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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a

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Speaker 1: show that pays tribute to people of the past by

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Speaker 1: telling their stories. Today, I'm Gabe Lucier, and today we're

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Speaker 1: celebrating the life of Ethel pain a prolific writer and

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Speaker 1: civil rights activist who dared to cover the stories and

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Speaker 1: ask the questions that no one else would. The day

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Speaker 1: was August fourteenth, nineteen eleven. Pioneering Black journalist Ethel Lois

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Speaker 1: Payne was born in Chicago, Illinois. She was one of

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Speaker 1: six children born to William A. Payne and Bessie Austin.

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Speaker 1: Her father worked as a pullman porter and her mother

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Speaker 1: was a Latin teacher turned homemaker. From an early age,

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Speaker 1: Ethel Paine loved to read, especially the poetry of Paul

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Speaker 1: Laurence Dunbar, and her parents encouraged her to pursue her

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Speaker 1: education and to start writing herself. As a teenager, Ethel

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Speaker 1: was one of the first black students to integrate LYNDE.

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Speaker 1: Blum High School, which was located in a white neighborhood

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Speaker 1: on the South side of Chicago. The environment was unwelcoming,

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Speaker 1: to say the least, the young girl endured taunts, racial slurs,

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Speaker 1: and even had rocks thrown at her while walking to school.

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Speaker 1: She was also barred from working on the school newspaper. Then,

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Speaker 1: one month into her first year at Lynn Bloom, in

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenty six, Payne's father passed away unexpectedly, making her

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Speaker 1: home life just as fraught as her days at school. Understandably,

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Speaker 1: Paine had trouble adjusting, and her grades began to slip

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Speaker 1: in every subject except English. Her teacher in that subject,

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Speaker 1: Margaret Dixon, had once taught a young Ernest Hemingway at

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Speaker 1: nearby Oak Park. She had encouraged him in his writing,

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Speaker 1: and she did the same for pain. Dixon even helped

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Speaker 1: her draft her first magazine submission, which was accepted for publication.

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Speaker 1: By the time Payne graduated in nineteen thirty, her experiences,

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Speaker 1: the good and the bad, had convinced her to become

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Speaker 1: an advocate for the oppressed and underprivileged. As she later explained, quote,

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Speaker 1: I had a strong, strong, deeply embedded hatred of bullies.

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Speaker 1: I just felt that if you're strong, you had no

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Speaker 1: right to pick on weak people. With that in mind,

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Speaker 1: Payne set out to become a lawyer, but she faced

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Speaker 1: discrimination again when she was denied admission to the University

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Speaker 1: of Chicago Law School because of the color of her skin. Undeterred,

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Speaker 1: she looked for other ways to further her education and

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Speaker 1: to confront the racial justice issues of her day. She

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Speaker 1: studied English and history at Crane Junior College and Garrett

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Speaker 1: Biblical Institute, and although the Great Depression had made it

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Speaker 1: harder than ever for a young black woman to find

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Speaker 1: work outside of service, she was able to take a

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Speaker 1: job as an assistant at the Chicago Public Library. In

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Speaker 1: her off hours, Payne pursued activism at the local branch

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Speaker 1: of the NAACP and helped organize community programs at her

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Speaker 1: church to combat juvenile delinquency. She also continued writing, including

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Speaker 1: several short stories based on events from her own life.

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Speaker 1: Ethel Paine kept herself very busy, but by the mid

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Speaker 1: nineteen forties she was feeling frustrated by how many avenues

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Speaker 1: still felt close to her, especially a career in law.

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Speaker 1: Ready for a change, Payne took a job with the

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Speaker 1: US Army Special Services Club and moved to Tokyo in

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight. She spent the next three years coordinating

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Speaker 1: recreational activities for Black troops stationed in Japan. The role

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Speaker 1: opened Paine's eyes to the unfair treatment of African American soldiers, because,

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Speaker 1: even though President Truman had issued an executive order for

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Speaker 1: the military to be integrated, General McCarthy had refused to comply,

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Speaker 1: insisting that his troops remained segregated. When the Korean War

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Speaker 1: began in nineteen fifty, Payne started writing down all the

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Speaker 1: incidents of discrimination that she witnessed in Japan. She eventually

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Speaker 1: shared these entries with Alex Wilson, a reporter for The

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Speaker 1: Chicago Defender, the first black newspaper in America to have

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Speaker 1: a circulation over one hundred thousand. The two first bumped

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Speaker 1: into each other at a Japanese press club, and after

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Speaker 1: reading a few excerpts from Payne's journal, Wilson asked permission

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Speaker 1: to take her notes back to his editors. Impressed by

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Speaker 1: her talent, Defender editor Lewis Martin offered Paine a full

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Speaker 1: time job in nineteen fifty one. It was the beginning

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Speaker 1: of a twenty seven year career with the paper, during

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Speaker 1: which she strived to cover stories that had been historically

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Speaker 1: ignored by the press. She detailed the struggles of unwed

