Payne explained to her readers unfamiliar with the name of Mahatma Gandhi that King was fusing the techniques that had won India its independence with the principles of Christianity to win Negroes their freedom.
Scribbling on her reporter’s pad, Payne took down King’s closing words. “We must use as our weapons the love which transcends everything and can make you compassionate with those who hate you,” King said, his voice resonating off the stone walls of the chapel. “If you can’t run, walk; if you can’t walk, crawl, but keeping moving forward.”
CHAPTER 21
GHANA
IN THE FOUR YEARS SINCE ETHEL PAYNE AS A WET-BEHIND-the-ears reporter covered her first convention, she had developed into the Defender’s unquestioned star political reporter. As was now its habit whenever Payne traveled, the Defender announced her plans with fanfare, referring to her as its “globe-trotting reporter” and “a political expert and civil rights authority.”
With the summer of 1956 came the quadrennial political conventions, but this year they hardly merited the attention of a skilled reporter. In San Francisco the Republicans predictably renominated Eisenhower, and in Chicago the Democrats settled again on Adlai Stevenson. But Payne was enraged at the Democrats for what she saw as a backroom deal that weakened the civil rights plank. Stevenson’s strategy was to offend no one. To accommodate him, the party suppressed a battle over a stronger plank supported by his rival, New York governor Averell Harriman. “Instead of the International Amphitheatre being turned into a bloody battleground with the liberals riding the chargers as so eagerly expected by 100 million TV viewers, the showdown was mild as a tea party sponsored by the church missionary society,” reported a sullen Payne.
Republican operatives discerned an opportunity in the discontent among African American members of the Democratic Party. Val Washington, the black assistant to the National Republican Committee chairman, felt that Payne’s frustration was an opening not to be missed. “She is thoroughly mad with the theory of ‘moderation’ that the Democrats are trying to sell to the Negroes,” Washington wrote to Max Rabb in the White House. Washington knew Payne well. He had once worked for the black press, including a seven-year stint on the business side of the Defender, and had frequently helped Payne with her reporting since she had come to the capital. “There is no doubt in my mind,” he said, “that she is going to do everything she can to help us in this campaign.” To that end, Washington urged that Rabb reward Payne by obtaining State Department funding to send her to a conference of African writers in Paris in late September. The State Department, however, didn’t buy into the idea, deciding instead “an acceptable delegation of American Negro intellectuals will be formed under private sponsorship.”
The supposition that blacks could be lured back to the GOP was not without basis. Congressman Adam Clayton Powell threw in his lot with Eisenhower, telling voters that a candidate like Stevenson who had been endorsed by both Eleanor Roosevelt and Mississippi senator James Eastland “has to be either a hypocrite, a liar, a double-talker, or a double dealer.” Both King and Abernathy said they would vote Republican. On election day, black voters in record numbers pulled the Republican lever, more than at any other time in the past quarter of a century. In the South, white voters gave Eisenhower Florida, Virginia, Texas, and Louisiana. “Montgomery, Ala.,” reported Payne, “where Jefferson Davis marched through the streets on his inauguration as President of the Confederacy, went GOP.”
In a front-page analysis called HOW IKE BROKE BACK OF SOUTH, Payne credited dissatisfaction with the Democrats for the surge in support among African Americans for the Republican Party. It was, in short, a protest against the Democratic-controlled machines in the South that stood as bulwarks against desegregation, she said. “From now on the Negro vote in the South will command more respect by both parties, particularly the GOP looking for a cadre which to build itself.”
But as frustrated and angry as she was with the Democratic Party, Payne was not about to jump ship. Rather, from her vantage point in Washington and from her trips to the South, she remained convinced that black voters could push Democrats into action. “Negro Democrats disgusted with pussyfooting and compromising that led to disaster in many places are prepared to deliver an ‘EITHER OR’ ultimatum to party heads before Congress opens,” Payne threatened in an end-of-the-year warning. “EITHER repudiate the Dixiecrats OR face a wholesale walkout from the party.”
