind it, it was started to counter the
racism of the mainstream press, and Freedom's Journal was the

(08:32):
paper of record for the three hundred thousand free blacks
living in the North and an advocated abolition, anti lynching,
voting rights, political rights, and the possibility of African repatriation
as well. So they're talking about all of these issues,
and it's it's notable too that it's the paper of

(08:54):
record because for much of obviously the you know, the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, white papers wouldn't even cover black obituaries, right, Yeah,
that's that that's a huge issue that you see mentioned
again and again when you read about the black press
and and racism of this era, that the bread and

(09:15):
butter of newspapers is essentially the ads, and that includes obituaries.
You have to pay to put your obituary in the paper,
and so you've got the obituaries and classified and just
regular advertisements of black families and and wedding announcements and
and all sorts of things like that that white papers
just wouldn't run. And you have black newspapers who are

(09:36):
not only delivering the news to their communities, but also
serving as a way to deliver that information as well.
So jumping back into our timeline if we hoped to
eight fifty two. The Fugitive Slave Acts were past a
couple of years prior in the United States, and with
the Fugitive Slave Acts, it became legal for freed slaves

(10:01):
or escaped slaves to be arrested if they cross state
lines and sent without any kind of questioning whatsoever back
to slave owners. So in eighteen fifty two, Maryanne Shad Carrie,
who had emigrated to Canada because of the Fugitive Slave Acts,

(10:21):
became a spokesperson and editor of the pro immigration Provincial Freeman,
encouraging other African Americans to high tail it up north. Yeah,
and just briefly, Marianne Shad Carry, if you're not familiar
with her, is an incredible person. She was the first
woman at Howard University Law School, but she couldn't graduate

(10:42):
because Washington d c. Did not admit women to the bar,
so she had to go back ten years later and
get her degree at the age of sixty. So just
keep that in mind. She's an impressive lady. She was
also a lady ahead of her time. I mean she
argued for suffrage rights under the Fourteenth Amendment and linked
the importance of women's suffrage to female labor and entrepreneurship. Yeah,

(11:05):
I mean, and it's with issues like that, the female
labor and entrepreneurship where we start to see how white
suffrage and all of those conversations that we've had around
that in past episodes overlooks issues relevant to women of color,
because labor is huge for women of color and is

(11:26):
a bigger issue than it is for often wider, wealthier
women involved in the suffrage movement. But when we get
to eighteen sixty, at the start of the Civil War,
they were already more than forty black owned newspapers throughout
the United States, and thirty years later, in eighteen ninety
suffrage and abolition leader Josephine st. Pierre Ruffin joins those ranks.

(11:49):
She launches the Women's Era, which is the first newspaper
published and written by and four black women, and four
years later in eighteen ninety four, by the way, Ruffin
would go on to organize the Women's Era Club, which
was a group specifically meant to advocate on behalf of
black women and to offer a little broader context to

(12:09):
the importance of that this was happening post suffrage movement
schism after black men were enfranchised and given the right
to vote, but female suffrage was not granted. So you
have that split where Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Katie
Stanton start to align themselves with the more racist supporters

(12:35):
who are not so keen on integrating women of color
in their cause, and then you have in response, women
like Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and others starting the Women's
the Black Women's Club movement, organizing within their communities for
community uplift, basically saying, listen, if you if you all,

(12:56):
y'all are going to help us, We're gonna help ourselves.
We've been doing this. And someone else who was highly
instrumental in that movement was Ida be for Badass Wells,
who was best known as an anti lynching journalist um In.
She kicked off her anti lynching campaign after her paper,

(13:17):
The Memphis Free Speech closed following a white mob vandalizing
it in retaliation for an article that she wrote denouncing
the lynching of three black Memphis men, and she and
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin would later come together through the
Women's Club movement. Because Ida B. Wells would like go

(13:38):
around and visit all these women's clubs and help start them,
and they would later help form a larger suffrage organization
focus solely on women of color. And in nineteen o five,
we get a newspaper that we will revisit more a
little bit later, but we get the Chicago Defender, and
it really urged blacks in the South to move of

(14:00):
north as part of what's called the Great Migration, and
it was massively influential in the Civil rights movement. So
then from nineteen twelve to nineteen fifty one, a woman
named CHARLOTTEA. Bass serves as the publisher of the California Eagle, which,
by the way, it was formerly known as the Owl.
And why would you change the name of a newspaper

(14:21):
from the Owl to a California Eagle. I'm just saying
the owl. That's cool, that's a I guess I like owls. Well, owls.
Owls can turn their heads really far and see things,
which is great. And but eagles are like, oh, we're
I'm an aggressive eagle. I've got my talent is going
to rip up this newspaper. See I don't, it's not
meshing in my brain. Um. But back to Bass, she

(14:44):
used the paper as a platform to denounce racist imagery
in the media. She particularly attacked birth of a Nation.
They also attacked issues that sound very familiar today, police brutality,
discriminatory high firing practices, housing discrimination, even in the phase
of death threats, and FBI surveillance. Yeah, I mean you

