GBN Daily Drop Podcast: Ethel Payne – “The First Lady of the Black Press” (LISTEN)

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

Although I have posted about the fabulous, fierce reporter and White House correspondent Ethel Payne on GBN before (link here), today I’m posting GBN’s Daily Drop podcast much shorter audio version based on the Monday, February 7th entry I wrote in the “A Year of Good Black News” Page-A-Day®️ Calendar for 2022 on “The First Lady of the Black Press.”

(BTW GBN’s Page-A-Day®️ Calendar is now 50% off at workman.com with code:50CAL until 2/28/22!)

You can also follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.comor create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website (transcript below):

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

Hey, this Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Monday, February 7th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.

Extra! Extra! Read all about Ethel Payne, the “First Lady of the Black Press.” After her Pullman porter father died from an infection when she was fourteen, Chicago-born Payne scrambled to get an education and eventually found work at the Chicago Defender, which in its day was one of the largest African American newspapers with its informal national distribution carried out by tacit agreements with the Pullman Porters.

Payne’s reporting at the Defender was hugely popular, and she later became the paper’s White House correspondent, famously challenging every president from Eisenhower to Nixon on topics important to her Black readership.

In 1972, she became the first African American woman commentator on a national network (CBS).

If you’re interested in learning even more about Ethel Payne, which I recommend you do because frankly her life and her words are fascinating, check out the extended companion episode on Payne that I’ll be posting within the week as a bonus.

That bonus episode will be based on the longer article I researched and wrote about Payne on Good Black News, and that link will be provided along with links to other sources about Ethel Payne in today’s show notes.

Lori’s Good Black News article on Payne: https://goodblacknews.org/2019/02/03/bhm-extra-extra-read-all-about-ethel-payne-first-lady-of-the-black-press/

More sources:

• Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press biography by James McGrath
• The Power of Her Pen: The Story of Groundbreaking Journalist Ethel L. Payne children’s biography by Lesa Cline-Ransome and John Parra
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN2Rf1c3KOw (Ethel Payne: First Lady of the Black Press)
• https://library.garrett.edu/collections/special-collections/womens-history-digital-exhibit/ethel-payne-1911-1991

This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022,” published by Workman Publishing, and available at workman.com (50% off with code:CAL50 until 2/28/22), Amazon, Bookshop and other online retailers.

Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot. For more Good Black News, check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.