DESPITE ETHEL PAYNE’S JOURNALISTIC ascension to the ranks of the premier black reporters, 1956 included a low moment. Richard Wright, whom she counted among her friends after the time they spent together in Bandung, betrayed her confidence. In The Color Curtain, his published account of the conference, he told the story of a visit to his quarters by a white woman. She had come to his room to ask frank questions about a black female journalist who was engaged in worrisome nighttime activities. Awakened one night, the woman told Wright, she discovered her roommate bent over a small blue flame. It seemed like she might be combing her hair, but maybe she was practicing voodoo?
Wright was puzzled until his visitor disclosed she had found an empty tin can marked “Sterno.” Comprehending what the woman had witnessed, Wright told her that she had simply seen a black woman straightening her hair.
“But why would she straighten her hair? Her hair seems all right.”
“Her hair is all right. But it’s not straight. It’s kinky. But she does not want you, a white woman, to see her when she straightens her hair. She would feel embarrassed—”
“Why?”
“Because you were born with straight hair, and she wants to look as much like you as possible . . .”
Slowly his guest comprehended. “Negroes have been made ashamed of being black,” he continued. “And this woman, your roommate, is trying to make herself look as white as possible. Can you blame her? It’s a tribute that she pays to the white race. It’s her way of saying: ‘Forgive me. I’m sorry that I’m black. I’m ashamed that my hair is not like yours. But you see that I’m doing all that I can to be like you.’ ”
“God in Heaven,” said the woman, “why doesn’t she forget her hair? She’s pretty like she is!”
“She can’t forget it. The feeling that she is black and evil has been driven into her very soul.”
Readers would certainly have not known that Payne was the inspiration for the black woman portrayed in Wright’s fictional tale. But by any measure it was a heartless use of an intimacy between the two to make a point about racial oppression. For the remainder of her life, Payne’s hair remained a source of consternation. Eventually she found her solution, like many other black women of her era, in acquiring a collection of wigs. Once she began wearing wigs, Payne almost never permitted herself to be seen without one, sometimes even going to bed with a wig when she had an overnight guest.
IN JANUARY 1957, Eisenhower asked Vice-President Richard Nixon to represent the United States at the Ghanaian independence celebration in March. For Africans, the moment was significant. The Gold Coast British colony would become the first sub-Saharan African country to gain its independence. For African Americans, it was an electrifying development. Not only would this be a nation ruled by blacks, but Kwame Nkrumah, who would become Ghana’s first prime minister, had gone to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and modeled his politics on the ideas of Americans Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois.
In addition to inviting Payne and other reporters to the independence ceremonies, the future rulers of Ghana extended invitations to numerous Americans, especially prominent African Americans, including Sengstacke, Payne’s publisher. “The occasion has engendered so much excitement,” Payne said, “that thousands of Americans of both races will make the long trek to Africa to participate in the rejoicing.”
Ghanaians promised to provide housing, food, work space, and in-country transportation to the foreign press. To ensure the black press would witness a moment benefiting Nixon and Republicans, the State Department classified
the trip as an “intergovernmental agency project,” thereby offering Military Air Transport Service seats at a price half that of commercial airlines. It even permitted Sengstacke to bring his wife at the reduced rate.
While the potential political dividends to Nixon from coverage in the black press were considerable, the irony of his going halfway around the world to score political points while avoiding his own backyard was not entirely lost on some scribes. “Nixon expects to be the GOP candidate in 1960 and he has been for some time shooting for the crucial minorities in the pivotal States where elections are won and lost,” noted columnist Doris Fleeson wrote. “He has yet, however, as has the president, to make a similar handshaking tour of the American South where the Negro segregation issue is boiling.”