(15:08):
could be talking about the Black Lives Matter movement in
that It's absolutely still relevant. But fun fact. Uh. In
nineteen fifty two, so the year after she stepped down
as publisher of The Eagle, she became the first African
American woman to run for national office as the vice
presidential candidate on the Progressive Party ticket. And I also
wanted to mention how in black paper the Chicago B

(15:34):
was started and it was on staffed by women. I
don't have any deeper information on that, but I saw
that and was like, oh, we should mention that right
on Chicago B. Now one of our really smart listeners
is going to write in I predict and tell us
about the Chicago B. And I'm already looking forward to
reading that letter in our listener mail segment in the future.

(15:54):
Um And just three years later, in the Atlanta Daily
World becomes the most successful black paper in the country,
and it's the only one to publish daily instead of weekly. Yeah,
and the weekly publication of most of these black newspapers
is going to come back into play when we move
into talking about the Washington Press Corps. But we want

(16:17):
to re emphasize to why these papers mattered so much.
I mean, we talked about how the white press just
completely disregarded Black communities, obviously perpetuating racist myths about the
black communities, um even refusing again to publish obituaries. But
the thing was this, these were such crucial resources sharing

(16:42):
uplifting stories about the black community and emerging stars like
Lena horne Um. They also pointed readers to employers who
didn't discriminate. It engaged these communities politically and expose them
to the writing of leading intellects like Linkston, Hughes, Marcus Garvey,
and Ernil Hurston. And there's been scholarship on how the

(17:04):
Black press in that way, speaking of like Links and Hughes,
Ernel Hurston laid the groundwork for the Harlem Renaissance as well. Yeah,
And as you might imagine, when you provide a community
with resources that they need and enjoy, that can translate
into big business for the publishers who are running those papers.
For instance, Chicago Defenders publisher Robert s Abbott became one

(17:28):
of America's first black millionaires. So by the time we
get to the World War two era, the black press
is up and running. It is powerful within these black communities,
but it's still operating separately from the quote unquote mainstream
read white media. And that was the case even in

(17:52):
the heart of Washington. Yeah, it's crazy, although not terribly
surprising to read about how even in the press core
like of the White House Press Core or the Capital
Press Corps, black reporters faced not even discrimination, yes, discrimination,

(18:13):
but they just were barred from entry and participation. Uh.
The white White House and congressional reporters had very little
interest in inviting their black peers into the conversations that
were happening. I mean, they just weren't prioritizing any type
of civil rights issues whatsoever. Um, the local black papers

(18:33):
were basically forced to rely on two wire services, the
Associated Negro Press and the National Negro Publishers Association. But
for a lot of other information they sort of had
to get it almost second hand. A lot of black
papers would get their news from white newspapers and then
spin it to then be relevant to their audiences. Yeah.

(18:56):
I mean, because this is even before obviously the civil
it's really starts picking up. I mean, but there were
new Deal policies happening that they were otherwise uninformed about,
like any any political development, imagine not having access to
that information. We have it so instantaneously now thanks to Twitter.

(19:19):
But in this era, this entire community was at least
intentionally like and strategically cut off. And we should say
too that this background info is coming from a book
reporting from Washington, a History on the Washington Press Corps.
And here's the thing. The White House Correspondence Association, you know,

(19:41):
that group that throws those hilarious dinners every year, um it,
and the presidential and congressional press conferences it controlled remained
all white until nineteen But that was only because FDRs
Press secretary need a black policeman and in the groin,

(20:01):
and because of the fallout with that, FDR was like, okay, okay, okay,
we gotta we gotta open things up a little bit.
Let's let's integrate. So it was the press, not the politicians,
keeping members of the black press out of presidential and
congressional press conferences, and along those same lines, the National

(20:24):
Press Club only admitted white men. And you know, we
mentioned that a lot of times black papers and news
agencies couldn't even get access to press releases. They relied
on other news outlets to sort of hear what was
going on in Washington, but they also relied on word
of mouth. Secretaries and custodians around the Capitol would often

(20:47):
share what they overheard, even you know, snag a document
or two off of the mimeograph machine that means copy machine,
you young people. Um and journals would also consult the
qute unquote black cabinet of the highest ranking black officials
at the time, including Mary McLeod Bethune and in nineteen
forty four, the Atlanta Daily worlds Henry McAlpin becomes the

(21:11):
first black journalist to cover a White House press conference,
but he was still denied admission to the White House
Correspondence Association. It wasn't until nineteen fifty one that Louis
Laudier became the first black reporter admitted to the Correspondence Association,
and ps that organization remains overwhelmingly white, as only seven

(21:37):
of the fifty three regular correspondents were journalists of color.
The Washington Post reported, Yeah, well, Laudier was considered a
pretty safe choice to start this integration idea because he
was already a Department of Justice stenographer who was a
freelance journalist, and so um people in the government were like, Oh,

(22:00):
he's going to be pliable. We can just get him
to do whatever we want. And so in their minds,
that was a lot safer than getting maybe an ethel Pain,
for instance, who might be more of a firecracker. So,
considering such an outright hostile and racist environment, how on
earth could a woman of color break through the ranks.

