Pinback Button, "Humphrey Muskie"

This pinback button supported the 1968 presidential campaign of Hubert Humphrey and his running mate, Edmund Muskie. The red, white, and blue button belonged to journalist Ethel L. Payne (1911-1991), a Chicago native who moved to the nation’s capital in 1952 to cover national and international news for the preeminent African American newspaper, The Chicago Defender. She worked for the Democratic National Committee when Humphrey served as Vice President. Payne, a lifelong civil rights activist, reported from thirty countries over the course of her own pioneering career, becoming known as the First Lady of the Black Press.