Ethel Payne is one of the most prominent black women reporters of her generation. Almost her entire career has been spent writing for the black press, primarily the Chicago Defender.

Payne began her career in the early 1950s as a reporter for the Defender. At the time of our interviews in the late summer and fall of 1987, she was free-lancing for a number of black newspapers. For a few years in the 1970s, she was an on-air commentator for the CBS television "Spectrum" series. The first black woman to give commentary over a major television network, Payne is a very prominent figure in the black community. Though she is less well-known in and among white media, that has changed in the last decade or so. She has been the subject of a profile in the Washington Post and has been the recipient of several prestigious awards and fellowships, including a Ford Foundation Fellowship in Educational Journalism.

At the time of our interviews Payne was in her late 70s and still going strong. She was working out of her apartment, a well-maintained high-rise located on 16th Street in Washington, D.C., not far from the Maryland state line. Payne's apartment was decorated with memorabilia from a life on the run: an oil painting of an African tribal scene, tribal statues and carvings, dolls from many lands, pictures of Payne with every president from Lyndon Johnson to Jimmy Carter, pictures of reporting trips to China and Vietnam.

Payne's office was located in one bedroom of her two-bedroom apartment. Although she had recently been given a computer by a relative, she had not yet learned to use it. She preferred her typewriter. I conducted all our interviews except number six, which was videotaped, in her office. She sat in a comfortable chair, often with with an arthritic foot elevated on a foot stool, and I sat on a couch facing her.

Before arranging to interview Payne. I spent two days in the Howard University Library looking at their excellent collection on the black press. I also made extensive use of their reference file on Payne. I was not able to gain access to the Ethel Payne papers, which she donated to Howard, but which have not yet been processed. Nor was I able to gain access to an oral history which she thought was included in the Howard University collection on the civil rights movement. They do not have a record of a Payne interview.

I also read A Black Woman's Experience - From Schoolhouse To White House, the self-published autobiography of Alice Dunnigan, a black woman who was reporting from Washington at the same time as Payne. The reminiscences of Dunnigan, who is now dead, provided me with another—often contrary—view of events Payne recalled. I also talked with several white women who were reporting at the same time as Payne. None of them were very familiar with her or her work, in my opinion a testament to the segregation that existed between the black and white presses.

In addition, Payne gave me access to a video tape produced about her for a tribute from Fisk University and raw tape of an interview conducted with her by a public television station.

Ethel Payne was chosen to be interviewed for this oral history project because of the prominent role she has played in the black press. She is perhaps one of the few women of her generation who made a life-long career in the black press. All through the interviews, Payne emphasized that her career has meant a life of activism. In that respect. she regards herself as a descendant of the black newspaperman and activist Frederick Douglass. She frequently quoted Douglass' admonition to "agitate, agitate, agitate."

Kathleen Currie
April 6,1990