(22:23):
We're going to talk about that when we come right
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a better way to cook. So we keep teasing you

(23:55):
about Ethel pain like when are we When are we
going to dig in to old Ethel? Here? Where is not?
We're just gonna keep saying her name and then it's
gonna hint at it finger well, so we will talk
about Ethel. We have so much to talk about, but
first we have to talk about a predecessor. So Ethel
was almost the first black female reporter in the White

(24:16):
House Press Corps. But her work builds right on top
of that of one Alice done Again, and Alice Donegan
herself is a pretty impressive figure with a lot of
first She was the first black female journalist accredited to
the House and Senate press galleries, the White House, and
the Supreme Court. And she was the first to travel

(24:37):
with the US President, that president being Harry Truman during
his nine whistle stop tour of eighteen Western states. And
I love the story where she was traveling. She was
the only black woman, but there were also two black
male reporters traveling with this whistle stop tour and Truman
makes an unscheduled stop I think in Montana or Wyoming,

(25:01):
one of those states. And uh, I think it was
at night. It wasn't planned. She gets off the train
because one of her colleagues back home had been like,
you always need to get off the train. Cover everything,
keep your ear to the ground at all times. But
her two uh, black male colleagues who had no interest

(25:23):
in getting off the train. But it just so happened
that at this unscheduled stop. This was Truman's first time
mentioning the importance of civil rights to America and she
got the story, but at the risk of losing her
spot and the press corps. She refused to share her

(25:44):
story with the rest of the pool, particularly her two
black male colleagues, because she was like, oh, you're not
going to get off the train. Well, then, I clearly,
as a woman, have had to work harder than you
I am. She she has this great quote about, um,
you know, women have to work harder because they're not
as secure in their positions and they have to prove themselves,
which is obviously something we still talk about on the

(26:06):
podcast today. Um She's like, well, no, I'm I'm just
going to write this story and submitted. Well, and one
of those dudes, one of her colleagues, was Louis Laudier,
and he was not helpful to her either. He was
outright rude about her and Ethel Payne when Ethel Payne
um steps onto the scene and they were outright competitors. Um.

(26:29):
So for a little more about Dunnigan, though, she became
the Washington bureau chief for the Associated Negro Press starting
in nineteen seven, and she was really the link between
the African American community and those early civil rights related
issues developing in Washington. Like you said, I mean she
reported on Harry S. Truman, mentioning this issue for the

(26:53):
very first time. But even just getting there, getting on
that train ending up in what wherever as Wyominger, Montana
was not easy, and she recounts her experience in her
nineteen seventy four autobiography Alone Atop the Hill in case
you're looking for some new reading material, and her account

(27:15):
of just initially trying to get into the press gallery
is exhausting. It is, but I mean she was. She
was relentless as well, she should be. I I admire
people who are relentless. Um, it is worth mentioning though
the subcurrent of what's going on here. Yes, she was

(27:35):
the Washington bara chief for the A and P. However,
this woman barely made enough to live on like she
and Ethel Payne and many many others had to work
second jobs if they wanted to pursue their passion of journalism.
So Dunnigan was initially thwarted from getting accreditation to access
the Capital Press Gallery because they said only daily reporters

(27:59):
were loud. This was strategic, people, because so many black
papers were either weekly or monthly and so she's like, okay,
I can't do that. She saw admittance to the Periodicals Gallery,
but they wouldn't admit her because she didn't write for
a magazine. Convenient Well, and all of this happened after

(28:23):
she submitted her application to get access to the press gallery,
didn't hear anything, didn't hear anything. Finally started checking in
and she knew she was like, I had to be
annoying at that point, and she pestered them to the
point that they finally were like, uh so, sorry, you
work for a weekly and that's too bad. So then

(28:43):
when she goes back around a second time to periodicals
like mm hmm, sorry, it's not a magazine. Well, so
finally the Senate Rules Committee has to hold a hearing
and they ordered news agency reporters to be admitted. Yeah,
so she gets in that way. I mean, it wasn't
specifically like you have to let black reporters in there,

(29:07):
like just you know, news agency wink wink um. But
she definitely did not get any help from fellow female
journalists in Washington at the time, as the Women's National
Press Club was whites only. Well, yeah, and they they
had her over for dinner at one point, and she
said that she was so intimidated that she didn't speak

(29:30):
the whole time, and so they didn't end up inviting
her to be a member. Seven years later though, once
she had established herself and her name and her writing,
they did invite her to be a member, and she
basically talks about how, like, yeah, I knew it was bs,
like this is crap. They wouldn't they wouldn't let me
in seven years ago, but suddenly they're like, oh, okay,

