Currie: Can you believe it? Number five!

Payne: Yes.

Currie: Last time, we left off with the civil rights movement, and really got you into the sixties. I'd like to talk a little more about what was happening to you personally and with reporters in general in that decade. For example, where did you live in Washington during that time?

Payne: I lived in so many different places in Washington. What was the year you're referring to now?

Currie: The decade between 1955 and 1965, generally, the civil rights decade.

Payne: Yes. I was probably living on R Street, Northwest. I had a very small apartment. It was almost a cracker box. Yes, that was where I was living—1619 R Street, Northwest. I was going back and forth to Alabama, so it really didn't matter too much to me. I hadn't really gotten into my collection business, so to speak, so a house was just a place to put your head down.

Currie: During that time, I know earlier you said you had no social life at all.

Payne: Not much. Very little. Very little.

Currie: Even in this period?

Payne: Yes, because, you see, I had so much responsibility. Just to keep up with it required so much energy. The nearest thing to social life was if you went looking for a particular story angle and it involved some social activity. Then, naturally, you became involved in that way, but I never really had it on my own. Once in a great while, I liked to invite people in for dinner or brunch or something like that, but that was rarely. I liked to cook, and at the time I thought I was a pretty good cook. So once in a while, I would relax by inviting people in.

Currie: Who were your friends at that time?

Payne: Mostly people in the media, my fellow colleagues, and a few other friends who sort of looked after me, kind of mothered me a great deal.

Currie: Who at that time would you consider one of your better friends?

Payne: Oh, I had a great friend named—she passed away, but her name was Arabella Denniston. She worked for the National Council of Negro Women. She was much older

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than I, but she was the type of person you could confide in. I got a great deal of comfort from her. We used to occasionally have Scrabble sessions. Both of us liked Scrabble, so a rare opportunity for me to relax a little bit would be to go over to her apartment and play Scrabble, and that would go on to the wee hours of the morning, because we fought so furiously. [Laughter.]

Currie: Really? Over the spellings of words?

Payne: Yes, yes. [Laughter.] She'd grab her dictionary, and I'd say, "Your dictionary is no damn good!" So I'd bring my own dictionary. We used to have a lot of fun.

Currie: How important was it to you to have a confidant?

Payne: Oh, you always needed a confidant. You had to, because it was a rough business. You were always strapped for money, and you got a lot of rebuffs, insults. You had to fight two or three different ways, because in the first place, you were a one-person operation, and that was a drain. Secondly, because you were a woman, it was another handicap, often. As I said, you didn't get too much respect, you know, sometimes. Then third, that you were black, you know. So that often proved, you know—it never really defeated me, but it was wearying to have to encounter this all the time.

Currie: What changes, if any, did you see in the press corps from the fifties to the sixties?

Payne: The press became much more cognizant of the impact of the civil rights movement. Then I found that it became a competitive thing, whereas we had dealt solely with the problem before.

Currie: You mean the black press?

Payne: Yes. Then you found the white press zeroing in, and they, naturally, had greater access sometimes because of their resources. So you got a little envious, maybe a little jealous of the fact that you had leaders of the civil rights movement talking to the majority press, and sometimes you'd be shut out. Then you were always having to fight that battle. Many of the leaders of the civil rights movement were people who had been associated, one way or another, with the black press. But you know, it's a peculiar thing. You always want the greatest exposure if you have a cause to fight, and I could understand that, but sometimes it just got to be downright annoying, because you were overlooked. So that meant that you had to sometimes get very pushy, very, very aggressive, and complain, and then you got a reputation that you were harping all the time, you know. It just got to be demoralizing sometimes.

Currie: So in some ways, the success of the civil rights movement made your job harder.

Payne: It did, yes. It did. Especially when it got to be a world event.

Currie: Because you were then competing.

Payne: Oh, Lord, yes, yes. You were just trying to get a toe hold into the thing, and it meant that you were caught up physically and spiritually and everything else, it just got to be such a thing that you just would find yourself exhausted, because

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you were trying so hard. I think the people who were leading the movement sometimes got carried away with the sudden exposure to the larger media, you know, TV, radio, the print media and everything, and it kind of diverted their real deep interest in black newspapers. Sometimes I felt there was a little contempt there, and that used to make me very angry. So sometimes what I would do is to get other black reporters, and I'd say, "Well, let's make a head-on confrontation about this." And we did. I just organized them to make formal protests about it. Then, of course, what it did was stir some guilt complexes about it: "You're neglecting your roots, you know."

Currie: Guilt can be a wonderful thing.

Payne: Yes. So that's the way we'd have to do it. It was unfortunate, but it happened. So you just had to confront it. Basically, I don't like to be really rude. I don't like to be really ugly. But sometimes it required that. I was reminded of it yesterday, when I went over to register for the Congressional Black Caucus, and as soon as I hit the lobby, people began coming up to me and greeting me, kissing me, and all the rest of it, you know. In a way, I guess, maybe I'm sort of an icon. But at any rate, great deference was being paid to me, you know. Everything was ready for me, you know, and "We want you to be sure that you're comfortable, and we're going to have a table for you." Then somebody said, "Alfreda Madison, she was here earlier, she was raising hell." Alfreda Madison is a woman who taught school for years, and she's from Richmond, Virginia. She retired on a pension, and then she got into newspapering, but I don't think—you know, it's sort of a hobby with her. But she faithfully covers Capitol Hill now, and she goes to the White House. She has White House press credentials and everything. I think she enjoys it, but it really isn't a hardcore thing with her, like it was with me. But Alfreda is known as a hell-raiser. [Laughter.] She has some real tiny, tiny papers, but she is quick to register offense if she thinks she's being ignored. I can understand, because I came from the same thing, too.

Currie: So today you're lionized.

Payne: Yes. [Laughter.]

Currie: But that's not always how it's been.

Payne: That's not always how it's been, you know, so I just smiled indulgently. I said, "Well, yes, she has to fight for her rights just like anybody else." [Laughter.]

Currie: Let me ask you, too. You had three presidents during that time. Was there change in the way that Presidents Kennedy and Johnson treated the press?

Payne: Kennedy had so many friends in the press. Oh, Lord have mercy! The press was just as enamored with John F. Kennedy as the public was, you know. He was a glamorous, charming man, and he was disarming. He had a way with it. The press treated him very gently, I think, overall. With Lyndon Johnson, it was different. Lyndon Johnson was crude, he was raw stuff, he was clever. And I think the press was on the alert, because they knew that he was wily. So therefore, there used to be a contest between LBJ and the White House and the press corps, and you could kind of feel that pull, because he knew the ways of Washington better than anybody. He had a very capable press secretary, George Reedy, but at the same time, the press was always lying in wait for him, you know. And Vietnam, when that came along, that provided the perfect vehicle for them to really savage him.

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Currie: Do you think that's something that the press does, that they're wary about certain people, and they wait for issues?

Payne: If I were to look at the press today, I'm really distressed about the turn of the press today, because I think they have become carnivorous, really, in their pursuit of things. I think Joe Biden is guilty, yes, but I think they lay back like they're Indians on the warpath, waiting for somebody to scalp. And they probably hang that up and say, "Well, here's another SOB we got. Here's another bastard we got." And I think, really, they go beyond the bounds. I really do. I'd like to know—then make excuses: "Well, this is politics. This is politics." Well, if it is politics, then they're helping to perpetuate a very seamy side of American life. I don't think it's very ethical at all, but they just seem to enjoy it. Like the Miami Herald, what they did to Gary Hart, I think was unconscionable. Well, nobody asks you to handle them with kid gloves. If they've got warts, you tell it. But when you put people on vigilante duty, to watch a person's back-alley door, you know, until wee in the morning, just to try to get an angle of it, I mean, I think it's an invasion of privacy. I really do. I just don't see the necessity for some of the extremes that they go to.

