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.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you. From how stupp
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Christen and I'm Caroline, and today we're talking about the
first lady of the Black preass Ethel Payne. And Caroline,
this was personally such a fascinating and also at times

(00:29):
horrifying and disconcerting a topic to dig into, partially because
you and I were journalism 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 Paine in any of our j school classes. Yeah,

(00:50):
because by and large, the black press as a whole
was pretty much invisible to white readership. So it really
ran parallel l 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,

(01:11):
it was invisible to the white population back then. But
in a lot 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

(01:33):
black communities around the nation and really making them uh
political force. And Ethel Payne 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

(01:57):
she was, but at the same time, how much like
racism in the United States was so overwhelmingly powerful in
the sense of holding people back as well. When she died,
a Washington Post editorial noted, had Ethel Pain not been black,
she certainly would have been one of the most recognized

(02:19):
journalists in American society. Oh, without a doubt. I mean this,
this woman was amazing. She 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

(02:39):
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 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,

(03:02):
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 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,

(03:25):
and how these black presses were so crucial for enfranchising
this people who were otherwise 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 covering civil rights. It really took

(03:46):
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 New York State, and you
have two freed black men, John Sworm 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,

(04:09):
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 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

(04:33):
all of these issues. And it's it's notable too that
it's the paper of 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

(04:54):
when you read about the black press and and racism
of this era, that the bread and 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

(05:16):
all sorts of things like that that white papers just
wouldn't run. And you have black newspapers who are 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 eighteen
fifty two, the Fugitive Slave Acts were past a couple
of years prior in the United States, and with the

(05:39):
Fugitive Slave Acts, it became legal for freed slaves 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,

(06:01):
who had emigrated to Canada because of the Fugitive Slave Acts,
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

(06:23):
woman at Howard University Law School, but she couldn't graduate
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

(06:44):
the importance of women's suffrage to female labor and entrepreneurship. Yeah,
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 the conversations that we've had around
that in past episodes overlooks issues relevant to women of

(07:07):
color because labor is huge for women of color and
is 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

(07:29):
suffrage and abolition leader Josephine st. Pierre Ruffin joins those ranks.
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

(07:50):
black women and to offer a little broader context to
the importance of that this was happening. Post suffrage movement
is um 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

(08:13):
Katie Stanton start to align themselves with the more racist
supporters 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

(08:37):
for community uplift, basically saying, listen, if you if you all,
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,

(09:01):
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 I B. Wells would like go

(09:22):
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

(09:44):
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
Charlotta Bass serves as the publisher of The californ An Eagle, which,
by the way, it was formerly known as the Owl.
And why would you change the name of a newspaper

(10:05):
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 baths. She

(10:29):
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 hiring practices, housing discrimination even in the face of

(10:49):
death threats and FBI surveillance. Yeah, I mean you could
be talking about the Black Lives Matter movement in that
it's absolutely still relevant. But fun fat 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

(11:10):
candidate on the Progressive Party ticket. And I also wanted
to mention how in nine five black paper, the Chicago
B 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

(11:31):
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. 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

(11:52):
of these black newspapers is going to come back into
play when we move into talking about the Washington press corps.
But we want 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

(12:15):
myths about the black communities, Um even refusing again to
publish obituaries. But the thing was this, these were such
crucial resources, sharing 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

(12:38):
and expose them to the writing of leading intellects like Langston, Hughes,
Marcus Garvey, and Zorneil Hurston. And there's been scholarship on
how the black press in that way, speaking of like
Lengths and Hughes, Ornel Hurston laid the groundwork for the
Harlem Renaissance as well. Yeah, And as you might imagine,

(12:59):
we 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 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

(13:23):
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 the heart of Washington. Yeah,
it's crazy, although not terribly surprising to read about how

(13:45):
even in the press core like of the White House
Press COREP or the Capital Press Corps, black reporters faced
not even discrimination, yes, discrimination, but they just were barred
from in rein participation. Uh, the white White House and
congressional reporters had very little interest in inviting their black

(14:07):
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 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

(14:29):
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. I mean, because this is even
before obviously the civil rights really starts picking up. I mean,
but there were new deal policies happening that they were

(14:51):
otherwise uninformed about, like any any political development. Imagine not
having access to that information. We have it's so instantaneously
now thanks to Twitter. But in this era, this entire
community was at least intentionally like and strategically cut off.

