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Rising Star in Washington
Upon her return from Asia, Payne was invited by Chicago Defender editor-in-chief Louis Martin to join the staff of the historic newspaper.
After a few months of local reporting, Martin sent Payne to cover the 1952 Democratic Convention. Having demonstrated her ability to cover national politics, Payne soon became the Defender's Washington correspondent and secured White House press credentials. In 1954, she used them to question President Eisenhower about the exclusion of the Howard University Choir from the Washington Republicans' annual Lincoln Day Dinner. (The invited Black singers were told to move along; a vaudeville actor's blackface routine remained on the program.) The President offered an apology, and the story became front page news in all the national papers.