Currie: Also, in the mid-fifties, Alice Dunnigan became the first black woman to join the Washington Press Club.

Payne: She was the first—Washington Press Club, did you say?

Currie: Yes.

Payne: Yes. I hardly remember that.

Currie: I'm sure she was.

Payne: Yes.

Currie: I was wondering if you had ever thought of becoming active.

Payne: Oh, they've asked me time and again since things changed, but first of all, there's a lot of money involved. I've always had a lean budget, and I just didn't think it was in my budget. It meant going to meetings, it meant paying for luncheons and breakfasts and so forth and so on, and I just didn't think that that was a priority. Not that I didn't want to associate; I just didn't think it was a priority. But they have asked me from time to time to participate in some special events.

Currie: You also, I know, earlier described yourself as a loner.

Payne: Yes. In a way, I am, even though I consider myself quite sociable. But I do it because I find that I can operate best that way. I have some very loyal, stout-hearted friends, who really just are so lovable and comforting to me. But sometimes I find that it's a restriction, so I have to go the way that I know that I can do best. It isn't that I don't want to be around people. The other thing is that—and I'll just say it very frankly—I never considered myself that physically attractive, and so sometimes you erect shields so that you won't get hurt, you know. I was just listening to a Phil Donahue show about the problems of fat women. Well, I've had to fight that all of my life.

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So sometimes people think that you're standoffish, you know, that you're—what shall I say?—that you're almost snobbish. But sometimes it's a defense mechanism. They don't realize that. You don't want to be exposed to hurt, so you just go your way. And you sort of build yourself up so that—[laughter]—once I was told that I was one of the most formidable persons they'd ever met. It was almost like when they approach you, it's like approaching a holy place or something. And that really, really—I had to sit down and examine myself and say, "Do I really come off like that?" But it's just something that you have to struggle with all the time.

Currie: I remember, early on, I asked if I could call you Ethel, and I kept calling you Miss Payne.

Payne: Yes.

Currie: Somehow it just seems that you should be called Miss Payne. It's not that I don't feel comfortable, but you do have a presence.

Payne: Yes, I guess so. Well, I guess it's so because I've struggled so hard to maintain a certain amount of respect, to garner a certain amount of respect. So I guess that it does come off that way.

Currie: It's not a negative thing with me.

Payne: No, no. Sometimes I've been told, "People just stand in awe of you." For one thing, I am unique in a certain way, particularly among blacks. I have had so many unusual experiences for anybody, you know, I mean all of the assignments and all the places that I've been to, and all the writings that I have done, and the fact that I have swung between two kinds of media, the print media on one hand, and electronic on the other, with "Spectrum." "Spectrum" placed me in a very, very unique position.

Currie: I want to talk about that. I want to get to it chronologically.

Payne: Yes. People were just, you know, just projected me almost into the—what do you call it?

Currie: The stratosphere?

Payne: The stratosphere. Yes, really! Because it was something that was unheard of.

Currie: For a black woman.

Payne: For a black woman to be in a position to voice her opinions on a network and have it by radio and television, and have it go into homes. [Laughter.] Henry Kissinger said, when he wanted somebody to go with him on his trip to Africa, he said, "Why don't we ask that woman that wakes me up at 3:00 o'clock in the morning, giving me hell?" [Laughter.]

Currie: Meaning you?

Payne: Yes! [Laughter.]

Currie: "Spectrum" was rotated so it would be heard at all hours?

Payne: At all hours!

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Currie: He couldn't get away from you.

Payne: [Laughter.] No.

Currie: Well, I'd like to talk a lot more about "Spectrum." Before we do that, I wonder if we can go back to the sixties a little bit, because "Spectrum" didn't come until the early seventies.

I wanted to ask you, too, I noticed on your résumé that you were assistant to the vice chairperson of the DNC.

Payne: Yes.

Currie: Did you do that while you were working for the Defender?

Payne: Well, yes. I really was doubling there, because what I was doing was working for the DNC. And maybe that wasn't kosher.

Currie: That was going to be my next question!

Payne: Yes! Maybe that wasn't kosher. You might call it a conflict of interest, but they didn't pay that much attention to it. See, it was a wonderful source for stories.

Currie: Sure! Did you ever feel any conflict of loyalties because you would be on the inside?

Payne: Well, oh, yes. There were times when I was chided and rebuked about it. Now, I wasn't really covering the White House at that period, during that period, because I realized that I was on the payroll of the Democratic National Committee. So I didn't really cover the White House during that period, but it sure was a fine source of news.

Currie: That was '62 to '66.

Payne: Yes.

Currie: So that would have been during a Democratic administration.

Payne: Yes.

Currie: Did your paper say that was okay, to go?

Payne: Well, you know, it's like saying, "Well, you shouldn't, but we're not going to raise any particular Cain about it." You see, when you work for a small outfit and you're on a very lean budget, you take opportunities to make some extra money.

Currie: So they knew.

Payne: Yes.

Currie: What they were saying was they didn't think it was such a great idea, but they weren't going to give you any grief about it.

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Payne: No, no. Besides, there was such a close connection there, because the man who was the vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Louis Martin—remember?

Currie: Oh, yes!

Payne: He was the man who originally brought me into the newspaper business anyway. He was the deputy vice chairman. But he was a political animal all the way, very much so, and as shrewd a strategist as there ever was. He was so close to Lyndon Johnson, because he understood Lyndon Johnson, and he knew Lyndon Johnson's ways. And sometimes he always imitated Lyndon Johnson in his way of speaking, because he was a master. He was one of those political operatives who was a king-maker in many ways. In fact, he influenced an enormous amount of appointments during the Johnson Administration, black and white.

Currie: And what did you do for him?

Payne: No, my assignment was with the vice chairperson, who was Margaret Price.

Currie: Okay. So you worked for the vice chair, and he was the deputy.

Payne: Yes. So we concentrated on women's issues.

Currie: Oh, I see.

Payne: Sometimes I traveled and made speeches and talked to black women. I did a great deal of that. I drafted press releases, I drafted stories to go out, all geared toward mobilizing the black vote. And it was exciting, and it was a productive period.

Currie: During the time you were doing that, you were also filing stories?

Payne: Yes. [Laughter.] Yes, I guess I had an advantage. Probably, as I say again, maybe it was not quite fair, but it sure did provide me with a lot of sources. Oh, I had to be careful. I couldn't go counter to the party and what it was trying to do, but it was a natural source of news. And if I didn't do it, I could leak it. Shall we say leak? Leak it to other people who would pick it up and provide them with good news sources.

Currie: Of course, there are a number of journalists today who don't even think that journalists should be in government service at all.

Payne: At all! Yes.

Currie: Let alone file stories and working for a political administration.

Payne: But you know, the black press didn't have all the luxuries that the majority press had. We didn't have expense accounts, big expense accounts like they did, and sometimes we had to do the things to help us survive. It was a survival thing.

Currie: Do you think if you had had the money—I mean, how do you feel?