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Speaker 1: mothers and black orphans, and exc disposed the racial disparities

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Speaker 1: in Chicago's labor, housing, and healthcare systems. In her national assignments,

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Speaker 1: Payne covered a host of historic events related to the

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Speaker 1: civil rights movement of the nineteen fifties and sixties. Among

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Speaker 1: them were the Brown Versus Board of Education case, the

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Speaker 1: Montgomery bus boycott, the horrific murder of Emmett Till, the

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Speaker 1: Little Rock Nine desegregation, and the nineteen sixty three March

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Speaker 1: on Washington. She also became the first black woman journalist

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Speaker 1: to focus on international news coverage. In nineteen fifty five,

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Speaker 1: she was the only black correspondent to attend the Bandung

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Speaker 1: Conference in Indonesia, which was the first major conference between

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Speaker 1: Asian and African states. Around the same time, Ethel Payne,

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Speaker 1: along with Alice Dunnegan, became one of the first two

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Speaker 1: black women to be issued a White House press pass.

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Speaker 1: She quickly developed a reputation for asking hard hitting questions,

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Speaker 1: including at presidential press conferences. One of her most memorable

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Speaker 1: exchanges came in nineteen fifty four, when she asked President

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Speaker 1: Eisenhower what he was doing to address racial inequality in America.

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Speaker 1: Mister President, she said, we were very happy last week

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Speaker 1: when the Deputy Attorney General sent a communication to the

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Speaker 1: House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee saying that there was

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Speaker 1: legal basis for passing a law to ban segregation in

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Speaker 1: interstate travel. I would like to know if we could

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Speaker 1: assume that we have administration support in getting action on this.

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Speaker 1: Clearly annoyed, Eisenhower responded gruffly, saying, quote, the administration is

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Speaker 1: trying to do what it thinks and believes to be

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Speaker 1: decent and just in this country, and is not in

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Speaker 1: the effort to support any particular or special group of

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Speaker 1: any kind. Ike's kurt response made headlines the following day,

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Speaker 1: with many interpreting it as proof that the Eisenhower administration

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Speaker 1: considered equal rights to be little more than a special interest.

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Speaker 1: The backlash further enraged Eisenhower, and he refused to call

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Speaker 1: on Pain again for the rest of his presidency. His

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Speaker 1: Press secretary also tried to revoke Paine's credentials, but even

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Speaker 1: after going through her tax returns, he could find no

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Speaker 1: defensible reason to do so. As a result, Ethel Pain

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Speaker 1: continued to cover the White House through seven presidents, and

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Speaker 1: thankfully not all of her relationships with them were contentious.

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Speaker 1: For example, President Lyndon Johnson invited her to the signing

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Speaker 1: of the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four and

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Speaker 1: the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five. He even

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Speaker 1: gifted her one of the pens he had used to

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Speaker 1: sign them. For the rest of the decade, Paine continued

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Speaker 1: to report on civil rights events for The Defender. She

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Speaker 1: interviewed prominent figures in the movement, too, including doctor Martin

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Speaker 1: Luther King, Jay Junior, Nelson Mandela, and Senator John F. Kennedy.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty six, Payne traveled to Vietnam to report

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Speaker 1: on the war, then the following year she covered the

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Speaker 1: Biafran war in Nigeria. In nineteen seventy two, pain broke

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Speaker 1: yet another barrier when she became the first African American

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Speaker 1: woman to appear on a national network as a radio

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Speaker 1: and TV commentator. For the next ten years, she made

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Speaker 1: frequent appearances on CBS programs such as The Morning News

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Speaker 1: Spectrum and Matters of Opinion. She retired from The Chicago

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Speaker 1: Defender in nineteen seventy eight and later taught journalism at

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Speaker 1: Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. She also continued writing throughout

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Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, including reporting on apartheid and on the

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Speaker 1: plight of refugees within Africa. Payne took one last trip

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Speaker 1: to South Africa in nineteen ninety in order to interview

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Speaker 1: Nelson Mandela, shortly after his triumphant release from la Prison

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Speaker 1: the following spring. On May twenty ninth, nineteen ninety one,

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Speaker 1: Ethel Payne died of a heart attack in Washington, DC

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Speaker 1: at the age of seventy nine. She's remembered today as

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Speaker 1: the first Lady of the Black Press, a fearless, unapologetic

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Speaker 1: advocate for her people, or, as she described herself, an

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Speaker 1: instrument of change. I'm gay, Blues yay, and hopefully you

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Speaker 1: now know a little more about history today than you

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Speaker 1: did yesterday. If you'd like to keep up with the show,

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Speaker 1: you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at

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Speaker 1: TDI HC Show, and if you have any comments or suggestions,

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Speaker 1: feel free to send them my way by writing to

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Speaker 1: this day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Kasby Bias

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Speaker 1: for producing the show, and thanks to you for listening.

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Speaker 1: I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day

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Speaker 1: in history class at the Painting of Putre,