Today we are raising a glass of 2017 For Our Daughters Rosé to Alice Allison Dunnigan, a woman who blazed a trail for our own daughters in so many ways. As we share this, after more than a year and a half, the 2020 presidential campaign trail is finally nearing its end. The rigor of one of the longest campaign cycles of any country in the world is something Alice Dunnigan knew very well, but unlike the members of the press that would follow in her footsteps, Alice had to pay her own way.
Only a year after her appointment as the chief of the Washington bureau of the Associated Negro Press in 1947, a position she would hold until 1961, Alice became the first Black female correspondent to be granted White House credentials. She also went on to become the first Black female member of the Senate and House of Representatives press galleries.
Alice was the first Black female correspondent to follow a President’s campaign on the road, covering Harry S. Truman’s Western campaign trail, but that trek was an expense that came out of Alice’s own pocket. She continued to endure routine racism and sexism within many factions of the White House, including from the President himself, until John F. Kennedy was elected and finally took office in 1961.
Alice faced a multitude of roadblocks and indignities. She endured reporting on Congressional hearings where blacks were referred to with the n-word. She was blocked from covering a speech that President Dwight D. Eisenhower made in a whites-only theater, and was forced to cover Senator Robert A. Taft's funeral from the servant’s section, not being allowed to sit with the rest of her press colleagues. This didn’t deter Alice from using her words and position to invoke change, being known for asking difficult questions, often focusing on race issues. Politicians avoided answering her questions, including President Eisenhower. In the beginning, he simply refused to call on her but grew so exasperated with her persistence that he began asking for her questions to be submitted ahead of press conferences so they could be reviewed. No other member of the press corps was asked to do this. Alice refused.
For Alice, the stonewalling ended with the election of John F. Kennedy, who not only welcomed her questions and answered them honestly but also named her as an education consultant of the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity where she served until 1965. She went on to serve as an associate editor with the President's Commission on Youth Opportunity from 1967 through 1970.
Alice’s journey to the White House seasoned her for the fight. Born in 1960 near Russellville, Kentucky, she was of Black, Native American and white descent, with a family tree that included both slaves and slave owners.
She had a strict upbringing, few childhood friends and was forbidden to have boyfriends. With a family emphasis on work-ethic, Alice had already started school by the time she was 4 and was reading before grade one, so it’s no surprise that her first job as a journalist arrived at 13, writing news items for the Owensboro Enterprise newspaper.
At the time, Blacks were only permitted to complete ten years of education in the segregated Russellville school system. While her parents saw no point to further education, a Sunday school teacher championed Alice’s cause, and she headed to college, training to become a teacher herself.
This is where another awakening began. Serving as a young teacher in yet another segregated school system, teaching Kentucky history, Alice soon learned that students had virtually no knowledge of the contributions of Blacks. She began creating “Kentucky Fact Sheets” and handing them out to her students in addition to the texts they were required to read. While these were collected for publication in 1939, no publisher would take them. It would be 43 years later before they were finally published as “The Fascinating Story of Black Kentuckians: Their Heritage and Tradition.”
Despite the lack of support, Alice continued elevating students’ knowledge of the fullness of Black contributions to history while teaching in Kentucky public schools from 1924 to 1942. While Alice loved teaching and the impact it allowed her to make, the salary wasn’t enough to make ends meet. Alice was forced to take menial summer jobs when school was out, washing tombstones in the white cemetery while also working in a dairy and cleaning house for a family, and doing wash for yet another at night.
Alice’s deepest dream was shaped by those early days as a 13-year old journalist. She had always wanted to experience the world at large through the life of a newspaper reporter, something both a war and a choice to return to school as a student herself would enable.
In 1942, during World War II, there was a call for government workers, one that Alice answered hoping for better pay and a chance to influence change more directly. It led to her working as a federal government employee for four years, during which time she also took night courses at Howard University. This landed her a job writing for the Black-owned weekly The Chicago Defender as a Washington correspondent where Alice still had to confront sexism, being paid far less than her male counterparts until she proved her worth. She did that loudly, going on to be appointed to the Associated Negro Press as the Washington bureau chief just a handful of years later, then making history—and change—at the White House.
While she was able to claim a profound legacy of work in both government and politics, it was the trails she blazed in journalism of which Alice was most proud, garnering more than 50 awards for that alone by the time she died in 1983. Alice was inducted into the Black Journalist Hall of Fame two years later.
We invite you to raise a glass of 2017 For Our Daughters Rosé with us to Alice Dunnigan for doors her courage and perseverance opened for so many of our daughters today!
As we celebrate her life and legacy, we invite you to connect with us in conversation below. A bit of food for thought ...
Tuck in a comment about the way Alice Dunnigan’s legacy has shaped your own opportunities and experiences today.
If we could sit down and share a glass with Alice now, what advice do you think she would offer black and brown women and journalists today?
What lessons do you think she would invite allies to consider in meeting the challenges she faced in both the White House and the press, and that women of color still face today?