(15:12):
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, 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

(15:39):
But that was only because f drs Press secretary need
a black policeman in the groin, 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,

(16:00):
keeping members of the black press out of uh presidential
and congressional press conferences. And along those same lines, the
National 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

(16:21):
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 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

(16:44):
consult the quote unquote black cabinet of the highest ranking
black officials at the time, including Mary McLeod, Bethune and
In four the Atlanta Daily worlds Henry McAlpin becomes the
first black journalist to cover a White House press conference,
but he was still denied admission to the White House

(17:05):
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
of the fifty three regular correspondents were journalists of color.

(17:26):
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,
he's going to be pliable. We can just get him
to do whatever we want. And so in their minds,

(17:50):
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.
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
about Ethel Pain, like when are we When are we

(19:41):
going to dig in to old Ethel here, We're just 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 f black female reporter in the White
House Press Corps, but her work builds right on top

(20:04):
of that of one Alice Done again and Alice Donagan
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
with the US President, that president being Harry Truman during

(20:25):
his ninety 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,

(20:46):
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 every thing,
keep your ear to the ground at all times. But
her two uh, black male colleagues who had no interest

(21:08):
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

(21:29):
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

(21:50):
podcast today. Um She's like, well, no, I'm I'm just
gonna write this story and submit it. 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. So,

(22:15):
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

(22:35):
on Harry S. Truman mentioning this issue for the very
first time. But even just getting there, getting on that
train ending up in wherever it was, Wyoming or Montana
was not easy, and she recounts her experience in her
nineteen seventy four autobiography Alone Atop the Hill in case

(22:56):
you're looking for some new reading material, and her account
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

(23:16):
the subcurrent of what's going on here. Yes, she was
the Washington bara chief for the A and P. However,
this woman barely made enough to live on like she
and Ethel Paine 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

(23:39):
the Capital Press Gallery because they said only daily reporters
were allowed. 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 amit her because she didn't write for

(24:01):
a magazine convenient Well, and all of this happened after
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

(24:22):
point that they finally were like, ah, so sorry, you
work for a weekly and that's too bad. So then
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,

(24:44):
so she gets in that way. I mean, it wasn't
specifically like you have to let black reporters in there,
like just you know, news agency wink wink um. But
she definitely did not get any help from fellow female
journe ls in Washington at the time, as the Women's
National Press Club was whites only. Well, yeah, and they

(25:07):
they had her over for dinner at one point, and
she said that she was so intimidated that she didn't
speak 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

(25:28):
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,
And she writes about how in her autobiography she writes
about how it, for some reason took seven years for
those liberal white women to finally get around to deciding
that having a black woman, one black woman in their

(25:50):
ranks was okay. That was the thing that kind of
astonishing me over and over again reading this history of
the Washington press. Schools are 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

(26:13):
to be objective, that's the whole thing. Right. No, No,
they were incredibly racist and exclusive back then, just like
so 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,

(26:34):
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 pundits, and there's
an entire news network devoted to that kind of news.
But I guess, Caroline, I'm just a little starry at
I'm a little starry at a cub reporter hoping everybody's

(26:55):
practicing some empathy. So hopping back into our timeline, it's
Alice done again is making her name with so much
dogged persistence in Washington and where selful pain? Was she
up to? Ethel's on our way to Japan? Wait? What? Yeah? Um,

(27:16):
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?
What's happening? Okay? So backing up, way up. In nineteen eleven,
Ethel Paine is born in Chicago. She's the granddaughter of slaves.
Her dad works as a pullman porter, but he dies

(27:40):
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
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

(28:02):
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
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

(28:24):
sound familiar to you if you've a studied history or
be listened to our episode on Polly Murray. But Uh,
Payne was denied admission to law school because of 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

