Research Catalog

Title

Oral history interview with Les Payne [videorecording] / conducted by James Briggs Murray.

Author

Payne, Les, 1941-2018.

Publication

New York, N.Y. : Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 2001.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Payne, Les.
• Murray, James Briggs.
• Black Journalists Oral History Project.
• Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
• Newsday.

Description

2 videodiscs (DVD) (187 min.) : sd., col.; 4 3/4 in.

Summary

The interview recalls Payne’s experience in Vietnam, where he served as an Information Officer and his decision to make a career in journalism; his first job with Newsday in 1969, where he did local news stories as a beat reporter, and his assignment to a story about the Black Panthers, which gave him one of his first opportunities to write a national news story as well. The interview goes on to recount Payne’s career with Newsday and his major news stories there, including one on migrant farm workers on eastern Long island, a 33-part story on the heroin trade, for which he shared the Pulitzer Prize in 1974. He also talks in-depth about his investigative reporting in South Africa where he wrote an 11-part report about apartheid and the Soweto uprising. . Other issues discussed in the interview include his relations with white reporters and the broader issue of race relations within the journalism profession; and his investigation of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, the Church Committee report on the FBI surveillance of King and the controversy regarding this material.

Subject

• Payne, Les, 1941-2018
• X, Malcolm, 1925-1965 > Influence
• King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 > Assassination
• African American journalists > Interviews
• African American newspaper editors
• African Americans in the newspaper industry
• African American journalists
• Journalists > United States > Biography
• Migrant labor > New York (State)
• African American authors > Biography > Anecdotes
• Apartheid > South Africa > Soweto

Genre/Form

Oral history.

Credits (note)

• Produced and directed by James Briggs Murray.

Event (note)

• Recorded on May 23, 2001, at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture as part of the Black Journalists Oral History Project.

Original Version (note)

• Archival original: two videocassettes (MII) in Sc Visual VRC-25.

Biography (note)

• Les Payne was the Associate Managing Editor for national, science, and international news at Newsday, and a columnist for the New York Tribune. In 1974 Payne won a Pulitizer Prize for the series, “The Heroin Trail,” which traced the international flow of heroin from the poppy fields of Turkey to the streets of New York City.

Call Number

Sc Visual DVD-1014.

OCLC

NYPG06-F838

Author

Payne, Les, 1941-2018. ive.

Title

Oral history interview with Les Payne [videorecording] / conducted by James Briggs Murray.

Imprint

New York, N.Y. : Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 2001.

Original Version

Archival original: two videocassettes (MII) in Sc Visual VRC-25.

Credits

Produced and directed by James Briggs Murray.

Event

Recorded on May 23, 2001, at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture as part of the Black Journalists Oral History Project.

Biography

Les Payne was the Associate Managing Editor for national, science, and international news at Newsday, and a columnist for the New York Tribune. In 1974 Payne won a Pulitizer Prize for the series, “The Heroin Trail,” which traced the international flow of heroin from the poppy fields of Turkey to the streets of New York City.

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Request Access to Schomburg Moving Images and Recorded Sound

Added Author

Payne, Les. ive.

Murray, James Briggs.

Black Journalists Oral History Project.

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Newsday.