175Mamie Bradley had: ChDe, 5/12/1956, 18; ChDe, 10/22/1955, 1; AfAm, 11/5/1955, 18; Mamie Till-Mobley, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (New York: One World/Ballantine; reprint edition, 2004), 203.
176Payne immediately sought: ChDe 10/21/1955, 1; ChDe, 10/29/1955, 1; WaPo, 10/15/1955, 26.
177The arrest of: Life, 2/20/1956, 28.
177Payne was convinced: Autobiographical Notes, ELPMSRC B1672.
177On Tuesday, February 7: ChDe, 2/8/1956, 3, 5, 10.
178Publicly the students: E. Culpepper Clark, The Schoolhouse Door: Segregation’s Last Stand at the University of Alabama (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 67.
178“You are in”: ChDe 2/9/1956, 3; ChDe, 2/18/1956, 2.
179Before escaping from: Clark, The Schoolhouse Door, 63.
179“It is for”: ChDe, 2/18/1956, 2.
179Hicks and Payne: DaDe, 2/14/1956, 18.
179As her first: Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 7–23.
180Only a few: Nomination form, ELPLOC, B18F9, and correspondence with Sig Gissler, administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes.
180Beyond attracting Rowan: Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation (New York, Knopf, 2006), 128.
181For Ethel Payne: ChDe, 2/18/1956, 1.
182“A new type”: ChDe, 2/15/1956, 8.
183In Chicago the editors: ChDe, 2/15/56, 11. Louis Martin also devoted a column to Payne’s reporting on this issue (see 3/17/1956, 9).
183Payne followed up: ChDe, 2/27/1956, 8.
184Her articles and: ChDe, 2/15/1956, 3.
184The unity was: ChDe, 3/7/1956, 4.
184From Montgomery, Payne: ChDe, 3/1/1956, 1.
185In the Masonic: NYT, 3/4/1956, E2; NyAm, 3/10/1956, 1.
186Lucy and her: ChDe, 3/17/1956, 2.
186In the company: ChDe, 3/17/1956, 8.
187Payne and Lucy: DaDe, 3/8/1956, 12; WaPo, 3/5/1956, 2.
187Butler was already: DaDe, 2/4/1956, 1; 2/6/1956, 2.
188The three-day: ChDe, 12/8/1956, 1.
188Again Payne made: DaDe, 3/19/1956, 4.
189As she had: Roberts and Klibanoff, The Race Beat, 139.
189Dean Drug Store, a: ELPOH, 79.
189King, who was: DaDe, 3/20/1956, 4.
190At the end: Payne even managed to sell some coverage of the trial to the London Daily Herald, whose New York editor said he might want more. “There is terrific interest in England in the segregation crisis,” he wrote to her. (John Sampson to ELP, 3/28/1956, ELPLOC B4F1.)
190The trial lasted: St. Petersburg Times, 3/23/1956, 2.
190A few hours: DaDe, 3/26/1956, 4.
191Montgomery had been: ELPOH, 80.
191Upon her return: DaDe, 3/28/1956, 2.
191In Chicago, Payne: DaDe, 4/26/1957, 8.
192Scribbling in her: ChDe, 4/21/1956, 1.
193In the four years: DaDe, 8/20/1956, 3.
193With the summer: DaDe, 8/20/1956, 8.
193Republican operatives discerned: Val Washington to Maxwell Rabb, 7/17/1956, Fisher Howe to Maxwell Rabb, 8/2/1956, Maxwell Rabb to Val Washington, 8/7/1956, Central Files, DDEPL. The delegation of Americans who did attend the Paris conference “all had the hallmarks of a CIA front operation,” according to Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer, 201.
194The supposition that: Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 220; DaDe, 11/8/1956, 1.
194In a front-page: DaDe, 11/8/1956, 1.
195But as frustrated: ChDe, 12/8/1956, 1.
195Despite Ethel Payne’s: Wright, The Color Curtain, 182–189.