An estimated 10,000 people were on hand when Nixon and his entourage landed in Accra, the capital of Ghana. But the majority of the thirty-five American press representatives were nowhere to be found. On the final leg of the 4,924-mile journey, engine trouble had caused the press corps’ DC-6B to turn back to Casablanca for repair. Payne, who had arrived on an earlier Pan Am flight, was one of the few Americans who watched as the crowds cheered for Nixon, calling him a “Show Boy,” a Ghanaian term of approval for a politician. When the bedraggled reporters finally reached Accra, Nixon had a surprise in store for them. Equipping himself with a press armband, notebook, and camera, he greeted the perspiring and furious reporters at the bottom of the plane’s stairs with notebook and pencil poised. “Anything to say, fellers?” he asked.
Later that night, at 1:30 AM, a plane bearing the final group of Americans arrived. On board were Martin Luther King Jr., A. Philip Randolph, Lester Granger of the Urban League, with whom Payne had battled, Ralph Bunche, representing the UN general secretary, Representative Adam Clayton Powell, and two dozen other notable African Americans. “When the Pan American plane set down here,” said Payne, “somebody aptly quipped had it crashed, the top Negro leadership of the United States would have been lost.” The group, however, was in no mood for jokes. They felt slighted that no one had been sent to greet the party.
AS THE HOUR OF INDEPENDENCE neared for Ghana, Payne discovered the celebration accomplished something that civil rights leaders in the United States had failed to do so far. Back in Washington, Nixon had left unanswered King’s letters inviting him to come to the South and witness firsthand the “anti-Negro violence.” In Accra, the vice-president could not duck for cover.
At a university convocation, where Nixon presented an American scholarship, he came face-to-face with King for the first time. “Nixon shook hands warmly with Rev. King while Mrs. Nixon and Mrs. King stood by chatting,” said Payne, watching the two men. “The vice-president said they had read the recent Time magazine article, in which Rev. King was featured on the cover, and said he had enjoyed it very much.”
“Mr. Vice-President,” King said, “I’m glad to meet you here, but I want you to come to visit us down in Alabama, where we are seeking the same kind of freedom the Gold Coast is celebrating.” Nixon demurred, but he invited King to come and meet with him in Washington. Although it was less than he sought, King was elated with the invitation. He told Payne and her colleagues he hoped Nixon would serve as a conduit to bring the segregation problem to Eisenhower’s attention. “We are not sure,” King said, “the president actually knows of all the violence and the desperation of the situation.”
American domestic politics, however, had to be put aside for another time and place. Under the agreement between the United Kingdom and the Gold Coast, Ghana would be granted its independence at midnight on March 5. When the ceremonies in the parliament concluded, the massive crowd of celebrants moved to the polo grounds to await the stroke of the clock. “It was so still that even the breeze from the sea was quiet as the upturned faces early hung on the words of Kwame Nkrumah, the man who had led them to freedom,” Payne said. Speaking in Twi, the common language of Ghana, Nkrumah’s voice quavered and broke with emotion, his arm rose in a clenched-fist salute, and he cried out “Ghana forever!” The crowd picked up the chant and rocked into the night to the rhythmic cry of “Freedom, freedom, freedom!”
In the days following, Payne joined the press plane that traipsed after Nixon as he visited several other African countries. Along with her was Howard K. Smith of CBS News, several well-known correspondents such as Peter Lisagor of the Chicago Daily News and John Scali of the Associated Press, as well as representatives of the black press such as Jet magazine’s Simeon Booker, with whom Payne had become good friends in their time together in Washington.
THE STOPS IN THE VARIOUS NATIONS produced little in the way of news beyond the usual platitudes about frankness and cordiality pronounced by Nixon and whichever leader he met. Instead, Payne turned her interest toward what she saw outside the official schedule. In Liberia, after the delegation visited industrial plants and plantations, Payne took note of the unclothed Liberians in roadside thatched huts. “A few yards from the president’s palace are makeshift tin houses with no running water and chickens scratching in the yard.” In Uganda, on a drive between Kampala and Entebbe, Payne was again struck by the contrast between the lush pastures filled with cows and the hard life of the Ugandans. “The thatched huts and barefoot Africans staggering under loads on their backs serve to remind you that this is Africa; the primitive clashing against the modern.”
