Story 04
New Horizons Once Again
Payne was welcomed back to the Defender at the end of 1966 and sent to investigate the treatment of Black soldiers on the front lines of Vietnam.
She was the first Black journalist to report on the war. Returning to the battlefront was a shock to Payne but she persevered, interviewing numerous soldiers and learning firsthand about the discrimination which persisted abroad. In Asia she was able to follow up on her previous work on interracial couples and their children, discovering that little had changed in the treatment of multiracial children. Her fruitful investigation and subsequent exposés helped re-establish Payne as the Defender’s star reporter.
