CHAPTER 23

THE VICE-PRESIDENT COMES CALLING

IF WHITE AMERICA BELIEVED THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1957 was all the legal protection blacks needed in order to vote in the South, a subscription to the Chicago Defender would have set them straight. Unlike the mainstream press, Ethel Payne’s newspaper made it its mission to document the violence and atrocities perpetrated on African Americans, especially those in the South willing to demand their equal rights. “I am just beginning to realize a grim truth,” reported Payne from Birmingham, Alabama, less than two months after the president signed the act. “Living in the South today is about as uneasy and dangerous as it is along the Gaza Strip in the Middle East.”

Payne had returned to Birmingham to cover the launching of a statewide voter registration drive, one of the first following the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Those counties in which African Americans outnumbered whites by as much as three to one were also the counties with the lowest black voter registration. In three of the counties there were no black voters registered at all.

Among her first calls was to Arthur Shores, the lawyer who had represented Autherine Lucy in her case against the University of Alabama and King in his trial in Montgomery. He invited her to his house for a Saturday-evening party. When Payne got there, she found his home to be like a fortress. Powerful floodlights lit the yards, a guard stood watch, and neighbors were keeping a round-the-clock vigil. Thirty minutes before she arrived, a bullet shot from a speeding car hit the window of the house. It did not shatter the plate glass but was found on the flagstone walkway. “Once again,” Payne said, “as she has been for so many times before over a long period, Mrs. Shores was terribly upset, but she didn’t let it interfere with her job as hostess.”

The next morning the volunteers arrived for the two days of voter registration training. “Most of them,” said Payne as she watched them come in, “were good plain folk showing the wear and tear of toil and living under almost indescribable oppression.” Shores and another lawyer explained to the group that if they, or those they helped, were denied the right to register, complaints could be brought to the U.S. Department of Justice under the provisions of the new civil rights law. “But,” Payne said, “the biggest question in the minds of the delegates, most of whose names must be kept anonymous to avoid reprisals, is how to overcome the fear and violence that come with attempting to get registered.”

In Payne’s eyes the year had not been a good one for civil rights. “The old saying that things sometimes get worse before they get better can be used to characterize the year 1957 in race relations in America,” she wrote. “It was a time of both gains and losses. Mostly, the losses can be chalked up to failure to follow through on the psychological advantages of great decisions.”

ON HER DEFENDER SALARY, Payne continued to have money troubles. Although she lived modestly, she had two weaknesses when it came to spending. First, she made up for her paper’s frugality by frequently dipping into her own funds in the pursuit of a news story. Second, Payne was a spendthrift when it came to others. No matter how little was in her wallet, Payne was always the first to offer to pay for a meal, and she always brought presents back from her exotic journeys for her family and friends. Payne was like a fairy godmother, recalled one of her nieces. “Whenever she would return from one of many trips to faraway places it was a special treat for us,” she said. “There were gifts for each one . . . She never forgot.” She also never failed to donate to a cause when asked. Her monthly paycheck of $433 was quickly used up.

In September, she brought up the idea of picking up some part-time work from others with her publisher John Sengstacke, whose demands for loyalty made the subject of money a risky one to broach. “I might say I’m doing this because I feel I can talk to you quite frankly without being scared like I used to,” she said. “Uh-huh, yes I was!”

She told him the political arm of the AFL-CIO had asked her to edit its newsletter. It was essentially the same work she had done for the CIO’s political action committee that had gotten her in trouble earlier with Eisenhower’s press secretary when he tried to muzzle her questioning of the president. This time, however, she would work through an advertising agency firm that handled public relations for labor. “Thus, there will be no chance of all the fiasco that occurred in 1955,” she assured Sengstacke. “No bylines and no other identification. They are fully aware of the necessity for not jeopardizing my position with the papers.” She gave her boss her word that taking on this extra task would not diminish the effort she put into her work with the Defender. “In fact,” she said, “I’ll be redoubling my efforts to do a good job.”

Sengstacke agreed and Payne added $900 to her annual income for that year, a 15 percent increase.

PAYNE OPENED 1958 WITH a lengthy and favorable profile of Richard Nixon called “The Constant Campaigner.” The vice-president was already campaigning so hard and effectively for the 1960 presidential race that the young Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy predicted that Nixon would be the Republican nominee. During Nixon’s trip to Africa, Payne told her readers, the vice-president was so enthusiastic in embracing a tribal chief for the cameras, particularly those from the black press, that a newsman quipped, “Well, this is the first time I’ve known an American presidential campaign to be run in far-off Africa.”

