Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press
As race relations take center stage in the public consciousness, this exhaustive biography of one of America’s most prominent black journalists offers a unique look at history as seen through her eyes. Ethel Lois Payne’s flair for narrative storytelling and her shrewd, relentless focus on civil rights landed her a plum assignment as Washington, D.C. correspondent for the Chicago Defender, but she covered the black struggle for equality wherever it took place, from Selma, Ala. to the Vietnam War. Her job at CBS, in 1972, made her the first black female radio-TV commentator for a national network.
Morris’s biography dazzles with history, comprehensively following the trajectory of her career and cataloguing her failures as well as her many achievements. Payne’s private life, however, is absent from this text: we learn almost nothing of her relationships with family members, close friends or lovers. While Payne’s accomplishments deserve the spotlight, the omission deprives the reader of an intimate connection with her – regretful, since she must have been fascinating company.