(29:53):
And she writes about how in her autobiography, she writes
about how it, for some reason took seven years for
the liberal white women to finally get around to deciding
that having a black woman, one black woman in their
ranks was okay. That was a thing that kind of
astonishing me over and over again reading this history of

(30:14):
the Washington Press Corps, partially, you know, because of our
journalism training and my own assumption that like, journalists are
more liberal, right, they're more open minded. You have to
be objective, that's the whole thing, right. No, No, they
were incredibly racist and exclusive back then, just like so

(30:37):
many other people. No, I mean, yeah, I'm I'm not
surprised whatsoever. I mean, I worked at an incredibly conservative
newspaper for four years, and reading the editorial pages, I
was like, I can't believe. So no, I'm not surprised. Yeah,
that's very true. I mean, and I know that of
course they were like a bazillion conservative punda and there's

(31:00):
an entire news network devoted to that kind of news.
But I guess, Caroline, I'm just a little starry eyed.
I'm a little starry eyed a cub reporter hoping everybody's
practicing some empathy. So hopping back into our timeline, it's
Alice done again, is making her name with so much

(31:22):
dogged persistence in Washington? And where selful Pain? Was she
up to? Ethel's on our way to Japan? Wait what? Yeah? Um,
I guess we should probably back up, okay and explain
we've teased you. We've hinted at Ethel's incredible life long
enough and they're like, wait, what she when she's in Japan?

(31:43):
What's happening? Okay? So backing up, way up. In nineteen eleven,
Ethel Pain is born in Chicago. She's the granddaughter of slaves.
Her dad works as a pullman porter, but he dies
when she's just twelve years old from a disease he
contracted from handling dirty laundry on one of the trains.
And up until this point, her mom had been a

(32:05):
full time stay at home mom until her father's death,
at which point her mom when became a Latin teacher
like you do just teaching Latin. Uh. But Ethel was
really inspired by a lot of what her mother taught her.
There was a lot of studying the Bible, but also
a lot of studying literature. There's some Louisa may Alcott

(32:26):
thrown in there. There's all sorts of reading that really
inspired Ethel to be a word person. And she actually
though dreamed of becoming a civil rights lawyer who would
work on behalf of the poor. But and this should
sound familiar to you if you have a studied history
or be listened to our episode on Polly Murray, but
h Payne was denied admission to law school because of

(32:48):
her race. So fast forward to Ethel Payne is hanging
out mining her own business and she encounters outside of
a tavern a group of twenty five black men being
arrested by white police officers, and wanting to know what's
going on, she goes up to one of the police

(33:09):
officers and it's like, hey, what what happened? Why are
these men getting arrested? And how does he respond? He
billy clubs her. Well, yeah, don't forget he first cusses
her out right and then yeah, this results in him
hitting her. So she gets hauled off to jail along
with all the all of these dudes who are getting arrested. Um.
She is released, but she basically says no and threatens

(33:34):
the police that she is going to go to the
press to tell them about all of his brutality unless
they release all of the dudes along with her, and
they do. Yeah. Yeah, she succeeded, um, and not surprisingly
a year later she's like, you know what, I'm going
to piece out. UM, So she leaves home and her

(33:56):
fiance who both move Ethel to be a hostess in
Japan for the Army Special Services Club UM, organizing recreational
activities and entertainment for African American troops because keep in
mind the military is segregated at this time. Now keep
in mind, you know, Ethel's a person with these huge dreams, right,

(34:16):
like a huge personality too. I mean, she's not afraid
to stand up even to the police, right. But she
had been working as a library clerk and was totally
bored and so that's when she like, she's bored in
her job. She's got these big dreams and a big personality.
She's experienced police brutality and is like, it's time to
go to Japan, as you do like you do. So

(34:37):
in nineteen though, a reporter from the Chicago Defender Guy
named Alex Wilson stops by Japan on his way to
report on the Korean War and they hit it off,
and she ends up showing Wilson her diary and he's like,
this is sensational. This is the kind of information that

(34:59):
we really need to be reporting back to the black
community in the United States. So he asks her and
she grants her permission for him to take the diary
back to Chicago, and he ends up turning the diary
entries into a front page news story about the experiences
a black soldiers stationed in Japan. And it is not

(35:21):
a pretty picture that she paints. She highlights not only
segregation but also this huge issue of black soldiers fathering
children with Japanese women and then of course leaving um
and the story is huge, so huge in fact that
in one the Chicago Defender is like, listen, you're a

(35:44):
good writer, you have an eye for news. Obviously, why
don't you come back from Japan? Will give you a
full time job. Yeah, And so she looks at this
opportunity and basically says, I wanted to be a lawyer.
I wanted to change the world that way, but that's
not going to happen. Here's another way that I can
fulfill what I perceive as my duty, my desire to