Payne’s assessment of Nixon focused primarily on his growing willingness to speak out against segregation, his work with the committee charged with eliminating discrimination in government hiring, and his role on civil rights issues on Capitol Hill. “When he made a recent speech in Asheville, N.C., attacking racial discrimination and calling for compliance at the community level, Western Union delivered advance copies of the speech to reporters’ doors,” reported Payne. It was the kind of coverage in the black press for which Nixon campaign managers dreamed.

Shortly after the article appeared, a staff member of the House Government Information Subcommittee sought Payne out. He wanted to know if she had any evidence that Eisenhower’s press secretary James Hagerty had actually obtained copies of her tax returns as columnist Drew Pearson had alleged in 1955. Payne had no evidence to show that Hagerty had. She wrote to Hagerty to say she was sorry the matter had surfaced again. “As far as I’m concerned it’s forgotten about,” she said. “Personally, I think you deserve the Medal of Honor for endurance in a grueling occupation.”

The truth of the matter, however, was that the administration remained hostile to the black press. “Coverage of Eisenhower’s second term was a pathetic chore for a Negro reporter,” recalled Simeon Booker, who stopped coming to press conferences since the president ceased calling on black reporters. “Four years of attending White House press conferences and observing the president’s reaction to the wide range of questions put to him have convinced me that his greatest sensitivity is to queries on civil rights,” Payne said. “The moment something in this area is posed, the Ike temper goes up and the defensive bristles become erect like porcupine quills.”

IN FEBRUARY, ETHEL PAYNE, Jet magazine’s Simeon Booker, and another reporter decided it would be fun to hold a reunion of the journalists who went to Africa with Nixon the previous year. Overseas trips by presidents and vice-presidents were still rare, and reporters often held anniversary get-togethers to remember the frequent engine troubles, bad accommodations, and indigestible food (at least for First World journalists), and share tales that were never reported.

“Where should we have the gathering?” asked Booker. “We want to do a little bopping and a little boozing.”

“Well, let’s have it at Ethel Payne’s,” said the third member of the group.

“I don’t have anything in the apartment,” said Payne, who had just moved into a five-story brick building on Belmont Road near Eighteenth Street.

“Well, that’s fine,” said her companions. “We can boogie on the floor.”

So the gang of three set Saturday, March 1, as the date. At Booker’s insistence, Payne sent a note to Nixon. “As March 1 approaches,” she wrote, “there are nostalgic memories of taking off last year at this time on that never-to-be-forgotten ‘safari’ across Africa.” Would the vice-president and his wife join the gathering?

The following Tuesday, Payne received a telephone call from Nixon’s office. “The vice-president and Mrs. Nixon will be happy to attend the party,” said the caller.

“Well, I panicked!” said Payne. “I just absolutely panicked.”

Payne’s new apartment, far roomier than her old haunts, was essentially unfurnished. Or at least she thought so. So she went to visit Hecht’s, one of Washington’s venerable department stores, and sought out the manager.

“I’ve got a problem,” she told him.

“What’s your problem?” he asked.

“The vice-president is coming to a party we’re having on Saturday evening, and I don’t have any money, and I don’t know when I’m going to be able to pay for this, and I don’t have any furniture.”

The manager kindly consented to send a truckload of furniture, even dishes, on credit up to her new place. Payne’s next-door neighbor got into the act and agreed to open her apartment and put together a spread of food. The group even procured a band for the building’s foyer.

On the night of the party Richard and Pat Nixon arrived in high spirits. Protruding from his coat was a bottle of bourbon with a label that read “The President’s Choice: Richard M. Nixon.” He gave it to Payne, and in turn the group presented the vice-president with a commemorative leather pocket notebook and a white orchid corsage for his wife. To everyone’s surprise, after the exchange of gifts and toasts, the Nixons stayed around for several hours. For Richard Nixon, the 1960 presidential campaign was under way and the room held influential African Americans. Not all became converts by his willingness to socialize with them. Booker, who cohosted the party, remained a skeptic. “Still, blacks simply didn’t trust Nixon,” he said. In his eight years in Washington, Booker noted, Nixon had failed to hire a single black person to work in his office despite urging employers to do so.