Payne: I probably wouldn't have done it. Probably would not have done it. By nature, I would have thought that it wasn't the right thing to do. But like I say, to

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me, it stopped short of being unethical, because, like I say, I never took anything under the table. I didn't go for that kind of thing. So it was just a way of survival to me.

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

Currie: We've talked about your domestic assignments, White House assignments, and your first foreign correspondent assignment. You also covered wars.

Payne: Yes.

Currie: The first of which was the Vietnam War. The Nigerian Civil War and the Vietnam War were the two major ones. Could we talk about how you got your assignment to cover the Vietnam War?

Payne: John Sengstacke asked me to do it.

Currie: He seems to be a recurring character in the story of your life.

Payne: Yes. Sometimes I wonder if he wasn't trying to get rid of me. [Laughter.] [Tape interruption.]

Currie: So you were saying that John Sengstacke sent you to Vietnam.

Payne: He called me and asked me, "How would you like to go to Vietnam?" I was in Washington. He said, "Why don't you come home so we can talk about it?"

So I went back to Chicago and sat down with Louis Martin and some others, and they said, "We think it would be a unique thing to have a woman cover the war. We'd like her perspective."

So I said, "Yes, I'll do it."

Currie: What went into your decision to go? What considerations did you have?

Payne: Well, I recognized the danger of it, the risk of it, but it was a gamble and an adventure, and it appealed to me. Besides, again, I liked the idea of finding out what was happening to the black troops in Vietnam.

So I went back to Washington, and I went to the Pentagon. I went through a series of briefings there, orientation. The first thing they told me was that they had no special provisions for women correspondents. They couldn't do that. They would do their best, you know, to minimize the danger, but they couldn't guarantee anything. So they wanted me to thoroughly understand the risks I would be taking.

Currie: What did they say the risks were?

Payne: Well, they never came out and said, "You can be killed," but being in a war zone is the risk, you know. I mean, every day you're at a risk in a war zone. It's just like being in Lebanon. Suppose you were a correspondent in Lebanon. You knew the dangers that it would entail, so you just had to take your chances, and you needed to know that.

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So I left to go to Vietnam. I think it was on Christmas Day, 1966 that I landed in Saigon.

Currie: Did you go by Army transport?

Payne: No, I went by commercial plane.

Currie: By yourself?

Payne: Yes. The commercial planes were getting in and out of Saigon at that time, so I left. As soon as the plane door opened—well, first, as I was looking down, I just saw the rice paddies and the green, the brilliant green. It was like a sea of emeralds. I looked down, and I thought, oh, what a beautiful sight it was. But as the plane landed and I heard the sounds of bombardment and artillery, I knew I was in a war. I had a sudden sinking feeling. I thought to myself, "What a damn fool you are." [Laughter.]

But anyway, I got off the plane. It was Tan Son Nhut Airport. Immediately, I was met by some military personnel, and they escorted me to—I think it was the Caravelle Hotel in Saigon. But I was told immediately I was to get ready to go with a group that was going to see Bob Hope and hear Bob Hope, who had come in to entertain the troops. The first two persons I met were John Steinbeck and his wife. He had a son who was stationed in Vietnam. I think he was a communications person. He had come over to visit, as well as to get some stories about the war. Well, he got into a car, a flag officer car, because he was such an important person. But his wife stayed with us, and we had a raggedy bus that we got on.

Currie: Was that for the press?

Payne: Yes. So we drove 20 miles outside of Saigon to the place where Bob Hope was entertaining the troops. Mrs. Steinbeck was a very pleasant person, a small woman. She was his second wife—second or third wife; I'm not sure. But at any rate, when we got there, what I saw was a sight. It looked like just a sea of men in uniform, and the worst of it were the stretchers, with the wounded on them, some of them lying on their stomachs, because they had been so badly wounded. Row after row of stretchers and nurses and all. It was such a sad feeling that came over me. Is this what it is like? Is this war? Does it have to be?

Well, Bob Hope and his troupe, he really had brought a lot of hope and cheer to them, and he was a wonderful person. I think Bob Hope, if nothing else, what he did for the troops in war, I think he's just a legendary person. I remember he came out on stage, and he had a golf club. [Laughter.] He said, "I thought I'd bring my fungus back to its breeding ground." Of course, that got a lot of cheers. Phyllis Diller was there. Oh, when she came out, she had on purple boots, red hair, dyed, ridiculous-looking, like Medusa locks, and a wild green outfit, you know. Of course, they just hooted and screamed, you know, when they saw her.

While Bob Hope was performing, suddenly, you know, overhead there were military planes flying over the place, but all of a sudden, there was an American Airlines—or TWA; I'm not sure—but it was a commercial plane, and it went overhead. It had sort of a—what do you call it?—a mass reaction, because as I described it, 20,000 eyes looked upward and said, "Going home, boy, that's where I'd like to go." It was just a chorus of that, when they saw this commercial plane. I wrote a piece about it, the reaction that occurred at that interlude. It interrupted the whole show for the time

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being. But then after the plane flew by, then the Korean Kittens, a group of performers came on, and everything went back to the business of entertaining.

After it was over, we left the area, and we walked through a cordon of soldiers, black and white, and they all called out, "Merry Christmas, ma'am! Merry Christmas, ma'am!" I started crying. Oh, I just broke down and blubbered like a two-year-old.

Currie: Why did you cry?

Payne: Oh, it was just—here were these young men. Today I get choked up over it, the idea that here they were in this strange land, fighting for something they really didn't know much about, but doing their duty, their patriotic duty. It just overcame me. Emotion just overcame me. I just cried and cried and cried all the way back to Saigon.

When we got out on the road, the bus got stuck in some mud, and some of the GIs who were on the road came and lifted the bus back on the road, and we went on. Shortly after, there was a land mine that exploded, and four soldiers were killed. So that was my Christmas Day introduction to Vietnam.

Currie: And war.

Payne: And war. I got back to the hotel. It was too late to have Christmas dinner at the billet, where they fed civilians. So I had a package of dried prunes and some peanut butter crackers, and that was my Christmas dinner. And I cried and cried and cried while I was banging out my first story. Well, that was Vietnam.

Thereafter, I used to go to the headquarters every day, where the "Five O'clock Follies," as the newsmen dubbed it— "Five O'Clock Follies"—the headquarters for JUSPAO, that was the acronym for the PR headquarters. The man who conducted it was named Barry—oh, these things, they escape me. I have to get those names. Barry Zorthian. He was with Time magazine then, but he had gone out to coordinate the press for the high command. And we'd go there, and we'd be fed, you know, the usual.

Currie: The briefings.

Payne: Yes, the briefings.

Currie: And they called it the "Five O'clock Follies."

Payne: Yes, they called it the "Five O'clock Follies," because it was always so carefully orchestrated, so carefully sanitized and so forth, the news coming out of General Westmoreland's quarters and the body counts. I remember that just got almost embedded in my brain every day, the casual way that the body counts would be announced, you know, so many dead. It was numbers; it was just numbers. But there wasn't a human thing behind it. It just got to be a routine thing.

Currie: Would you say that the press, in general, was skeptical about it?

Payne: Yes, the press was skeptical. That was Barry Zorthian, I think his name was, Barry Zorthian—that was his job. He's a great guy. He did the best he could under the circumstances, but he had a tough one. He had a very tough task to contend with. You know, I'm going to have to go and look at my Vietnam stuff, because these names elude me right now.

