Eye on the Struggle

by James McGrath Morris

  Kennedy, as predicted, picked Johnson. Payne and every black delegate, elected official, and party activist at the convention received a telegram inviting them to a meeting at the Biltmore Hotel. Chicago congressman William Dawson, who had given the seconding speech for the Johnson nomination, and Reeves, who had seconded the Kennedy nomination, greeted the group. But Payne observed that the crowd remained skeptical, even sullen. After some delay Kennedy arrived, accompanied by Johnson. “There was muted applause and some grim-faced onlookers kept their arms significantly folded,” Payne said.

  Johnson told the gathering that he understood how African Americans felt about him but pledged that if they were elected, he and Kennedy would not disappoint them. “I’ll do more for you in four years than anyone else has done for you in one hundred years,” Johnson said. Payne looked at Reeves. He had, she said, “the satisfied look of the broker who has delivered for his client.”

  In the fall the Kennedy-Johnson ticket prevailed by the smallest of margins made possible in part by winning 70 percent of the black vote. Not long after, Payne’s nephew came back to the apartment carrying a large package. Johnson proceeded to take down some pictures on one wall and put in their place a large picture of John and Jackie Kennedy. “That’s our leader,” he said to his aunt.

  THE YEAR 1961 SPARKED hope among many African Americans. In Walter Mosley’s novel Black Betty, Easy Rawlins considered the prospects of the year: “About our new young Irish President and Martin Luther King; about how the world was changing and a black man in America had a chance to be a man for the first time in hundreds of years.”

  For Payne the year brought hope that she might be able to leave the AFL-CIO. She did not want to give up her life in the capital. “I’m now in my eighth year of life in Washington, and still fascinated by the panorama of politics and its accompaniment of rumors, intrigue, cynicism, frustrations, and pomp and circumstance,” she told her family.

  After the new president took office, Payne’s name showed up on a list of rumored appointments. It was thought she might be given the assistant directorship of the Labor Department’s Women’s Bureau. The invitation never materialized. The lack of a college degree took her out of consideration. “Contrary to all those speculations you may have read about my going into the administration,” she wrote to her family, “I’m right here at the AFL-CIO and as the kids would say: ‘Nothing is shaking.’ ”

  On Monday, June 12, 1961, Payne, her sister Avis and Avis’s husband James, as well as other relatives, gathered to watch as James Johnson and thirteen other boys graduated from the Capitol Page School. “You have been privileged to serve in one of freedom’s greatest institutions—the Congress of the United States,” Vice-President Johnson told the students. Then, almost as if he were addressing Payne’s nephew, he said, “You know the frailties of its members, but you know the vastly greater strengths of the institution.” When the time came for James A. Johnson to receive his diploma, the audience stood on its feet applauding, providing him with a send-off to a college education, medical school, and a naval career culminating in the post of rear admiral.

  “Although his family is disappointed that he did not realize his dream of being accepted as a page on the House floor,” said Payne, “he had made so many friends and well-wishers that it has been a great experience.

  “He thinks philosophically that he has paved the way for Congress to relax its resistance and in the future, some other colored boy will get the opportunity to break the iron curtain and become a page.”

  A YEAR INTO THE KENNEDY administration, on January 26, 1962, COPE fired Payne. No public reason was given. Some press accounts attributed the termination to an economy move. “Ranks of the AFL-CIO’s staff employees and some labor circles are wondering out loud why it happened,” reported the Pittsburgh Courier. When she was asked, Payne refused to comment beyond confirming she had been let go.

  The speculation was that Payne’s independent political streak had become too much for union leaders. From the beginning her fidelity to the labor movement’s alliance with the Democratic Party had been suspect because of the widely publicized visit to her home by then vice-president and 1960 Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon. Payne’s support for insurgent candidate Frank Reeves had certainly not helped.

  At first it was thought that Payne might become deputy director of the newly created Agency for International Development. Instead, Payne accepted an offer from the Democratic National Committee to become the deputy field director. Margaret Price, the director of women’s activities for the party, hired Payne to recruit and organize black women. “The appointment is the first move of the Dems to develop a striking force among Negro women,” noted Jet magazine.

  In September, the White House dispatched Payne, along with presidential aides Hobart Taylor Jr., special counsel to the Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity, and Andrew Hatcher, the first black person to serve in the White House Press Office, to the annual meeting of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World, the largest black fraternal organization, in Detroit. The goal of the White House emissaries was to win support for Kennedy’s Medicare bill. But the Elks’ Grand Exalted Ruler, who was a Republican, declined to lend his organization’s support to the controversial legislation. However, before Payne left Detroit, he permitted her to argue in favor of Medicare in a closed session. In doing so, she became the first woman to speak before the group. The audience did not buy Payne’s message, but she received a standing ovation.

  CHAPTER 25

  WE SHALL OVERCOME

  WHILE IN BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA, TO WORK ON A voter registration drive in May 1963, Payne reconnected with her former colleagues from the press. In the years since she had first gone to the South while working for the Defender, many black and white reporters had gotten to know each other well, pursuing together what they called the “deseg beat.” But like a kid outside a candy shop window, Ethel Payne could only look into the world she had left.