196Readers would certainly: “He made that tall tale up himself out of whole cloth,” according to writer Margaret Walker, who interviewed Payne in 1981. See Walker, Richard Wright: Daemonic Genius (New York: Harper Paperback, 2000), 266–267; various interviews with friends of Payne.
196In January 1957: Dwight Eisenhower to Richard Nixon, 1/29/1957, African Trip, 1957, Series 351, Box 1, Folder African Trip—1957—administration, RMNPL.
197In addition to: ChDe, 2/16/1957, 3. Kwame Nkrumah to JHS, 1/22/1957, A-SFP.
197Ghanaians promised to: WaSt, 4/4/1957.
197While the potential: ChDe, 2/23/1957, 4.
197An estimated 10,000: DaDe, 3/4/1957, 3. The incident was alluded to in Ebony, June 1957, which has a photo of Nixon with the armband. Argus, “Nairobi Roundabout,” Sunday Post, 3/24/1957. Africa Trip, 1957, Press Clippings Africa to Kenya, Series 349, Box1, RMNPL.
198Later that night: DaDe, 3/5/1957, 1; AmNe, 3/16/1957, 1.
198As the hour: DaDe, 3/6/1957, 3. UPI dispatch, Bonham Daily Favorite, Bonham, TX, 3/5/1957, 1.
198“Mr. Vice-President”: PiCo, 3/9/1957, 2.
199American domestic politics: PiCo, 5/13/1974, 25.
199In the days: Itinerary and Press List, African Trip, 1957, Series 351, Box 1, folder Africa Trip—1957—administration, RMNPL.
199The stops in: ChDe, 4/6/1957, 4; ChDe, 3/30/1957, 12. Not all Payne observed was as weighty. At one stop, she telegraphed her Chicago editors with sartorial news about Pat Nixon. She had confided in Payne that she managed to keep a fresh look in the absence of a maid by packing lightweight nonwrinkle suits rolled in tissue paper. But in an emergency, she also swapped clothes with Rose Mary Woods, her husband’s secretary, “such as at Khartoum when Pat stepped off plane in dark silk faille suit and black hat loaned to her by Rose.” Woods remained Nixon’s personal secretary his entire career and became famous for claiming that she inadvertently erased a critical part of a White House tape relating to the Watergate scandal by stretching to press two different controls several feet apart. Silk faille is a slightly glossy silk. (Undated telegram to Chicago Defender from Tripoli, “Writings by, Dispatches from Africa” folder, ELPSMRC, B1657.)
200After visits to: ChDe, 3/23/1957, 2.
200Back home Payne: DaDe, 4/8/1957, 2.
201As the date: Payne also reported that leaders of the rally said they were aware that Communists were attempting to infiltrate the march but that there was no chance of their “capturing” the meeting. Although Payne added that “fellow travelers” Paul Robeson and his wife, Eslanda, would be joining the pilgrimage; DaDe, 5/15/1957, 9; DaDe, 5/20/1957, 2.
202The Sunday after: DaDe, 5/22/1957, 1.
202Payne continued to: Payne’s boss, Louis Martin, was also at times favorably impressed with Nixon, although he remained suspicious. (See Memoirs, Draft I, 140, LBMLOC, B8.) Booker, Shocking the Conscience, 165.
203Two days after: Branch, Parting the Waters, 219; DaDe, 6/18/1957, 6.
204Ethel Payne was optimistic: ChDe, 6/8/1957, 3.
205From the press: DaDe, 7/9/1957, 1.
205Payne sought to: ChDe, 7/20/1957, 12.
206By the end: DaDe, 7/31/1957, 7.
206In early August: ChDe, 8/10/1957, 3.
207To Payne the treachery: ChDe, 5/31/1958, 11.
207Thurmond’s speechifying resistance: Branch, Parting the Waters, 221.
208Payne and civil: Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 98; ChDe, 9/7/1957, 1.
208In the Defender: DaDe, 8/5/1957, 5.
209The nine children: Rowan, Breaking Barriers, 155.
209After landing at: DaDe, 9/11/1957, 1.