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Currie: We can always go back and put them in. That's a little bit of research we can do. I wouldn't worry about it right now.

Payne: Okay.

Currie: We can find that out with no problem.

Payne: I think the Pentagon was very anxious for me to get some favorable stories. You know, the only way you could get around was through Army transportation or Air Force. So I got an assortment of assignments, and I think I flew in every type of transportation that the Army and Air Force had. I got to know C-47s and the low-bellied planes, the cargo planes, the helicopters, jeeps, lorries, whatever. The only thing I didn't get into was a tank. [Laughter.]

But I remember my first helicopter assignment. They said they were taking me on a defoliation assignment. Well, defoliation meant cutting down the leaves in the forests, the trees, the denseness of it. And I saw this orange haze. [Tape interruption.] Excuse me.

Currie: You were on a defoliation trip, and you saw the orange haze.

Payne: And I saw this orange haze, and I wondered about it, but I didn't realize at the time that it was Agent Orange they were spraying. That came later; the knowledge came later. I guess what I saw later was probably the result of that defoliation process, as they called it, because we went to a village and stepped into a crude hospital that they'd set up for wounded civilians. Of course, they called this something that had happened in an encounter with the Viet Cong, and they blamed the Viet Cong for it. But this woman was actually dying, this peasant woman. I can't even describe it. You knew instantly that she was dying. She was lying on this cot. I remember this bubbling foam just came out of her mouth. I said, "Now, I can't faint, because I'm not over here to do that, you know. I have to be tough." But just to see this as a direct result of the war, you know, that was my real first encounter with what war is all about.

I went, next, I think, to the 12th Air Force, where the units were stationed at Cam Ranh Bay. That was not Cam Ranh Bay. Well, it was where the 12th—I can reconstruct this later—where the 12th Air Force was based. And there I saw some black officers, and they invited me to their tent to talk with them. They were going on flying missions, of course. I got to know them. You know, it was a welcome meeting, to talk about their experiences and everything. They didn't criticize the war directly, but they did talk about the problems that this created as black persons fighting against people of color. But they said, "We are military people, and we have a job to do, and that's what we have to do."

But I got the feeling that it was not pleasant to them to go out on bombing missions or strafing missions, to bomb people that, as they said, they were kind of a kindred to, you know. Well, of course, always there was a great urge to do a better than average job, because the common thread that I felt, that I gathered, was here was, years later, black servicemen were trying to prove themselves as soldiers, as personnel. Because the stigma had been left over from World War I and II that blacks couldn't do certain things because they weren't capable, or else they were cowardly. And it took me back to the Korean conflict, when Thurgood Marshall came over to investigate the extraordinary amount of what we called drumhead court-martials, where

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you were tried on the spot, tried and convicted on the spot. And blacks have always had to fight the stigma of being inferior. In World War I, the Secretary of State Henry Stimson, you know, it was just cruel, the way they talked about blacks. And if you read the records of it now, there's a series running on NBC now about blacks in the military. But if you go back to the history of that, you see that blacks were just horribly stigmatized. So that feeling was transferred, I think, to the Vietnam War, and you had these young soldiers then at the lower level, combat troops. So there was a great deal of friction about that—always trying to prove themselves.

When I talked to the parachutists who were in the jumping unit, they did it, they lined up, they queued up for that duty, because that was another way of proving themselves.

Currie: Was this a story that you went after?

Payne: Yes, because I was there to see how black troops were faring. So this was an important angle—I think the most important thing that I saw and that I reported on all through the war. I didn't really understand the politics of the war. Probably I'm not too proud of the fact that I didn't dwell on the validity of the war. I think I probably was—maybe I was a little brainwashed myself, because I didn't concentrate on that, and I should have. When I think back on it today, the immoral purpose of the war—I didn't do that. I was so busy concentrating on how well the black troops were doing, that maybe I overlooked that. Maybe I should have. I didn't get the full impact of the public reaction to the war until I came home, see, because I was doing it from one angle, whereas maybe I should have concentrated more on why we were in Vietnam.

Currie: What did you learn from this war assignment?

Payne: I think I learned two things: that war is a great employer, and sometimes it's an equal opportunity employer, because blacks who couldn't find jobs otherwise gravitated to the services, because that did provide employment opportunity. And that's a sad commentary on the whole societal system in this country, that blacks have to turn to war to find occupations and find a way of living—or dying.

I wanted to find out how they dealt with the guerrilla warfare, because it became very clear to me that this was not an ordinary—what do you call it?—standard conventional operation of war.

Currie: I'm not sure.

Payne: A standard conventional operation of war. This was guerrilla war. Because the enemy was so clever. And so they took me to a place called the Ambush Academy, and that was where new persons coming in for combat, soldiers coming in, were instructed in guerrilla warfare. They took me through a simulated obstacle course. The enemy is extraordinarily clever in converting old materials into lethal weapons. For example, C-ration cans could be made into deadly little land mines. They could do that and hang them in trees. If you stumbled and pulled the string, then it could explode. They could take bamboo sticks and sharpen them to needlepoint fineness, dip them in human feces, stick these in the ground, and you're going through a jungle, and you have a heavy boot on with a heel maybe two inches, a thick heel, and that bamboo stick could penetrate that heel, get into your foot. You'd have gangrene. All kinds of things like that. Anything that the Vietnamese, the VC Vietnamese people are small people, very small physically in stature. So they had perfected the art of

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underground hideaways. They even had hospitals underground. They were so trained that they could come up from behind. For instance, if you had—I was trying to think of it—conventional warfare. Yes. Conventional warfare. They were so trained that they could hide under water, breathe through reeds, and then come up behind a deployment of troops, and attack them from the rear. So, you see, it was almost a no-win situation.

Another thing that bothered me greatly was to see the waste of material. The beach in Saigon was just littered with jeeps, with materials of all kinds, just strewn there, rusting and rotting on the beach. War always produces its complement of procurers, and so those that they couldn't gather up and sell on the black market, they were just lying there wasted.

The streets of Saigon were so—Saigon was just bursting at the seams, because it had drawn people from the countryside. Whereas it was once a beautiful city that the French had built of 800,000 people, at the time of the war, maybe there were 3 million or more people in Saigon. And people slept on the streets. The streets were the toilet, and you just had to weave through that. And the black market flourished. I tell you, you could buy anything you wanted on the street, American materials, penicillin. You could buy penicillin on the street. You could buy radios, American-made radios. Almost everything that was ever made in America, it had been sent over there and was on the streets, on the black market.

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

Currie: It sounds like Vietnam left a vivid impression on your mind.

Payne: It did, yes.

Currie: What did you learn as a journalist? What were the things that you think you learned?

Payne: I've always regretted to this day that I didn't do what I felt was an adequate job in reporting on the immorality of the war.

Currie: Was there anything that you did learn that you think helped you later on?

Payne: Oh, yes, it had its beneficial side. Of course, I could appreciate better what war means and how fruitless it is. I think I could understand what peace was really about, because wars do not settle conflicts. They just don't. They only have a cessation, perhaps, of hostilities for some time, but then we're right back at it again. Any time you really look at it, you can find 50 different conflicts going on in the world. There's never a universal peace.

Currie: You did cover another war, the Nigerian Civil War.

Payne: Yes. That was a civil conflict.

Currie: Was that different than Vietnam?