(36:07):
change the world. Pen instead of gavel. The pen is
mightier than the gavel, I don't know, or or a
lawyer's briefcase, The pen is mightier than a matlock suit.
Is that? Yes, that's actually perfect um. And keep in
mind that that The Chicago Defender was actually banned in

(36:27):
a lot of towns because it's motto was that American
race prejudice must be destroyed. I mean, I think that
that's a basic, important statement, but that was dangerous to
a lot of people. So because it was banned in
so many areas, you have those pullman porters who would
stash copies in their lockers and drop them at barbershops

(36:49):
and churches along their southern roots, and her dad had
been one of those people when he worked as a porter.
He had been one of the people stashing those copies
of the newspaper in his locker so that he could
distribute them full circle legacy. Well, and speaking of mottos too,
I would like to note that the Chicago Defender's motto

(37:10):
well compliments her personal motto that she borrowed from Frederick Douglas. Agitate, Agitate, Agitate.
Oh yeah, there's no there's no removing her personal views
from her work. And I mean this is critical to
to who she is and what she accomplished. I mean,
you know, people talk about agenda journalism and advocacy journalism,

(37:32):
and Ethel Payne denied that she had a bias, but
that whatever bias she had, it was for the truth.
And I think that work like hers is still incredibly important.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Yeah, and I
quickly want to mention too that she's hopping into her
job at the Chicago Defender untrained, So I think this

(37:54):
is around the time she starts taking some classes at
Northwestern's Middle School of Journalism. So any Northwestern alums or
students listening shout out to y'all. I would have loved
to have been in a class with Ethel Payne. Can
you imagine? Well, you're probably like, well, I'm sure it
would have been cool. Why do you say that? And
it's because she's a freaking rabble rouser, which will get

(38:16):
into more like if you can already tell like, we're
really excited about Ethel Paine. She's kind of a journalism
hero um. But so after starting her full time job
at the Chicago defendsh she quickly makes her mark in In
In nineteen fifty two, her story on the adoption crisis
among African American babies won her an Illinois Press Association
Award for Best News Stories, and she also quickly established

(38:41):
her complete disinterest in fluff pieces. Don't assign Ethel a
feature story on because even when she was a sign
of fluff piece, she would still find the hard news
angle in it and find a way to insert her
views on the topic. And that's probably why by three

(39:01):
her press compatriots or for dour as a newsman's newsman
kind of like you know, a comedians comedian, she was
a newsman's newsman. Now sensing her ambition and also that
instinct for hard news. The Chicago Defender needed someone to
take over in its Washington bureau, so they're like, Ethel,

(39:26):
head on out to d C. It's only gonna be you.
You will be a one person bureau, but you can
do it. And they I love the fanfare with which
the Chicago Defender announced Ethel going to Washington on the
front page. The headline read, miss Ethel Payne, one of

(39:46):
the Chicago Defenders crack news and feature writers, has been
assigned to Washington. Q Celebratory trumpets. Yeah. And she would
later go on to talk about how having a seat
at the table, so to speak, really forced the mainstream
white media too not only hear about and acknowledge, but

(40:09):
also report on issues of civil rights that they were
completely ignoring. Um. One of the first things that she
reported on was the fact that the Howard University choir
had been diverted away from performing during the Republicans annual
Lincoln Day dinner, and of course the white press did
not report this. There were a couple of choirs, one

(40:30):
was from Emory, one was from I think it was
Duke University Duke, and so Howard was the third. Well,
the two white choirs get through just fine, but the
Howard buss is diverted a couple of times, and because
they want them to go into a special back entrance.
And this outraged pain and so she reported on it,
forcing other people to finally recognize like, Okay, well, I

(40:53):
guess there are issues that we are ignoring. Yeah, and
this is Eisenhower's turn that she is stepping into and
right on the heels of the Howard University incident during
all of this, uh Lincoln Day celebrating that the Republican
Party was doing. She was outraged at Sherman Adams, who

(41:18):
was chief of staff, because he apparently specially requested for
a black face performer at another Lincoln event, and she
sent him a telegram. I mean, this woman has like
barely been in d C. Like a week, and she
is sending a telegram to the president's chief of staff

(41:38):
basically saying, listen, there could have been a better way
to represent black people on quote such an occasion, more
dignified and in keeping with the progress of the race.
I mean. She clapped back, well, I mean you also
have to keep in mind what she herself was facing
while she was walking the streets of Washington, d c

(41:58):
I mean, she had to deal with cabs not picking
her up, not being admitted to restaurants. UM. When she
was traveling to cover story, she had to stay in
private homes instead of hotels, particularly in the South. There's
one story UM where she was staying in a white
professor friends house and rocks were threatened through the window.
The professor ended up getting evicted from his own apartment UM,

(42:21):
simply because he allowed her to stay there. And she
wasn't afraid to speak or rather write her mind about
the civil rights issues that were really starting to bubble
up at the time. I mean, when Brown versus the
Board of Education Supreme Court decision was handed down in