After visits to Sudan and Ethiopia, the group reached Rome for recuperation and refueling. There Payne obtained an interview with Nixon. She asked him if the domestic struggle over civil rights had international consequences when it came to Africa. “What happens in the U.S. in the matter of race relations can have a serious effect on the success or failure of our dealings in Africa as it proceeds towards independence and freedom,” Nixon said. It would determine whether newly independent African nations would go communist. “Those who promote discrimination and prejudice in the U.S. are not only hurting our country at home, but internationally as well,” he said.
If Nixon was surprised at a question of international affairs coming from a member of the black press, this line of questioning seemed natural to Payne. Attending the Bandung conference, circumnavigating the globe, and now touring Africa had cemented her conviction that the fight for civil rights had an international dimension. Forces outside the United States could be brought to aid the civil rights movement at home, and equally if not more important in her mind, the fight for black freedom in the United States was part of a larger international struggle.
BACK HOME PAYNE WAS ONCE MORE on the domestic civil rights beat. She caught up with Martin Luther King again in early April when he, Roy Wilkins, and A. Philip Randolph came to Washington to announce a Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom to be held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on May 17. Wilkins explained that the rally would serve as a protest against the violence and intimidation to which blacks were subjected. Randolph quickly added it would not be a second March on Washington Movement like the one he had led in 1941. Instead it would be a spiritual demonstration in support of pending civil rights legislation and to commemorate the third anniversary of Brown v. Board.
As the date for the rally neared, Payne made the rounds of churches in the nation’s capital and found parishioners transforming the houses of worship into hospitality centers in preparation of an anticipated 50,000 pilgrims. In the end, the number who made it to Washington was far smaller than organizers had hoped. Payne reported the crowd at 30,000, resisting the temptation to inflate the turnout. The largest contingents were 11,000 people from New York and some 8,000 from Southern states who came for the hours of prayers, sermons, and speeches interlaced with musical performances by Mahalia Jackson and two choirs, including an interracial one from Philadelphia. The crowd listened quietly and patiently—“most orderly crowd they had handled,” said the police—until Howard University president Mordecai Johnson called for supporting desegregation efforts even at the risk of jail time. “The multitudes,” said Payne, “went wi
ld and the pace of enthusiasm for the entire afternoon was set.”
When at last the venerated Randolph introduced King, the crowd erupted in a thunderous ovation. “Speaking in slow measured tones to the quiet spellbound group,” Payne said, King explained it was not a day for rabble-rousing. Rather, there was “no place for misguided emotionalism” in dealing with the complexity and intransigency of the problem blacks faced.
Payne and other observers regarded King as the movement’s undisputed leader. “Those who a few months ago thought of the young King as a brilliant comet shooting across the sky never to be seen again,” Payne explained, “came away from the rally with a firmer conviction than ever of his mature, wise leadership when he pinpointed the whole basic struggle of the Negro in these simple phrases: ‘Give us the ballot and we will quietly and nonviolently, without rancor or bitterness, implement the Supreme Court’s decision of May 17, 1954. Give us the ballot and we will no long have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.’ ”
But, having been among Randolph’s field soldiers in 1941, Payne couldn’t resist reminding readers of the labor leader’s role in the unfolding events. “Indirectly,” Payne wrote, “the day was a tribute to the man who first began the agitation for full citizenship, 15 years ago in June, A. Philip Randolph who conceived the idea of a march on Washington.”
THE SUNDAY AFTER THE PRAYER pilgrimage Payne went to the Nixons’ home. It was the first time the Nixons had hosted a gathering in their new house in the exclusive Spring Valley neighborhood in Northwest Washington. To celebrate their purchase and score some political points, Nixon had invited reporters who had accompanied him on his trip to Ghana to tour the three-story house. In particular, the vice-president wanted it known that he and Pat had struck the restrictive covenant on the deed forbidding the sale of the house to anyone other than a Caucasian. Nixon told Payne he had been impressed by the prayer pilgrimage. This was good news, because while in Washington, King had sent Nixon a list of dates for the proposed meeting between the two that the vice-president had promised while in Ghana.
Eye on the Struggle Page 19