210After a night’s: DaDe, 5/1/1956, 8. The first part of the two articles appeared on 4/30/1956.
211Payne was particularly: ChDe, 9/21/1957, 1.
212Payne spent her: ChDe, 9/21/1957, 3.
212Payne caught up: DaDe, 9/16/1957, 4; NYT, 9/14/1957.
213At his press: DaDe, 9/16/1957, 5.
214“Grimly,” said Payne: DaDe, 9/17/1957, 19.
214The next morning: DaDe, 9/16/1957, 1.
215What with the traveling: PiCo, 4/6/1974, 6.
215In Washington, a: DaDe, 10/3/1957, 1
215As the Little Rock: DaDe, 10/21/1957, 14.
215White House press: DaDe, 10/21/1957, 24.
218The next morning: DaDe, 10/28/1957, 6.
218In Payne’s eyes: ChDe, 1/11/1958, 12.
218On her Defender: Remarks by Alice Samples, 6/12/1982, ELPLOC B7F5; Expense Account, ELPMSRC B1657.
219In September, she: ELP to JHS, 9/27/1957, Correspondence, ELPMSRC B1657.
219Payne opened 1958: ChDe, 1/4/1958, 11.
220Shortly after the: ELP to JRH, 1/3/1958, Payne, E. folder, DDEPL. Hagerty was then in the sixth year of the eight years he would serve as press secretary, the longest anyone ever held that position.
220The truth of: Booker, Shocking the Conscience, 137; ChDe, 4/5/1958, 3.
221In February, Ethel: ELPOH, 123–125.
221So the gang: ELP to RMN, 2/13/1958, Correspondence, ELPMSRC, Box 1657.
222On the night: Joseph B. Samples to RMN, 3/17/1958, Box 582 of Vice-President General Correspondence, Payne, Ethel L. (Miss), RMNPL; Booker, Shocking the Conscience, 167.
222Several days later: DaDe, 3/4/1958, A3; RMN to ELP, 3/7/1958, Box 582 of Vice-President General Correspondence, Payne, Ethel L. (Miss), RMNPL; Pat Nixon to ELP, Correspondence, ELPMRS, B1657.
223A few weeks: Expense Accounts and ELP to LEM, 4/24/1958, Correspondence, ELMPSRS, B1657.
224The conflict was: DaDe, 3/19/1956, 4; ChDe, 9/21/1957, 5.
224John Sengstacke was: ChDe, 5/10/58, 11.
225The answer to: Daniel T. Sullivan to ELP, 6/28/1958, Correspondence, ELPMSRC, B1657.
225In August, Sengstacke: JHS to ELP, 8/7/1958, Expense Account, ELPMSRC B1657.
226If the Chicago: Documents in PMWP and Personal Bio Folder, ELPMSCR B1667 date ELP work for the AFL-CIO.
226In June 1958: Personal Bio Folder, ELPMSRC, B1667; Jet, 7/31/1958, 29.
226Payne put her: COPE records, RG22–001, Committee on Political Education, Research Division Files, 1944–1979, GMMA. Personal Bio Folder, ELPMSCR B1667.
227But the union: Jet, 9/3/1959, 11; ELP Memo to James L. McDevitt, 4/24/1959, Payne, Ethel, 1959, 61, B5, PMWP.
227With the hike: Roy Wilkins to ELP, 12/19/1958, ELPMSRC, correspondence, B1657; The Crisis, April 1959, 236; Mildred Bond to ELP, 2/5/1959, NAACP III, BA214, NAACP.
227Working for a: ELP to Clare B. Williams, 5/20/1959, 109-A–1 1959–1960, DDEPL.
228Payne also found: In 1958, Payne told a relative she was working on landing Johnson a page position. (ELP to Philip A. Johnson, 6/5/1958, JAJP); James A. Johnson, interview with author, 5/22/2012.