(42:43):
nineteen fifty four, she wasn't kicking up her heels about it.
She was distraught and called it a poor compromise because
they did not stipulate a timeline for integration. So she
was like, there's no timeline, and so this is going
to be a mess because we're gonna have to go
state by state now and protests will happen. I mean,

(43:04):
and she predicted all of this stuff that did happen.
And she also had this presecent instinct about the civil
rights movement as it was developing. She was one of
the first to spotlight the significance of Rosa Parks and
even MLK. She was like, there's this preacher in Atlanta,
used twenty seven years old, and watch out for him. Well, yeah,

(43:27):
She was one of the first to note how the clergy,
the black clergy, were sort of leading the way in
the civil rights movement. And she was also though critical
of MLK. She's not like she gave him a free pass,
but she did voice concerns about airing laundry in a
way that would attract the white press's attention. She wanted

(43:49):
to definitely support leaders like MLK, and she wanted him
to succeed, but she also wanted to do her due
diligence of being a critical reporter who could analyze the situation.
But there was that concern that if the white press
catches wind of any criticisms, they might just run with
it and not give him a seat at the table.

(44:11):
And that's something too, that's so so fascinating about the
role of the black press at the time, and particularly
the handful of them who were in Washington, because there
were all these separate conversations that would be happening within
these black newspapers. I mean that was their functions since

(44:32):
what eight But like you said, it's like they could
speak but not too loudly so as to not attract
too much attention. We'll we'll come back to that in
just a second. But we should know that she probably
covered and participated and more civil rights events than any
other journalist at the time. I mean, she she was

(44:54):
there for the events that were happening in six She
was there for the Montgomery bus boycott and the desegregation
efforts at the University of Alabama. In ninety seven, she
was in Arkansas for the Little Rock nine and I
think that's where she was staying in the professor's home
and got the rock throne in the window. That's war
to nineteen sixty three, and she's hopping into the activism herself.

(45:19):
She demonstrated in Birmingham, she participated in the March on Washington,
and two years later she marched from Selma to Montgomery
to demand voting rights. Yeah, and she unintentionally question mark
made civil rights and national issue when during a press

(45:40):
conference with President Eisenhower, she asked when he would ban
segregation in interstate travel and he was none too pleased.
I mean, this was not just a black press issue.
Everybody reported on how angry Eisenhower got and how he
used clipped tones and clipped words with her. Uh. This

(46:03):
effectively moved civil rights into the national news cycle, and
it drove Eisenhower on a more personal note to Boycott
ethel Payne. I think in the rest of her time,
the couple of years that she was still in the
press corps, he just answered maybe two of her questions
in her remaining time. Yeah, And I believe that happened
in when he when he got his feathers all ruffled.

(46:28):
And when I was first reading this, I was like, wait,
so what what Why did him getting annoyed set off
national headlines and like the Washington Post and all of
these bigger newspapers. And then I read his exact response
and was like, oh, so, in response to her question
of just like, okay, when are you gonna like, uh,

(46:50):
you know, enforced desegregation of interstate travel, he said, quote,
the administration is trying to do what it thinks and
believes to be decent and just in this country. Okay,
following you, Mike. But then he says, and it's not
in the effort to support any particular or special group
of any kind. Who All right, so you are framing

(47:12):
the African American community as a special interest group, and
with that, civil rights becomes a national conversation. It's not
just happening within the Black press anymore. It's funny though,
because both Ethel Payne and Alice Dunagan had annoyed the
president at these press conferences with these these gal reporters,

(47:35):
as their colleague Lewis Laudier called them. Yeah, he was
so dismissive of Alice and Ethel. But at the same
time too, I mean, remember, yeah, that Ethel and Alice
are in Washington at the same time, and I mean,
talk about personality differences. You have Alice Dunnagan, who was
so much more reserved, and then Ethel comes in and
she's such a bulldozer. And when incident with Eisenhower happened,

(48:02):
the Black press freaked out. They accused her of being
overly assertive because it was again it was that issue
of like, Okay, we can't we can't make too many waves,
don't like act out because it's taken so much for
us to even get in the room in Washington. But
she did not care at all about likability. Um. She

(48:24):
had a great quote saying, I admit it, I was obnoxious,
stubborn and absolutely impossible to work with, impervious to all
suggestions as to how to behave with civility. But when
you're a black reporter man or woman, that's part of
your job. Yeah. I mean, but there were other reporters
as part of that press corps who were saying that
that question should have been asked anyway, And instead of

(48:45):
being like tisk tiss ethel, were like, hey, why aren't
the rest of you asking these questions? And because of
her work, and because of how political she was, and
because of how involved she was, she was the only
woman invited to lbj's off is for the signing of
the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. He
only invited people who were important and critical to the

