Correspondence, speeches, reports, articles, syndicated columns, transcripts of radio broadcasts, notes, biographical subject file, clippings, printed matter, photographs, and other papers relating chiefly to Payne's career as a foreign correspondent (1950s); syndicated columnist (1957-1989) for two African American newspaper chains, Afro-American Newspapers and Sengstacke Enterprises; and commentator (1972-1982) with the Columbia Broadcasting System, inc., (later CBS Inc.) Spectrum radio program. Documents Payne's coverage of the war in Vietnam and her involvement as a journalist and activist in African and Third World causes especially her work in Southern Africa, with Africare, and at the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia. Documents her activities in the Democratic Party official especially with the Metropolitan Women's Democratic Club of Washington, D.C., and her year as a professor at Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn. Also includes material pertaining to the Payne family and to the allied Austin and Boswell families. Family correspondents include Payne's sisters Thelma E. Gray and Avis Ruth Johnson and a nephew James A. Johnson. Other correspondents include Clifford L. Alexander, Faith Berry, Hyman Harry Bookbinder, Dennis Brutus, Ofield Dukes, Joseph C. Dumas, John H. Hicks, Mal Johnson, Winnie Mandela, Fatima Meer, Richard M. Nixon, A. Philip Randolph, Charles R. Sadler, Mal Whitfield, and Aurelia Norris Young.