Payne: Yes, it was different, let's say, because it was a regional thing, and it would be a tribal thing—differences. But there were great stakes, there were high stakes involved in the Nigerian conflict.

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Currie: You must have been one of very few reporters to cover that.

Payne: Yes. I went with a woman named Lillian Wiggins, who was with the Afro-American, and we had made contact through the Nigerian ambassador at Washington.

Currie: The Afro was another black newspaper chain?

Payne: Yes. The point of going over, really, was to see, because at the time, there was so much propaganda about Biafra, which was trying to secede from Nigeria. I must explain to you. Biafra wasn't Biafra; that was a name that they applied. This was the eastern region of Nigeria, and it was concentrated heavily by the Ibo tribe. They were considered among the most astute of all the tribal groups. They were the entrepreneurs; they were the merchants; they were the bankers. They're very, very aggressive people, and they were almost totally Catholic. So you had a division there of the Ibos, the Catholics, and you had the Yorubas, who were the larger tribe. Then in the north, you had the Housa-Falani, who were Moslems. So you see what you had? The Yorubas were Protestants, for the most part, shall we say, generally. The Ibos were Catholic. The Hausas were Moslems. Each one of them were politicized. The Hausas were the ones who came to prominence when independence was achieved, and the first president or prime minister of Nigeria was a Moslem from the north—Hausa. Very, very distinguished man. I love his name—Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. [Laughter.] But anyway, he was a very distinguished person. He made quite an impression. I met him at the U.N. when he first came. Well, he was assassinated later.

Then the Yorubas were asserting themselves. Now, I must tell you that the Yorubas were the classicists, shall we say. They were the scholars and the people who had gotten pretty well superior educations. They liked to boast of their old British ties. They were educated in England, for the most part. The Ibos sent so many of their people to America to learn technical trades, to learn finance and everything, and they concentrated on that. But the father of independence was from the eastern region, an Ibo—Nmadi Azikwe, whose name is preeminent today. He was an Ibo. So you had these little interplays and these cliques and so forth.

What led to it was, I think, some meddling of the Western powers, because at stake, really, in this whole conflict was oil. Nigeria was producing some of the world's finest type oil, and it was just gushing out of the ground. So oil was the big thing; that was what we were after, high-grade oil. That was what the war was essentially about: who would control that. So it was seen as a conflict that had been generated and had been pushed by the Western powers to break up the country, to Balkanize the country, and to split it, so that they could come back in and take over. I called it an effort to do the same thing that we had in the Civil War to break up the country, the north from the south. So we went over, Lillian and I.

Currie: How did you get interested in the conflict? Why did you decide you needed to go public?

Payne: Because we were saturated with news about Biafra; that was the name that had been adopted by the Ibo people. They had superior public relations people, and the stories were just pouring out about the plight of these poor children, and you saw emaciated children and starving children and dead children. This whipped up public fever, you know. It became so highly propagandized. Senator Edward Kennedy was leading the charge on behalf of the poor Biafran people. To this day, he's not well liked in Nigeria because of the role he and the Catholic Church played in that whole thing. The Catholic Church had a stake in this, too.

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Currie: Did you have an instinct?

Payne: I had an instinct that something was wrong. So Lillian was interested in it. She was writing about it. She knew the Nigerian ambassador, so she invited me to go and visit the Nigerian ambassador. And what he told me, he said there was just a blackout on the federal side to tell its story. He said it was just a deliberate effort to close out news about the larger story that he felt, and he just felt they just weren't getting a break. So then he asked if we would go over. He thought that somebody should go over. So I thought about it, and then I took it up with the people back home, and decided I should go.

So Lillian and I left, and we went to—we did not go into the eastern region. It was extremely dangerous, because the Nigerian Air Force was bombing, strafing the airports there. We went to Lagos first, and we went to meet a man who was in charge. His name was—gee! But at any rate, he was the commander. I was just so impressed with him, because I felt that this man was so sincere, and he was so—Gowon. General Gowon. I felt that this man really had—he was a military man, you know. Most of these African countries are run by military, anyway, but I thought this man stood out, because he definitely made a comparison of this to the efforts of the Civil War in the United States. He said that, "This is about nationhood. This is about preserving the country, the whole war." So he welcomed us, he said, "Because you're one of the few foreign journalists who comes with a positive attitude."

And I remember that also at the time, among the correspondents who were there, Winston Churchill III, the son of Winston Churchill, Jr., and he was arrogant. Oh, he was so arrogant, so brash. He came over with a fixed idea, and it was almost like it was British colonialism reasserting itself. He would just argue with me. Well, he was obnoxious in many ways.

At any rate, so Lillian and I decided that what we would do was to concentrate on the federal side. So we went to Ibadan, and we went to several places. We went down in the eastern region close to the border of the fighting; we could hear the sounds of fighting and so forth. But our purpose was to see, you know, and talk with the people, and to concentrate on the refugees. So that was our angle.

We met an extraordinary character there, I think one of the most fascinating persons I've ever met. His name was Benjamin Adekunle.

Currie: Why was he so fascinating?

Payne: He was called the "Black Scorpion." He was a small man, but he was noted as a fighter, a brilliant fighter. He would be almost like a Patton. Adekunle, he was just a soldier to the core. He had all kinds of marks and scars on him from hand-to-hand fighting and all that sort of thing. And they had put him in charge of coordinating the troops. You talk about General Patton and that notorious incident where he was slapping a soldier? Well, I saw Ben Adekunle just literally savage an individual for being drunk. He slapped him. Oh, but he demanded and he got results. When the traffic, which was notorious there, coming from the airport, blocked the road so that the tankers that were lying in the harbor couldn't get the oil unloaded and reloaded, what he did was, he rounded up all the armored vehicles, and he closed off the roads. He just closed off everything for three days, and in three days' time, he unlocked that harbor and got things so that the ships could move in and out again. A fantastic character!

Currie: Did you write about him?

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Payne: Oh, yes. [Laughter.] One of the things he did, while we were down in the eastern region, we went to Port Harcourt, and there was a gathering there of the commanders, the field commanders. And he wanted us to meet field commanders, but he looked at Lillian and me, and he said, "I don't like those European clothes you're wearing. Come, come, come, come." And he took us upstairs, and he called in some women. He said, "Dress them." And those women went to work and whipped up some cloth, and then wrapped us in turbans, Nigerian-style turbans, and then they quickly made, for me, and they said I looked typically Nigerian after they got through with me. I've got the stuff in that trunk there now.

Currie: Maybe we can get it out for the video.

Payne: Yes.

Currie: That would be great to see.

Payne: Yes. I don't think I can duplicate the turban.

Currie: Well, I know I can't.

Payne: But at any rate, so finally, when we were dressed and the women took us out, and we stood at the head of the stairs, and he looked up, he said (clapping his hands three times), "Now you are Nigerian." [Laughter.] Oh, he was quite a character. There was a little military band down there. He had the military band strike up the music as we descended the stairs. So that was Ben Adekunle.

Currie: How was the Nigerian civil war different than the Vietnam War?

Payne: Because it was a war—it wasn't the scope of the Vietnam War, in the first place. It didn't have the international aspects of the Vietnam War. It didn't have the political ideology that was behind the Vietnam War, but it was a tribal conflict, and it was a war for oil. You could call it the oil war.

Currie: Did you find it harder or easier to cover the second war?