  One night she was holed up with a group of her journalism friends at the A. G. Gaston Motel, where Martin Luther King and other movement leaders camped when in town. Confined to their rooms by a heavy downpour, the reporters heard a loud knock. Opening the door, they found New York Post reporter Murray Kempton dripping wet with a bulky package tucked under his raincoat.

  “You all can’t have any of this,” Kempton exclaimed to the African Americans in the room, “this is white folks’ whiskey.” He had discovered that segregation was so rigid in Birmingham, the liquor store had a barrier running down its center. On one side there were brands of liquor for white customers, and on the other side, brands for blacks. Years later when Payne regaled a college audience with this tale, she added with a laugh, “The cash register was in the middle and it didn’t discriminate.”

  The year 1963, however, was a low moment for the civil rights movement. What had once worked no longer did. In Birmingham, the jailing of Martin Luther King had attracted national attention to the campaign he was leading to desegregate downtown commerce but the effort was faltering. In a stroke of brilliance, however, organizers turned to the city’s African American students. Pouring out of the city’s public school, the students marched peacefully into the downtown. When the police turned high-pressure fire hoses and police dogs on them, the images of the young students under attack filled the front pages of newspapers and TV evening newscasts, triggering national outrage. By mid-May the city caved in and released all who had been arrested, and merchants agreed to desegregate downtown stores.

  The Birmingham success reenergized national civil rights leaders. In late May 1963, on behalf of three leading civil rights organizations, A. Philip Randolph called for a March on Washington in August to draw attention to the lack of progress in reaching the movement’s goals in the centennial year of the Emancipation Proclamation. King quickly agreed to join the march, as did other leading activists and organizations. Feeling the pressure, President Kennedy called
for new and stronger civil rights legislation that would use the power of the federal government to open all public establishments and expand the right to vote. Of those likely to favor civil rights, only Payne’s former employer, the AFL-CIO, refused to lend its support to the march.

  THE SCOPE AND SIGNIFICANCE of the march grew as the August date approached. Two weekends before the appointed date, sitting in her Washington apartment, Payne opened her old wooden file cabinet, the one she had been trying to clean up for years. From it she pulled a scrapbook with clippings and letters from the early 1940s, when she had worked on the earlier March on Washington Movement led by Randolph. “It seems impossible that it was 22 years ago when the dream of a March on Washington was first born,” Payne wrote in a guest appearance in the Defender, her first byline in the paper in five years. “But there was the record in the pages of a scrapbook, the leaves so brittle that they crumble at the slightest touch.” On page after page she had pasted flyers, articles, and editorials from the Defender, and—most precious to her—letters from Randolph.

  “Now 22 years later,” she wrote, “the man whose dream of a March on Washington was deferred by a promise while a whole new generation of Americans grew up, will at long last lead his legions numbering more than 200,000 across the Potomac and up to the Shrine of the Great Emancipator to demand payment in full on the promissory note.” Payne listed the names of those with whom she had worked in Chicago and reminisced. “We worked and worked. We walked and talked, distributing thousands of leaflets,” she said. “Yes, those were the good old days—they weren’t really good days. It just felt good to be part of the flowing stream of Negro consciousness.”

  In the two decades since, the country and Payne had undergone an astounding transformation. In 1941 she had been unable to obtained decent work because of her race; now she held a well-paying job because of it. The civil rights movement, in which she served as an activist and for which she had functioned as a chronicler, had not just opened the door to the Democratic Party’s national office but had put African Americans to work at its desks.

  The changing political climate also elevated Payne’s status. In her job at the Democratic National Committee, as well as when she had worked for the AFL-CIO, she was always introduced as the former reporter who had challenged the president and been on the front lines of the battles. Her reputation put her on guest lists. In January, for instance, she had been among the dignitaries invited by Attorney General Robert Kennedy to an exhibit marking the centennial of the Emancipation Act, and in June the president asked her to attend a White House meeting of leaders from women’s organizations to discuss civil rights. When a newspaper referred to her as “one of the top national figures in Washington,” it was not for the work she currently was doing but for what she had done in the past as a reporter.

  But at age fifty-two, Payne was hardly ready to be put out to pasture. She remained eager to be active. “Before I order my rocking chair, I’ve got some stirring and turning to do,” she told her family. “Causes and crusades are my life blood and I hope to be a part of moving civil rights out of the talking stage into reality.”

  WHEN MORE THAN 200,000 DEMONSTRATORS converged on the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, Payne joined her old colleagues in the press seats despite lacking press credentials. She couldn’t help but notice the immense scope of this march in comparison to the smaller Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom she covered six years earlier. Washington would have to pay attention now.

  A. Philip Randolph welcomed the crowd as its members found places to stand, trees to lean against, bits of memorial walls to sit on. His place of honor brought back memories of when Payne had worked for him in the 1941 effort to organize a Washington march. Sadly to her mind, now, like then, women continued to be given a backseat. Bayard Rustin paid tribute to black female activists, but their absence from the list of scheduled speakers highlighted their continuing exclusion from leadership posts.

