He turned his anger into determination, trying out each year until he made the 10th-grade junior varsity team, “though the coach did tell me, ‘I’d better never see you trying to make a fast break,’ ” he laughed.ĭr. When you prove the world wrong at such a young age, Dr.
I was walking when many others with polio couldn’t, and I rarely got mad after that moment.” Payne moved from crutches to braces, but the supports still kept him a step behind his peers: “I didn’t make the sixth-grade basketball team, and I cried to my dad, ‘Why would God bless me with the ability to shoot and dribble but not run?’” Payne said. “I finally confessed I could walk, and my parents were upset at first but when the doctor was excited and encouraging, so were they.” “Neighbors told my parents, ‘Wow, it’s so great to see your boy walking.’ My folks thought they were crazy,” he said. He shuffled around on crutches, but when his parents were gone, his brother would kick the aids aside: “Walk Charley Ray, walk,” he’d say, challenging his brother to try. Kids teased the scholar: “Hey professor,” they’d say, never knowing Payne would one day respond to that title with pride. Told he shouldn’t walk to avoid injury, Payne spent his early life reading and thinking. Kiwanis also supports area schools, and Dr. Payne was past president of the local Kiwanis chapter and was Lt. When I heard Kiwanis supported Riley Children’s Hospital, I signed up.” Dr. “When I came to Muncie, I looked to get involved with those organizations, but I didn’t find any chapters. “I will never forget that my parents didn’t have to pay for my care, which included six surgeries to reposition my knee and foot that had twisted 180-degrees, pointing straight back,” he said. He was four when the county doctor said his fever and sore throat was tonsilitis, but a traveling salesman saw Payne, writhing on the porch in discomfort, and told his parents, “Your boy has polio.” They rushed Payne to a clinic supported by the March of Dimes and Shriners International. He also serves as a cardiologist for the U.S. Greg Payne is now a doctor-an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, to be exact. The teen came straight home: “Thank you, Dad.” If you’re accused of stealing, you’d have no proof.” Years later, Greg and his friends were stopped at the store. Those lessons influenced his parenting: “My son, Greg, came home from the store without a receipt once, and I said to him, “Don’t you ever come home without a receipt again. Write “N” on your schoolbooks, don’t talk to white girls, ever, and speak softly to the police. Never hold out your hand for change, pick it up from the counter.
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Payne learned early how to survive the segregated South: step off the sidewalk when white people pass, and don’t react if they stomp on your feet. My uncle said he never tried to pass for white because it would have meant that he couldn’t have us.”ĭr. “A Southern accent is considered dumb, so a Black person with a Southern accent is doubly dumb,” Dr. Uncle Lawrence and his wife were light skinned and educated, so the Payne boys had access to books and other advantages. His father died in a car crash a few months before Payne’s birth, so his dad’s brother, Uncle Lawrence, offered to raise Payne and his brother. Payne grew up in Philadelphia, Miss., the youngest of five children. “They mean old,” he said shortly after his 80th birthday in April, when he talked with Alumni Magazine about his storied life. He spent the remainder of his life-before his passing in June-supporting youth, serving his church, and advocating for equity and inclusion across Indiana. Payne spent 41 years at the University, retiring as assistant provost for diversity and professor of secondary education.
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Charles Payne taught through story, and the most powerful parables are his own: how did a Black Mississippi boy, stricken with polio, cross several graduation stages to become the first tenured and full Black professor at Ball State University? Charles Payne shared his journey to start the University’s first multicultural education program.ĭr. Ball State University’s first Black tenured and full professor died in late June.
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