Payne: Yes, it was hard, because I didn't understand completely the tribal differences; I had to learn. I didn't understand the nuances of this. Remember now, these are people from where some of my ancestors sprang. But Africa was as foreign to me, I mean, in that respect, as it would be to you, a person going over there. I had to learn. I didn't really understand. I knew some of it, but I didn't really understand the meaning of inter-relation conflicts. I didn't understand why the Hausas were so much different from the Ibos. I didn't understand the Yorubas and what their position was. You had to learn all those things.

Currie: Do you think if you had known more about the background, it would have helped you cover the war then?

Payne: Yes.

Currie: Do you think the more knowledge a correspondent has, the better job—

Payne: Yes, definitely. It definitely would have helped. It would have made the job easier, yes.

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Currie: You didn't have much time to gain that, though.

Payne: No.

Currie: I guess that's a problem you've always had, because you've covered such divergent—

Payne: Yes.

Currie: Because you haven't had a beat, like a lot of reporters have.

Payne: One special beat.

Currie: A special beat.

Payne: No. No, no, no. Mine was very diversified. [Laughter.] I guess that's what makes my life so extraordinary. I've covered so many different things with different angles.

Currie: Did you always approach it with, "I have to learn as much as I can about the subject I cover"?

Payne: Yes, I'm always humble about going into a new situation. I always go with saying, "Well, you've got to learn." I never tried to carry with me a know-it-all situation or attitude. I try to make my attitude fit in with the particular circumstance.

Currie: Maybe we could talk about this. I was reading in Essence magazine that in 1974, they reported that you were living in Chicago. I'm looking at your vitae here. I guess at that point, you changed from Washington correspondent to associate editor of the Defender.

Payne: Yes.

Currie: Why did you move back to Chicago?

Payne: John Sengstacke.

Currie: Again! Why did he want you back in Chicago?

Payne: Well, the Chicago operation wasn't going too well, according to him, and he wanted to bring me in, to put me in charge of it. He also, frankly speaking, maybe there was a little jealousy and envy on the part of him and the Chicago paper. Because you remember now, I'm into "Spectrum" now.

Currie: Okay. So "Spectrum" and Chicago happened all at the same time?

Payne: No. I started with "Spectrum" in 1972.

Currie: Right. Okay.

Payne: But, see, gradually, I was really getting, shall we say, famous for my "Spectrum" thing. And he felt maybe that it was taking up too much of my time away from

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the Defender, that I wasn't concentrating as much on the Defender as I was on my "Spectrum," because I was really being projected into the spotlight. There were all kinds of stories coming out about me from "Spectrum."

Currie: When you got on "Spectrum," was that the first time when you yourself started getting attention from the media? There had been a lot of stories written about you since—

Payne: Let's go back to 1973.

Currie: In '72, you went with "Spectrum."

Payne: '73, was that when I went to China?

Currie: Let's see.

Payne: Did I go to China in 1973? Yes, it must have been.

Currie: Yes, because that would have been during the Nixon administration.

Payne: 1973. I remember that I went to China, and that was another big breakthrough. I was one of a group of eight people who went to China, and I was asked by the Chinese Government to come.

Currie: Oh, I see. One of the first groups of journalists?

Payne: To go in after Richard Nixon.

Currie: Oh! I see.

Payne: To go in after Richard. Richard Nixon went in the fall of 1972, and then the big story broke about his opening up China. And China didn't have a formal relationship with the United States.

Currie: I understand that it was difficult at first for journalists to get in.

Payne: It was.

Currie: That they would let other groups in before they'd let journalists in.

Payne: Yes. The fact that I was chosen to go in this group meant that the Chinese were becoming aware of the propaganda advantages, you know, the public relations advantages. We had to be cleared through the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa, Canada. They hadn't established an embassy or a consul here.

Currie: Was that a group of journalists that you went with?

Payne: Well, they called them journalists, but some of them were just writers, and one of them was a person who really didn't have much to offer in the way of journalism, but he was a very wealthy person, and he had managed to wangle his way in. But I'll tell you who was in the group—Susan Sontag. You know Susan Sontag?

Currie: Oh, yes.

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Payne: She was there. In fact, we were the only two women. So everybody was astonished that here I had been invited to go to China, you know, among the very first wave of people, of journalists, who were admitted to the country. So that was a big scoop. That made a whole lot of news, and CBS was delighted. They wanted to know if I couldn't broadcast from there. They tried every way they could to get permission for me to broadcast from China.

Currie: Did they ever get it?

Payne: No. I did do a wrap-up piece from Hong Kong, but never really got into—

Currie: Why do you think you were chosen?

Payne: I had been doing "Spectrum," and I had, you know, gained a reputation then. I think the Chinese knew it.

Currie: It's interesting, you and Susan Sontag.

Payne: Well, Sontag, you know, well, she's considered one of the intellectuals of the whole literary scene. There's a connection. Her father and her mother had been in China, not as missionaries, but associated with some business connection there. And she liked to say that she was conceived while they were in China, because her mother became pregnant. They came home, and she was born in the United States. She says she was conceived in China.

Currie: Maybe she was. Well, maybe we should go back, then. This is important. We should talk a little bit about how you got the job at "Spectrum," because you were the first black woman to be a commentator on a major network, is that right?

Payne: That's right.

Currie: How did you get the job on "Spectrum"?

Payne: By accident. No, by happenstance. Mildred Roxborough, a friend whom I knew at the NAACP (she worked in New York), was talking one day with Morrie Robinson, who was a producer for "Spectrum." "Spectrum" was a new program that had been conceived more or less as a public service thing. It wasn't a revenue-producing thing. But people were saying, "Why can't we have more public service?" CBS was at its pinnacle of power. "Why can't we have some opposing viewpoints?" So Morrie Robinson and some others came up with this idea of having a program called "Spectrum," in which they would present varying viewpoints. The idea went over well. The people at Black Rock* thought, "Well, maybe this is it. to give us a public posture."

So among the first group that they had to join—well, they tried to bring in people from the right, the left, and the center. And they had to think about women, too. So Shana Alexander, who, I think, worked for Life magazine, she was very well known, so they brought her on. Shana got very involved with some other things, and she wanted to take a break. Well, they needed another woman. One day, Mildred happened to be talking with Morrie Robinson, who was the producer. I think they were having lunch. And he mentioned the fact that he felt that maybe they ought to have a black woman, and she said, "I've got just the right person for you."

He said, "Who is that?"

______________________
* Black Rock is the name of the building in New York City where CBS corporate management offices are located.

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So she said, "Ethel Payne." And she went on to tell him a little bit about me. Well, he was interested.

I was back in Washington, and at the time, the government of Zaire had asked me to go over on a special tour for the fifth anniversary of the Popular Revolution Movement, as they called it. They wanted me to go as a guest of the government.

So Mr. Robinson called me, and he said, "Shana Alexander wants to take a vacation break, and you were recommended to substitute for her. We wondered if you would take a voice test."

I said, "Yes, but I'm getting ready to go to Zaire."

And he said, "Well, could you take the voice test?"

So I went over to the studios on M Street, and did a piece, and the word came back that they liked it.

Currie: What piece did you do, do you remember?

Payne: I don't remember. [Laughter.]

Currie: They made you do like a test column?