Several days later, the Defender reported in an article probably written by Payne herself that the paper’s Washington correspondent went about her duties tired “but with her head in the clouds.” Both Richard and Pat Nixon sent thank-you notes to Payne addressing her as “Ethel,” citing their friendship and how impressed they had been by her collection of memorabilia from her travels around the world. Booker filed his report for Jet. It heralded Nixon’s journey to Payne’s place as “marking the first time a vice-president has socialized at the home of a Negro in Washington.”

A FEW WEEKS AFTER the party, Payne fell ill again. But unlike in September, when a rest at home was sufficient, she was hospitalized at Washington’s Providence Hospital on March 27. The doctors were concerned that there was a malignancy associated with her illness and took X-rays and conducted various tests. Finding none, and with Payne’s health improving, the hospital sent her home in the middle of April. “After being in bed for two weeks and undergoing all the tests,” Payne wrote soon after getting home, “I found myself really weak and I am just getting my sea legs back again.”

She would need them. In the midst of her health ordeal, Payne’s bosses in Chicago had dropped a bombshell. Louis Martin, her editor, informed her that after she had spent five years in Washington, they wanted her to come back to Chicago. The paper had begun subscribing to the UPI wire service, expanding its coverage of news from Washington and around the world. The publisher no longer thought it worth the expense of maintaining a correspondent in Washington.

Payne was stunned. She immediately appealed to Martin, recalling the circumstances in which he had sent her to Washington in the first place. “Do you remember back in 1953 when Ed Goodwin offered me 49 percent of the stock in the Oklahoma Eagle to come there and edit the paper and how you talked to me like a Dutch uncle?” Payne asked. “I still double [over] when I think of what you said about the grasshoppers and the stock consisting of a chair and a desk. It was your eloquent persuasion which made me settle on Washington. So it puzzled me when you said recently you couldn’t understand why I like Washington so much because Chicago was the place for real opportunity.”

At length, almost as if she were writing a legal brief, Payne spoke of the enhanced reputation of the paper since she had come to Washington. “A check of the Congressional Record would show that the Defender is more often quoted than any other Negro paper,” she said. “This is not mere happenstance. It means that we have national respect.”

On top of her good work, said Payne, she had come cheap. She had not received a raise in four years and supplemented her $5,200 to $5,400 annual salary from the Defender with freelance work. But her hometown offered no extra work of the sort she had been able to get in Washington. “Therefore to come back to Chicago now would mean a real financial hardship.”

Payne consulted her Newspaper Guild contract with the Defender. It included a clause that prohibited transferring employees to work in another city without their consent and stated that employees should not be penalized for refusing to accept a transfer. Frostily addressing her note to “Mr. Martin,” Payne declined the transfer.

The conflict was bizarre. For years the paper had touted Payne’s presence in Washington, had used her name in advertisements, and, most tellingly, had built its headlines around her rather than the news. Now it was treating her callously.

John Sengstacke was taciturn as to his motives. A strong Eisenhower supporter, he may have grown discouraged with Payne’s drift away from her positive coverage of the administration to her now-disparaging articles. If this was not the cause of Sengstacke’s unhappiness with Payne in Washington, money was certainly an issue. Since going daily two years earlier, the hoped-for additional advertising and increase in circulation had not materialized; meanwhile, editorial costs had risen substantially to meet the need for more news copy. Sengstacke had also purchased a new building and a new press, which by his own admission that spring was an ill-timed decision, as the nation was wallowing in a recession. Cutting costs was an imperative.

However much she argued, Payne knew that Sengstacke’s decision, for which Martin was only the messenger, was irreversible. In her entreaties, Payne revealed both her gratitude and affection for Martin. “If I have amounted to anything in the world of journalism, it has been because you have guided me and I have always had the greatest confidence in your advice, even though some times we may have irked each other. I should have qualified that to say I did most of the irking.”

The answer to her appeal came swiftly. The Defender sent her a formal announcement that it was closing its Washington bureau. Payne was flummoxed. She turned to the guild for help. Unfortunately, the union couldn’t do anything beyond determine that she would receive payment for severance and vacation time. Because she had refused to go back to Chicago and the Washington office was being closed, the paper “reluctantly considers that you have resigned,” explained a guild officer.

In August, Sengstacke sent Payne a letter along with a check for $1,004.60, the balance due her. He added a postscript: “I know that you are and will always be a Defender booster.”