(28:47):
white police officers and wanting to know what's going on.
She goes up to one of the police officers and
it's like, Hey, what what happened? Why are these men
getting arrested, and how does he respond 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

(29:09):
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 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,

(29:30):
she succeeded. Um, and not surprisingly, a year later she's like,
you know what, I'm going to peace out. Um. So
she leaves home and her fiancee, who both move Ethel
to become a hostess in Japan for the Army Special
Services Club UM, organizing recreational activities and entertainment for African

(29:54):
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 h dreams, right, 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

(30:14):
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 in ninety 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

(30:36):
up showing Wilson her diary and he's like, this is sensational.
This is the kind of information that 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

(30:59):
front page news story about the experiences a black soldiers
stationed in Japan. And it is not 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

(31:22):
is huge, so huge in fact that in one the
Chicago Defender is like, listen, you're a 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

(31:43):
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 change the world. Pin
instead of gavel. The pin as mightier than the gavel,
I don't know, or or a lawyer's briefcase. The pen
is mightier than a matlock suit? Is that it? Yes,

(32:06):
that's actually perfect um. And keep in mind that The
Chicago Defender was actually banned in a lot of towns
because its 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

(32:28):
those pullman porters who would stash copies in their lockers
and drop them at barbershops 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,

(32:50):
and speaking of mottos too, I would like to note
that the Chicago Defender's motto well compliments her personal motto
that she borrowed from Frederick Douglas magic sate, 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,

(33:12):
you know, people talk about agenda journalism and advocacy journalism,
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

(33:36):
job at the Chicago Defender untrained, so I think this
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

(33:57):
would have been cool. Why do you say that? And
it's because she's a freaking rabble rouser, which we'll get
into more like if you can't already tell like, we're
really excited about Ethel Payne. She's kind of a journalism
hero um. But so after starting her full time job
at the Chicago Defenders, 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

(34:20):
Award for Best News Stories, and she also quickly established
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 ninety three,

(34:45):
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
inst anked for hard news, the Chicago Defender needed someone
to take over in its Washington Bureau. So they're like,

(35:10):
Ethel 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,

(35:30):
one of the Chicago Defenders Cracked 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,

(35:53):
but 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 Republican's
annual Lincoln Day dinner, and of course the white press
did not report this. There were a couple of choirs,

(36:15):
one 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 bus is diverted. A couple of times because they
want them to go into a special back entrance. And
this outraged pain and so she reported on it, forcing

(36:35):
other people to finally recognize like, Okay, well, I guess
there are issues that we are ignoring. Yeah, and this
is Eisenhower's term 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

(36:57):
was doing. She was out rage at Sherman Adams, who
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

(37:18):
is sending a telegram to the president's chief of staff
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

(37:38):
have to keep in mind what she herself was facing
while she was walking the streets of Washington, d C.
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

(37:59):
professors house and rocks were threatened through the window. The
professor ended up getting evicted from his own apartment UM,
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

(38:20):
up at the time. I mean, when Brown versus the
Board of Education Supreme Court decision was handed down in
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

(38:41):
was like, there's no timeline, and so this is gonna
be a mess because we're gonna have to go state
by state now, and protests will happen. I mean, And
she predicted all of this stuff that did happen. And
she also had this precinct 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.

(39:06):
She was like, there's this preacher in Atlanta, used twenty
seven years old, and watch out for him. Well. Yeah,
she was one of the first to note how the clergy,
the black clergy, were sort of leading the way in
this 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

(39:31):
way that would attract the white press's attention. She wanted
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

(39:53):
it and not give him a seat at the table.
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

(40:13):
these black newspapers. I mean, that was their functions since
what eighteen seven. 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

(40:35):
any other journalist at the time. I mean, she she
was there for the events that were happening in nine
fifty 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.