Payne: Yes. I don't remember exactly. But they liked my voice; they liked my voice quality. So he said, "Well, I'll get back to you." Well, I didn't hear any more from him. I was getting ready to—well, in fact, I had gone on up to New York. No, I was at Dulles Airport. I'll never forget it. Dulles Airport, getting ready to board the plane for Zaire. This page came over. They had tracked me down. They knew I was leaving. So I went to the phone and picked it up, and it was Morrie Robinson. He said, "How long will you be there?"

I said, "Well, I'm not sure, but maybe a week or so."

So he said, "Where can we reach you? How can we contact you?"

I said, "I really don't know, but you can contact the American Embassy." So when I got to Kinshasa, the capital of Zaire, there was an American Embassy officer waiting for me with a telegram.

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

Currie: So you got off the plane in Zaire, and there's an American Embassy personnel waiting for with a telegram.

Payne: With a telegram, saying, to the effect, "You've been accepted. Would you come on board?" This was in June. "Would you come on board and contact me as soon as you get back?"

Well, I stayed in Zaire; I guess it was just about a week. When I came back, on my way back home, there was a change of planes in Brussels, had to go through Brussels, Belgium. My luggage got lost. The night that I left, there was a party for me, and they had dressed me—I'm always getting dressed up. [Laughter.] They had dressed me in this Zairian costume. It was very colorful, and it was beautiful, and

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another headpiece. Oh, I didn't have time to change, so I just was in that dress the whole time. When I got to Brussels, they said, "We'll find the luggage and send it on to New York."

When I got to New York, I stepped off the plane, there was Morrie Robinson waiting for me. [Laughter.] He looked at me and gasped, because here I was coming through in this costume. It was very colorful, very colorful. Anyway, he took me to lunch; he rushed me to lunch.

Currie: Do you remember where he took you to lunch?

Payne: Some restaurant on West 57th Street, near the studios. We talked, and he told me that he was delighted with my voice, and he wanted me to start immediately. He told me a little bit about what "Spectrum" was like, and what they would expect and everything.

Currie: What would they expect from you?

Payne: They would expect some commentaries that would be maybe two-and-a-half minute commentaries, that would be on current topics, current issues. I could speak freely. They wanted free-wheeling commentary, pithy ones. Of course, he asked me a lot about my views, and then he had read my résumé, and he decided that I had some points of view that they would like. So he said, "You're free to say anything you want; just nothing libelous, you know."

So I told him yes. He wanted me to stay in New York and do a couple of pieces ahead of time. He wanted me to do three a week. So I stayed in New York. They put me up at a hotel. I prepared two pieces. First, I gave a little—I think the first one I did was on Zaire itself, something about Africa negritude. Negritude—it's a phrase that was coined by two people who were involved in the movement many years before, and one of them later became president of Senegal. Basically, it's a philosophy of exploring your inner self and your inner roots, and coming to be comfortable, so that you have a sense of pride and a sense of projection of that particular kind of ethnic identity.

Currie: So you were advocating this.

Payne: Yes. I was just talking about what I was finding, what I felt I was finding in the emergence of African countries. So I did that piece. Then I think I did a humorous piece, which they really delighted in, about my lost luggage and all the rest of that. So they were delighted with those two pieces.

Currie: How much were they going to pay you?

Payne: I think they started—it was to be $125 or $150 for each segment, and then it went up a little bit.

Currie: You did three a week.

Payne: Three a week. So that was pretty good.

Currie: Did that compare well to what you were making?

Payne: It sure added to it! [Laughter.] It sure added to it, yes.

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Currie: You were still on the Defender payroll.

Payne: Yes. Sure, it added to it. It helped immensely.

Currie: How long did it take you to do your commentaries?

Payne: I could sit here and just think about something and frame it up. It didn't take me long to put the ideas together.

Currie: Did you go record them at the studio there in Washington?

Payne: Yes. I used the studio. Then if I happened to be travelling, he gave me license, and if I happened to be travelling, I could do it in New York or sometimes, like I was going to St. Louis, I could use the CBS studios there. I had freedom to do it. I even did some in L.A. at the CBS studios there. As long as it didn't interfere with their schedule, I could go in there and do it.

Currie: Did they ever reject any of the commentaries that you submitted to them?

Payne: No. [Laughter.] The only one—I think about it now. Morrie Robinson, God rest his soul, he died from cancer, and he was a wonderful person. But I had an idea that proved—I guess it predated Andy Rooney. I wanted to do a takeoff on some commercial products, and I lined up some aspirin. [Laughter.] That was for the TV portion.

Currie: So you did TV?

Payne: Yes. After a year or so, they asked me to do some TV pieces. So I had all these products lined up, and he ruled that out. He said, "No." Now Andy Rooney does it all the time! [Laughter.]

Currie: Why do you think he said no?

Payne: Oh, I guess he thought it was wandering too far into the commercial end of it. And it could be a risky business. but I was doing a satirical thing, a fun piece.

Currie: So you were satirizing different kinds of medicines available?

Payne: Yes. So he thought that was a little bit too much.

Currie: He didn't want you dumping on brand-names.

Payne: Yes.

Currie: Is that it?

Payne: Yes. They were sensitive about it. After all, their advertisers were involved, you know. Maybe it was a risky thing, but I often think about Andy Rooney now and the stuff he drags out, all the paraphernalia he drags out now. But he is a humorist, first and foremost. But anyway, that was my—

Currie: The other people on "Spectrum," I know one was Phyllis Schlafly.

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Payne: Oh, yes.

Currie: One was Murray Kempton.

Payne: Murray Kempton.

Currie: Did you talk to those people?

Payne: Yes. I had known Murray Kempton from some of the civil rights days in the South. I never met Phyllis Schlafly personally, but occasionally I would talk with her by phone, and we would exchange notes, you know.

Currie: What did you think of all these people?

Payne: I knew she was a rabid conservative! I think she's solely responsible for killing the women's rights movement, the ERA. Yes. And why she was so determined and so hardfast on that, you know, I really just didn't know, but she was a smooth talker. She had a way with words, and she could sound so convincing, you know. But she was dead set on it. I never understood, because she's Catholic, she's from East Alton, Illinois. Her husband is a lawyer there. She had seven or eight children. I never quite understood why she was so dead set against the feminist movement, because she was such a strong woman in her own right, you know.

Currie: What did you think of her personally, from your conversations with her?

Payne: She could be charming, but her philosophy, I just thought was horrible. You know, her ideology, I thought it was horrible. I remember one time I wrote her a little note, and she had come out with this diatribe against ERA. So I just kidded her. I said, "Phyllis, when was the last time you were in the kitchen?" [Laughter.]

Currie: Did she ever answer?

Payne: Yes, she answered me. She said, "Well, thankfully, I have a full-time housekeeper." [Laughter.] That's what she said.

Currie: So you started "Spectrum" in 1972, but then you moved back to Chicago in 1973.

Payne: See, "Spectrum" went on for six years.

Currie: You were in Washington, you started "Spectrum." That, of course, gave you tremendous exposure.

Payne: That's right.

Currie: That is something you didn't have just reporting for the Chicago Defender. John Sengstacke wanted you to move back.

Payne: Yes, to take over the operation at the Defender. He gave me the grand title of associate editor. I moved back reluctantly, really, I did, because by this time, I had become a Washington animal, you know. I mean, I was just so geared toward Washington and Washington ways. It never left me. I didn't do well at all in Chicago. People welcomed me, and I got into organizing again, but I was just like a fish out of water. Local things just were not my style, not my tea bag. I could

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appreciate it; it was my home town and everything else. But my vision was always out in the world, it was always out in national politics. I couldn't get away from that. I couldn't adapt to just local news. And local news is very demanding, very requiring.