(49:06):
civil rights movement, and she was one of those people.
She ended up actually getting two of the pins that
he used to sign those acts. Um. And you mentioned
earlier about how she wasn't necessarily an objective journalist, as
much as she claimed that she didn't have bias, but
I mean she it was never really her goal, like

(49:28):
you talked about. I mean, her goal was to whether
whether she you know, kind of was blind to her
own biases. She was really driven to uncover the truth.
And in talking about that, she once said, the privilege
of being a White House correspondent, wasn't that enough? Why
couldn't I be quiet and not stir things up? Well,

(49:50):
I didn't think that was my purpose. If you've lived
through the black experience in this country, you feel that
every day you're assaulted by the system. You're either acquiescent,
which I think is wrong, or else you just rebel
and you kick against it. Yeah, and she says I
wanted to constantly, constantly, constantly hammer away raise the questions

(50:10):
that needed to be raised. And she later said that,
you know, I was part of the problem if I
didn't speak up. So she felt compelled to speak up.
This is a woman who had wanted to be a
civil rights lawyer for the specifically for the poor and disenfranchised.
So you know, she's made quite the name for herself.
She's an incredibly successful reporter, and so the Chicago Defender

(50:34):
actually sends her overseas to be their international reporter. So
she goes back across the ocean, and lands in Vietnam
on Christmas Day, nineteen sixties six. She was the first
African American woman reporter to do this. Well, I mean,
she was the first member of the Black press to

(50:54):
go to Vietnam period too. I mean, and it was
super rare for just a female correspondent period to a
exist but then also be in a war zone. And
her reporting over there of a situation for African American
troops in the war was so important because back in

(51:15):
the United States, the community was really divided over Vietnam
because of the irony of US soldiers being over there
fighting to allegedly free a people while its own people
had to fight tooth and nail for equality. But at
the same time, Ethel Payne was not overtly critical of

(51:36):
the war because this was the first time the army
was fully integrated, and she considered the black soldiers quote
free of racial barriers. Well. Part of that was that
a lot of reporters at the time, a lot of
black reporters at the time, were encouraged by their home
papers to try to gloss over any potential racism or

(51:57):
segregation that was still lingering. They want to present a
better picture to the people back home. Um, in order
to support the war, in order to support African American soldiers.
She would later go on to say that she regretted
not being more critical of the war. Yeah, and and
after Vietnam, I mean, she just continues traveling. She reports

(52:18):
on the Asian Africa Summit in Indonesia. She travels to
Ghana with President Nixon. UM and side note on that
when I think it was was it Kissinger? He specifically
requested her. He said he wanted that woman who gives
me hell on CBS to accompany him. Oh my god,
I love it. Um. And she ended up going to

(52:38):
China with Susan Sontag and a group of other people,
and they were I think one of, if not the
first group of Americans who went into China, Like who
were even allowed in China at that time. But in
the nineteen seventies, she ends up finally retiring from the
Chicago Defender. They tried to make her Um actually like

(53:00):
manager of the local news operations. She was just like,
I can't do this. I'm not into this local stuff. Sorry.
But she's then hired on by CBS and becomes the
first black female news commentator for a major radio and
TV network, And I think it was in an interview
with Gwen Eiffel, the author of one of these fantastic

(53:21):
books about black women, journalist talks about how um there
was a well known black male newscaster who told this
author that I saw um ethel pain on television and
I knew I could do that too. And that story
it just gives me goose bumps because we talk all
the time about like role models and seeing yourself represented.

(53:45):
And not only is this a black person feeling like
I can achieve something in a white dominated industry, but
it's a man seeing an incredibly inspiring woman on screen too.
If you see it, you can be at Caroline. And
as she was working for CBS, she also continued expanding
her reach with syndicated columns. UM so she'd be she

(54:07):
was a well known name around the country. Um. And
she died in and there was a quote that she
gave talking about how she had a box seat on
history and she was like, I like to think that
I helped change things. She did. She for sure wanted
to be remembered as an agent of change, and without

(54:29):
a doubt she was, Yeah, I mean, the the only
sad part about it is how unsung she has been. UM.
But we should also note about the black press at
the time after the Civil rights movement, it really starts
to fade from relevance as these larger newspapers start hiring

(54:49):
the best and brightest black journalists and they begin actually
covering civil rights and other African American relevant issues. And
then on top of that, you have the girl success
of Ebony and Jet magazines that kind of pushes these, uh,
these black newspapers out of business. I mean, because you've

(55:09):
been have higher ad rates. I mean, now we're just
getting into the weeds of how um journalism operations were.
But essentially they were evil and her counterparts did such
a good job they kind of put the black press
out of business in a lot of ways. But you
see sort of the repeated re emergence of a vocal

(55:32):
black press so to speak nowadays, not to use the
word nowadays and sound like an old but you have
all of these incredible voices emerging online on Twitter. You've
got the route which I love to read, UM, that
is bringing up issues that are relevant to communities of
color that again the mainstream press is not paying the