228In the summer: AfAm, 1/31/1959, 2. In 2013, House historians uncovered records that revealed the House had an African American page in 1871, and other records indicate the Senate employed a black “riding page” who delivered messages between the Senate and executive offices at some point in the nineteenth century. The Supreme Court, following Earl Warren’s appointment as chief justice, had employed three black pages prior to Johnson’s attempt to become a House page. In fact, Payne had written a front-page story about the appointment of the first one five years earlier. (See ChDe, 7/31/1954, 1.)
228In a chamber: ChTr, 1/28/1959, 1.
229Thinking everything was: An inkling that something might go wrong surfaced when O’Hara called Payne to let her know there might be a slight delay because two pages had not yet vacated their posts. Nonetheless, Johnson left Chicago for Washington. But Payne ignored the warning signs.
229Only when the two: ChDe, 2/14/1959, 10.
229Meanwhile the press: ChTri, 1/28/1959, 1; ChTr, 1/29/1958, 1.
229With the Page: ChTr, 2/17/1959, A2; James A. Johnson interview with author, 5/22/2012.
230With a partial: Johnson’s family was Lutheran, while Payne remained nominally an AME Baptist but rarely if ever attended services. Her older sister Avis, Jimmy’s mother, had retained their mother’s religiosity but switched to the Salem Evangelical Lutheran Church when they moved to the Park Manor neighborhood of Chicago. Herman Davis interview with author, 2/20/2013.
230Johnson did well: Ebony, May 1960.
231Representative William H.: William H. Ayres to Clarence Mitchell, 1/25/1960, Jimmy Johnson Folder, ELPMSCR B1664.
231Mitchell was beside: Clarence Mitchell, 1/28/1960, Jimmy Johnson Folder, ELPMSCR B1664.
232More odious to: Andrew Edmund Kersten, A. Philip Randolph: A Life in the Vanguard (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 2007), 152.
232“Now the letters”: ELP to BP, 2/18/1960, JAJP.
233Payne was elected: ELP Memo to You, undated by early spring 1961, Correspondence, ELPMSCR.
233The Metropolitan Women’s: ELPOH, 86.
233Payne was soon: DaDe, 4/14/1973, 8.
234In the fall: ELP to family, 11/15/1960, ELPLOC.
235The year 1961: Walter Mosley, Black Betty (New York: Washington Square Books, 1994), 45.
235For Payne the: ELP to family (undated), Spring 1961, JAJP.
235After the new: Jet, 2/16/1961, 9; ELP Memo, undated but early spring 1961, Correspondence, ELPMSCR Box 1657.
235On Monday, June: Remarks by Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson, 6/12/1961, Statements of Lyndon B. Johnson, Box 55, LBJPL.
236“Although his family”: ELP to family, (undated) Spring 1961, JAJP.
236A year into: Jet, 2/8/1962, 51; PiCo, 2/10/1962.
236At first it: Jet, 4/19/62, 3.
237In September, the: Reading Eagle, 9/7/1962, 10; Jet, 9/20/1962, 13.
238One night she: “Civil Rights and Journalism: Then and Now,” 1989 video, Department of Special Collections and Archives, Queens College Libraries, CUNY, Queens, NY.
239The scope and: ChDe, 8/24/1963, 6.
240The changing political: AtWo, 1/9/1963, 2.
241But at age: ELP to Family (undated) 1963.
241A. Philip Randolph: NYT, 8/29/1963, 21.
241As King began: “And all of a sudden this thing came to me that . . . I’d used many times before . . . ‘I have a dream.’ And I just felt that I wanted to use it here . . . I used it, and at that point I just turned aside from the manuscript altogether. I didn’t come back to it” (King, November 29, 1963).
242The reporters sitting: Sherrod, Ethel Payne, 71; Robert Camfiord, who directed the television pool coverage for the networks, recalled that in a television news career spanning six decades, the March on Washington stands out clearly in his memory. “The raw emotions of Dr. King’s speech and its effect on all who were there to witness it will always remain with me. I am indeed grateful. (Robert Camfiord, USA [2003] http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/witness/august/28/newsid_3171000/3171155.stm.)
242A few days: ELP to APR, 9/3/1963, ELPLOC B4F1.