Currie: They wanted you to cover local news there?

Payne: They wanted me to direct it. They wanted me to produce the stories, to oversee the whole operation. It was miserable.

Currie: What didn't you like about it?

Payne: I thought it was too confining. I thought it was too parochial. I was always in demand in Washington or someplace else.

Currie: Also, being an associate editor is different from being a reporter.

Payne: That's right.

Currie: Because one is management.

Payne: One is management. I had all these calls and these invitations to speak and to lecture and so forth and so on, and sometimes CBS would like for me to be in New York or Washington. So I would, you know, go on back to Washington or New York, and that irritated John Sengstacke. Oh, it irritated him so bad, because he thought I should just—he was just trying to hold me. I felt like I was being smothered; I was being strangled a little bit. So we had a constant conflict about it, I admit that. I think what he was trying to do was tame me, more or less. I probably was kind of out of control, according to him.

Currie: Why did he think you were out of control? Did he say?

Payne: Because I wasn't responding to what he wanted for the Chicago operation. I just didn't. It wasn't that I didn't like it, that I detested it, or anything of that kind, but I just was not geared toward that type of thing. I had become truly international and national, and that was my thinking; that was my whole stand. He arranged to get me back. They set me up in a gorgeous apartment.

Currie: Really?

Payne: Near Lake Shore Drive in Chicago.

Currie: Not bad!

Payne: Probably the finest living I've ever had was that, because that had a gorgeous view of the lake and the park.

Currie: And they paid for it?

Payne: They paid for it—for a while. [Laughter.] It was very comfortable. It was lovely. I enjoyed that apartment so much. But even that wasn't enough. That just wasn't enough. I wanted to get back to Washington. I wanted to do some more overseas travel. If you look at that résumé, what followed in those years, my foreign assignments?

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Currie: You went with Henry Kissinger, you went so many places! We can include this in the record, all the places you went. But you stayed on in Chicago for how long?

Payne: I think until 1978.

Currie: So you were there a good while.

Payne: Yes.

Currie: I noticed in an Essence magazine in 1974, it said you were living in Chicago, but you wanted to retire in a few years.

Payne: Yes. At the time, I thought maybe I would, and just do some international travel and writing.

Currie: How come you never did?

Payne: Too many things beckoning me.

Currie: So how did the final break with the Chicago Defender come about?

Payne: It came in a very personal confrontation with John Sengstacke, in which he charged that I had no interest in the paper, and therefore, he was just reducing my salary to a minimum.

Oh, I know. I had been asked by USIA to join a selection board. The selection board was one that reviewed the performances of career people, and on the basis of their recommendations, these people would be moved up. These people wanted promotions. It's a very exacting assignment, and it required that you be in Washington, because that's where the records were. It's a very confidential thing. So you couldn't be marching around with people's vitaes or anything else; you had to stay in one place. So they paid for you to come to Washington and participate in this. Then it took about three months to do that. So I think that when I accepted that, that's when he became—so he just curtly told me we could no longer be associated. So it was a break, a distinct break.

Currie: After three decades.

Payne: Yes. Well, yes.

Currie: The fifties.

Payne: The fifties, yes, '53 to '78. That's 25 years, isn't it?

Currie: Yes. Looking back on it, what did you like most about working for the Chicago Defender?

Payne: I always loved my experience. I always give credit to it as my start, and I always give the credit to John Sengstacke for what he did to launch me, even though, I guess, he regretted it later. But I gave him credit for having that much vision. He's a very complex man personally. He's a brooder. But he had more vision than any of the other black publishers that I knew, and so I remember that with fondness to this day. Whenever I see him, we have a very cordial relationship, although he fired

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me. [Laughter.] But I don't hold it against him. I guess, looking at it from his perspective, maybe it was the best thing.

Currie: Would you have wanted to continue with the Chicago Defender?

Payne: Oh, yes, I would like to, but not under the same circumstances.

Currie: What was the worst thing about the job all those years?

Payne: Well, I don't know if I could categorize it as the worst thing. I just would get annoyed sometimes at the limitations and frustrations of being a one-person operative, and about the limitations that working with the black press does have, especially when a person is creative as I like to think I am. There's never enough money; there's never enough resources. And so those are the things that I found quite frustrating.

Currie: So in 1978, you packed your bags and came back to Washington?

Payne: No, no, no. After that break, let me see. I didn't move back here until 1980.

Currie: Oh, I see. What did you do?

Payne: I was free-lancing, and I was still doing pieces.

Currie: You were still with "Spectrum"?

Payne: No, I ended with "Spectrum," because Morrie died in 1978.

Currie: Is that what—

Payne: That's what ended my relationship with CBS. When he died, a new crew came in, and they just changed the whole thing.

Currie: 1978 was a real pivotal year for you.

Payne: It was a pivotal year. You know, six years, I guess, I had a kind of a record for longevity there. That's a long time to have stayed with the program.

Currie: With "Spectrum"?

Payne: Yes.

Currie: Was that long for a commentator?

Payne: Yes.

Currie: It's interesting. Earlier, you thought perhaps working for the black media gave you more freedom, and yet CBS is a white-owned, certainly major media.

Payne: That particular program gave you a lot of leeway, because remember now, it wasn't like I was a regular employee of CBS, taking directions. The only instructions that we had as commentators—we were independent—the only thing we were asked to

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avoid was libelous things. But other than that, we had an enormous amount of freedom.

Currie: Would you have liked to continue with "Spectrum"?

Payne: I wish I could do it today. [Tape interruption.]

Currie: Would you have liked to have stayed on with "Spectrum"?

Payne: Yes. The reason why I say that is because I considered it to have been one of the rare opportunities to really do a public service, with free-wheeling opinions. It was an outlet whereby you could express your views. I think those were probably the most enjoyable years of my whole career.

Currie: Really?

Payne: Yes, because I felt that, again, here I could get over a point of view to the public that had not been expressed, as a black person particularly. Now, if you ever go through some of my "Spectrum" pieces, you'll note that I didn't always dwell on black subjects.

Currie: There is one that is quoted all over the place about streaking.

Payne: A humorous pieces, yes.

Currie: People seem to focus in on that. What were some of the other subjects that you talked about?

Payne: The war, labor topics, foreign policy, Congress and its responsibility. I had carte blanche about the subjects that I could talk about.

Currie: What was the thing that you least enjoyed about doing the "Spectrum" series?

Payne: There wasn't anything least. [Laughter.] I enjoyed the whole thing.

Currie: Good money, good working conditions?

Payne: Yes. Most of all, the freedom to speak my mind. That was the most enjoyable part.

Currie: It all ended in 1978 because Morrie Robinson died.

Payne: Well, Morrie Robinson died in 1978, and then the new crew of persons that came in, they didn't have the same outlook at he did, so they just—and as a matter of fact, I don't think "Spectrum" is even going on now. I don't think it is.

Currie: Did you ever try to do any other broadcasting?

Payne: Oh, yes, WBBM in Chicago asked me to come in.

Currie: And you did a similar thing?

Payne: I did a similar—it was called Matters of Opinion.

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Currie: Maybe we should stop here at 1978, which is the year that both "Spectrum" and your association with the Defender ended. We can pick that up, because that would be a time when you had to reshape your life again.

Payne: Yes.

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