(55:54):
same attention to. Yeah, I mean, and the media might
have changed, but I think that the voices are getting louder.
I mean because it's also not just journalists and established
thinkers like Jamil Smith, but you also just have the
existence of black Twitter. I mean that it's I mean,
there's that level of organizing that is happening. It's just

(56:18):
more digital than I r L. Yeah, and I think that.
And I don't want to put words in Ethel's mouth.
I'm sure she would be more than happy to spit
them out. She would be more than happy to speak
for herself. Um. But I think she would be really
excited by the social justice landscape today. I mean, she
was absolutely an agenda journalist because I mean the truth is,

(56:43):
you do have to change people's hearts and minds from
the ground up. Yes, yes, when you get Supreme Court
rulings and legislation, that is the ultimate goal, But first
you have to do a lot of mind changing. And
that was that was her goal. She wanted to change
people lives. Yeah, I mean, and and also too, I
mean Supreme Court decisions and legislation, that's not where it stops.

(57:05):
I mean, think about her reaction to Brown, I mean
just being so um, so upset at almost how toothless
it was. But speaking of ethel Pain being alive today,
oh man, I wish she was on Twitter. Oh god,
I know I have the same thought or tumbler. Well, listeners,

(57:27):
now I want to hear from you. What are your
thoughts on all of this? Have you ever heard of
ethel Pain before? Are there people that we didn't talk about,
figures in the black press that we should have mentioned
that we didn't let us know? Help us fill in
all of the pieces of this story that all of
us need to know. So much more about mom Stuff
at how stuffworks dot com is our email address. You

(57:49):
can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or messages
on Facebook, and we have a couple of messages to
share with you right now. Well, I have a letter
here from Rachel in response to our miscarriage interview with
Dr Jessica Zucker. She says, heycy and see, it's me,

(58:10):
the gal who stopped taking sperano lactone so she could
get pregnant. Well conceived, I did, but it quickly ended
in an ectopic pregnancy. I opted to have surgery as treatment,
and literally the first time I looked at my phone
and recovery, I saw that the eye had a miscarriage
episode had dropped. It took me two weeks to bring
myself to listen to the episode, but I'm so glad
that I did. While my loss was early on, it

(58:32):
was certainly traumatic, with emergency major surgery and the loss
of one of my fallopian tubes. Although I didn't know
that I was pregnant until I knew that something was wrong,
I still had to grieve the disappointment and the perceived
failure of my otherwise healthy and somewhat youthful body, and
the loss of a crucial part of my reproductive system.
Something that I thought would be so natural and easy
was suddenly a disaster. I have found refuge in the

(58:54):
support of friends, family, and lady co workers, because when
you disappear for a week, at least keep people the
office have to know the whole story. When I tell
my story, I always say that the women need to
discuss the issues more. I mentioned to my husband that
what happened to us is rare. His response, no, it's not.
All the articles I've read say it's about one in
fifty pregnancies and anek topic one in fifty. That is

(59:18):
so much more common than I ever would have expected.
Pregnancy laws in any way, is a very real possible
outcome of conception, and I just keep thinking that if
we had been hearing about it in a real and
honest manner our whole lives, we would have been better
equipped to deal with the situation. Thank you for the
interview with Dr Zucker. It could not have come to
me at a better time. I'm sorry for that traumatic

(59:40):
experience you had to go through, but we really appreciate
you sharing your story. So I've got to let her
hear from Kim about our episode on NASA's Hidden Women,
and she writes, I wanted to comment on the word
hidden in your podcast title. You're sad that these amazing
women aren't household names, and some of them were impossible
to research. This the problem inherent in STEM fields. We

(01:00:02):
don't watch science like we watch sports. Great accomplishments aren't
often labeled great until we can look at them through
the lens of history, and much of the work is
done behind closed doors or private companies. So your podcast
is a great example of something I tell the women
engineers around me. Don't let your history be forgotten. Write
it down, talk to people. Even if it's complicated. Think

(01:00:23):
of the ways you could explain to a first grader
what it is you're doing to make the world a
better place. I'm an electrical engineer in the aviation industry.
What what? I helped figure out how to make cockpit displays,
radios and sensors work together. And I love all caps
my job. But growing up, I wasn't sure what electrical
engineers did. I liked physics and had a hunch I

(01:00:46):
could make it. It was a gutsy decision, but it
should have been an obvious choice. Telling our stories and
all the other ones like Katherine Johnson's will make us
less hidden and will help all of the next girls
know that they're taking the right steps into STEM and
I couldn't agree more. Kim and listeners, Now, we'd love
to hear from you, Mom Staffatt. How stuff Works dot

(01:01:07):
com is our email address and for links all of
our social media as well as all of our blogs,
videos and podcasts with our sources. So you can learn
more about ethel Pain and the Black Press. Head on
over the Stuff Mom Never told You dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it

(01:01:28):
How stuff Works dot com