"Ethel Lois Payne" (August 14,1911-May 28,1991)

Was an African American journalist.Known as the "First Lady of the Black Press,"she was columnist,lecturer,and freelance writer.Ethel

combined advocacy with journalism as she reported on the civil rights movement during the 1950s,and 1960s.She became the first African-American commentator employed by a national network when CBS hired her in 1972.In addition to her reporting of American domestic politics,she also covered international stories.Born in Chicago,Illinois,Ethel began her journalism career rather unexpectedly while working as a hostless at an Army Special Services club in Japan,a position she had taken in 1948.Ethel allowed a visiting reporter from the Chicago Defender to read her journal,which detailed her own experiences as well as those of African-American soldiers.Impressed,the reporter took the journal back to Chicago and soon Ethel's observations were being used by the Defender,an African-American newspaper with a national readership,as the basis for front-page stories.In the early 1950s,Ethel moved back to Chicago to work full-time for the defender.After working there for three years,she took over the paper's one-person bureau in Washington,D.C. in addition to national assignments, she was afforded the opportunity to cover stories overseas,becoming the first African-American woman to focus on international news coverage.During Ethel's career,she covered several key events in the civil rights movement,including the Montgomery Bus Boycott and desegregation at the University of Alabama in 1956,as well as the 1963 March on Washington.At the 1956 Bandung conference in Indonesia she was the African-American corresponden.Ethel earned a reputation as an aggressive journalist who asked tough questions.She asked President Dwight D.Eisenhower when he planned to ban segregation in interstate travel.The President's angry response that he refused to support special interest made headlines and helped push civil rights issues to the forefront of national debate.In 1966,she traveled to Vietnam to cover African American troops,who were involved in much of the fighting.Ethel subsequently covered the Nigerian civil war and the International Women's Year Conference in Mexico City,and accompanied Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on a six-nation tour of Africa.In 1972 she became the first African-American woman radio and television commentator on a national network,working on CBS's program Spectrum from 1972-1978,and after that with Matters of Opinion until 1982.Ethel died of a heart attack at her home in Washington,D.C.