242Payne sought to: Jet, 10/31/1963, 13; Jet, 8/15/1963, 12, Jet, 3/26/1964, 13; Denver Post, 4/8/1964, 23.
243It was so: Carl B. Stokes to ELP, 2/26/1963, ELPLOC B4F1.
243Like most everything: ELPOH, 87.
243Now Texan Lyndon: NYT, 11/28/1963, 1.
244On July 2, 1964: Lawrence F. O’Brien to President, 7/2/1964, courtesy of Allen Fisher, LBJPL.
246Payne could not: ELP to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, 3/17/1965, W.H. Central File, Subject File, LBJPL.
246Taking her pledge: ELPOH, 82.
247Another life was: Charles E. Fager, Selma: 1965 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974), 150–153; ELPOH, 82.
247A Johnson aide: Streitmatter, Raising Her Voice, 125.
247The DNC Christmas: ChDe, 12/25/1965, 2.
248Payne deftly skirted: Meriden Journal, 1/22/1966, 4; Press Release, ELPMSRS B1657.
248Payne could see: Katie E. Whickam to Margaret Price, 3/11/1965, MBPP.
249The election in: Cal Jillson, Texas Politics: Governing the Lone Star Sate (New York: Routledge, 2011), 80.
249Now, five years: Sean P. Cunningham, Cowboy Conservatism: Texas and the Rise of the Modern Right (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2010), 76–77.
249On August 28: By any measure, Payne was neither comfortable nor facile as a public speaker. At first she stuck to her prepared remarks.
But Payne’s anger toward Republican opposition to the Great Society stirred her. “When I think about all the lies those ornery critters of the opposition are telling,” she said, “well, I just get turned on and come out fighting.” Her developing stump speech opened with a recounting of the Selma marches, President Johnson’s “We Shall Overcome” address to Congress, and the eventual passage of the Voting Rights Act, triggering amens from her audiences. More talk of expanding the rolls of voters with Negroes and closing with an evangelical call to support the president and Negro soldiers in Vietnam would bring a roar of amens, Payne said. “And you just hope you’ve succeed in translating apathy into action.” ELP letter, 11/9/1966, Correspondence Folder, ELPMSRC B1657.
250Moreover, her candidate: Cunningham, Cowboy Conservatism, 106; Van Pell Evans, “Texas Politics,” The Informer and Texas Freeman, 11/5/1966, 4.
250On Election Day: ELP letter, 11/9/1966, Correspondence Folder, ELPMSRC B1657.
251But the end: ELPOH, 92.
255After an absence: The New York Times assigned Tom Johnson, an African Amercian, in December of 1967. Wallace Terry, whom Payne met at the Gov. Faubus press conference, went to the war for Time magazine that year as well. A few months after Payne departed from Vietnam, the concert pianist Philippa Schuyler was killed when the helicopter she was in crashed. She had written some freelance articles but on this instance was volunteering to help evacuate orphans from danger. Payne missed meeting Schuyler by a few days when in Vietnam (DaDe, 5/18/1967, 3). Frances FitzGerald and Martha Gellhorn were both in Vietnam at the time. The two white women were well-known writers, particularly Gellhorn, a famous war correspondent who had once been married to Ernest Hemingway. (Joyce Hoffman, On Their Own: Women Journalists and the American Experience in Vietnam [New York: Da Capo, 2008], 149–151)
255Even before agreeing: ELP to JHS, 11/29/1966, Defender Correspondence File, ELPMSRC B1667.
256Ahead of the: Nikolas Kozloff, “Vietnam, the African American Community, and the Pittsburgh New Courier,” The Historian, Vol.63, No. 2, 2001, 523.
256But with each: Ebony, August 1968, 60–61; Herman Graham III, The Brothers’ Vietnam War: Black Power, Manhood, and the Military Experience (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), 17–24; DaDe, 4/11/1967, 1.
257The White House: SB to LEM, 8/13/1965, Correspondence, ELPMSRC, Box 1657.
Eye on the Struggle Page 41