(40:57):
Fast War in nineteen sixty three, and she hopping into
the activism herself. 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

(41:23):
when during a press 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

(41:45):
with her. Uh. This 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

(42:06):
I believe that happened in when he when he got
his feathers all ruffled. 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

(42:30):
response to her question of just like, okay, when are
you gonna like, uh, 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, ike, But then he says,
and it's not in the effort to support any particular

(42:51):
or special group of any kind who all right, so
you are framing 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

(43:14):
annoyed the president at these press conferences with these these
gal reporters, as their colleague Lewis Ludier 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,

(43:35):
who was so much more reserved, and then Ethel comes
in and she's such a bulldozer. And when that incident
with Eisenhower happened, 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

(43:57):
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 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

(44:17):
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 being like TSK tess 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,

(44:41):
she was the only woman invited to lbj's office for
the signing of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting
Rights Act. He only invited people who were important and
critical to the 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

(45:04):
objective journalists as much as she claimed that she didn't
have bias, but I mean, she it was never really
her goal like 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,

(45:27):
the privilege of being a White House correspondent, wasn't that enough?
Why couldn't I be quiet and not stir things up? Well,
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

(45:51):
wanted to constantly, constantly, constantly hammer away raise the questions
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.

(46:11):
So you know, she's made quite the name for herself.
She's an incredibly successful reporter, and so the Chicago Defender
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

(46:32):
African American woman reporter to do this. Well, I mean,
she was the first member of the Black press to
go to Vietnam period two. I mean, and it was
super rare for just a female correspondent period to a
exist but then also be an a war zone. And

(46:53):
her reporting over there of a situation for African American
troops in the war was so important because back in
the and its 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

(47:15):
at the same time, Ethel Payne was not overtly critical
of 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

(47:38):
home papers to try to gloss over any potential racism
or segregation that was still lingering. They wanted 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,

(47:58):
and and after via no, I mean, she just continues traveling.
She reports 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

(48:20):
my god, I love it. Um And she ended up
going to 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

(48:40):
from the Chicago Defender. They tried to make her um
essentially like 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

(49:01):
in an interview with Gwynn Eiffel, the author of one
of these fantastic 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

(49:24):
we talked all the time about like role models and
seeing yourself represented. 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,

(49:45):
she also continued expanding her reach with syndicated columns. UM,
so she'd be she 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.

(50:09):
She for sure wanted to be remembered as an agent
of change, and without 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

(50:31):
newspapers start hiring 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 growing success of Ebony and Jet magazines that kind
of pushes these, uh, these black newspapers out of business.

(50:53):
I mean, because you then have higher ad rates. I mean,
now we're just getting into the weeds of how um
journalism opera rations 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

(51:14):
emergence of a vocal 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

(51:38):
is not paying the 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.

(52:00):
It is happening. It's just 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.

(52:20):
I mean, she was absolutely an agenda journalist because I
mean the truth is, 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

(52:40):
of mind changing. And that was that was her goal.
She wanted to change people's lives. Yeah, I mean, and
and also too, I mean Supreme Court decisions and legislation,
that's not where it stops. I mean, think about her
reaction to Brown, I mean just being so um so
upset at almost how toothless it was but speaking ethel
Pain being alive today, Oh man, I wish she was

(53:03):
on Twitter. Oh God, I know I have the same
thought or tumbler. Well, listeners, 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

(53:24):
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 house Stuff works
dot Com is our email address. You 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

(53:47):
in response to our miscarriage interview with Dr Jessica Zucker.
She says, heycy and see, it's me, the gal who
stopped taking Speranta lacton 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.

(54:10):
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 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

(54:31):
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 support of friends, family,
and lady co workers, because when you disappear for a week,
at least key people in 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

(54:53):
is rare. His response, no, it's not. All the articles
I've read say it's about one and fifty pregnancies and
an eck topic one in fifty that is 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

(55:13):
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 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

(55:35):
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 is a problem
inherent in STEM fields. We 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

(55:56):
private companies. So your podcast is a great example of
thing 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 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

(56:18):
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 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

(56:39):
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 Stabatt. How stub
works dot com is our email address and thrillings all
of our social media as well as all of our blogs,
videos and podcasts with our sources. So you can learn

(57:00):
more about ethel pain and the Black Press. Head on
over the Stuff Mom Never told You dot com or
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how stuff Works dot com