  As the program neared its conclusion, Martin Luther King rose to deliver a speech intended to serve as the centerpiece of the rally. He had only just finished it early that morning, before the sun rose. Payne and the reporters were given mimeographed copies.

  As King began to read, the crowd fell silent. The audience reaction was palpable from where he stood on the stairs of the monument. Seized by the moment, he put aside his script and instead extemporaneously talked about a dream, a theme he had been using in recent speeches. “I say to you today, my friends,” said King, “that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream.”

  The reporters sitting around Payne couldn’t follow the copy of the speech they had been given. It was not on the page. In words that would be carved on monuments and recited by schoolchildren for generations, King spoke of his vision. “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” King’s eloquent plea moved civil rights veterans and even hardened reporters. “I saw white and black veteran reporters seated near me with tears in their eyes, streaming down their cheeks,” said Payne. “I had tears, too.”

  A few days later, while staying at the Sheraton East Hotel in New York, Payne took out a piece of the hotel’s stationery and wrote to Randolph. “Dear Phil,” she began. “We are still glowing from the great experience of the March last Wednesday. Remembering 1941 and 1942, I can say I’m glad that at long last your dream did come true.”

  BECAUSE SHE HELD A POST on the Democratic National Committee, Payne’s name continued to show up on lists of potential administration minority appointments. She also became one of the most frequently invited speakers at Democratic Party events. Building on the momentum of the march, the committee intensified its voter registration efforts. Payne, along with two others, was assigned to boost the number of black voters in New York, Chicago, Indianapolis, and other metropolitan areas.

  Payne sought to do more than increase black voting. She was also frustrated by the low turnout of women. Wherever she spoke, she urged women to vote. “Too many feel like the woman who told me that her husband does the voting in their family,” Payne told a reporter in Denver, Colorado.

  It was so different being on the inside as a party functionary, rather than being on the outside as a reporter. Her life centered on the Democratic Party. For instance, in February, President Kennedy had held a reception to celebrate the centennial of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. The guest list for the gala read like a who’s who of American blacks, although Martin Luther King and A. Philip Randolph pointedly stayed away to protest the failure of the administration to move forward on promised civil rights actions. Payne chose party loyalty over fidelity to King and Randolph. After the reception, Representative Carl B. Stokes, in his first term in office, and other activists retired to Payne’s apartment to talk about the 1964 elections. They talked late into the night and decided to try to persuade the party to hold a series of grassroots gatherings around the country leading to a summit to placate black impatience with the lack of progress.

  Like most everything, their plans went into limbo on November 22, when President Kennedy went to Dallas, Texas, on a political fence-mending trip and returned in a coffin. Despite the president’s slowness in pushing Congress to move on civil rights legislation, his other actions—such as meeting with the March on Washington organizers to pose in the Oval Office—had scored points for him with African Americans. They, like much of the country, were enamored with the Kennedy mystique. “He was a glamorous, charming man, and he was disarming,” said Payne. “He had a way with it.”

  Now Texan Lyndon Baines Johnson, the man whom Payne blamed for the gutting of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, ascended to the presidency. To her surprise, as well as to that of many in the movement, Johnson pledged to keep the promise he made to the black delegates and activists at the convention three years earlier. He resumed Kennedy’s previously unsuccessful efforts to get a streng
thened civil rights bill out of Congress. “No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long,” Johnson said in his first address to Congress shortly after Kennedy’s death.

  He got his way. Despite their strong presence in leadership positions in the House, Southern Democrats were powerless to thwart the bill’s progress. In the Senate, however, arcane rules and apportionment of votes by states rather than by population gave recalcitrant Southerners an advantage they did not possess in the House. It was there they planned their last stand.

  Georgia senator Richard Russell led the charge against the bill with eighteen other Southern senators, a group that included Senator Strom Thurmond, who in 1957 had conducted the longest filibuster ever. Two decades earlier, Senator Russell had pledged to “resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our states.”

  Payne knew firsthand what an opponent he could be from her days as a cub reporter at the 1952 Democratic Convention, when she scored an interview with him, to her day-by-day coverage of the 1957 fight. But this time there was nothing the segregationist could do. The verbal ramparts they built in the Senate held for fifty-four days until a bipartisan group of senators brought it down with a compromise bill to the floor that, unlike in 1957, retained tough enforcement provisions.

  On July 2, 1964, Lawrence F. O’Brien Jr., President Johnson’s political point man, prepared a memorandum for his boss listing the names of those who were expected at the White House that evening when the bill would be signed into law on national television. He grouped the invitees by such classifications as “Executive Branch” and “House of Representatives” and “Religious Leaders.” Among representatives for “Negro Groups” were the familiar names of Martin Luther King, Whitney Young, A. Philip Randolph, and others. On the last page of the list given to the president was a group called “Other.” The second of those names was that of Ethel Payne, mistakenly listed as “Mrs.”