Archive - May 18, 2023

After a five-month search for a new director of the Peace Corps, in which Sam Brown offered the job to Rafer Johnson, then-representative Ron Dellums of California, Jane Hart – the widow of former Senator Philip Hart – and LaDonna Harris, Brown appointed Carolyn Payton as Director of the Peace Corps. Payton was the first female Director of the Peace Corps, and the first African American.   Brown clashed with Payton from the start. And after only thirteen months in the position, in November 1979, Brown asked for her resignation. She initially agreed to resign, then withdrew her resignation and issued a statement that implied she would not leave unless asked directly by President Carter, who asked for her resignation shortly thereafter. Payton cited, in part, policy differences between ACTION and the Peace Corps saying “as Director, I could not, because of the peculiar administrative structure under which the Peace Corps . . .

May 16, 2023   Dr. Carolyn L. Robertson Payton was the first African American and the first woman to become the director of the U.S. Peace Corps. She was appointed in 1977 by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Carolyn L. Robertson Payton was born on May 13, 1925, in Norfolk, Virginia, to Bertha M. Flanagan, a seamstress, and Leroy S. Robertson, a ship steward. She graduated from Booker T. Washington High school in Norfolk in 1941 and received her B.S. degree in Home Economics from Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1945. Payton remained close to Bennett College, establishing a scholarship fund there in the late 1990s. Payton then attended the University of Wisconsin where her tuition and other expenses were paid by the state of Virginia as part of the state’s policy of sending black graduate students to out-of-state institutions rather than allowing them to received advanced degrees at . . .