By Yonaia Robinson
(Photograph credit score: AFRO Archives)
Alice Allison Dunnigan was the primary African-American feminine correspondent on the White Home and the primary Black feminine member of the Senate and Home of Representatives press galleries.
Dunnigan was born April 27, 1906, in Russellville, Kentucky, to Willie and Lena Pitman Allison. Her father labored as a tobacco sharecropper, and her mom took in laundry for a dwelling. On the age of 4, she started attending faculty someday per week and discovered to learn earlier than getting into the primary grade. She accomplished the ten years of training out there to Blacks within the segregated Russellville faculty system and wished extra.
Dunnigan began writing one-sentence information gadgets for the native newspaper, the Owensboro Enterprise, at age 13.
(Photograph credit score: AFRO Archives)
In 1925, Dunnigan married a tobacco farmer, nonetheless, she felt burdened by the farming way of life and shortly left the wedding. She started instructing within the Todd County College System in Russellville whereas taking programs in journalism at Tennessee A&I College.
She shortly realized that her college students have been nearly utterly unaware of the historic contributions that African Individuals had made to the state of Kentucky, so she started making ready Kentucky truth sheets to complement the required texts. The sheets have been later collected and changed into a manuscript in 1939 however weren’t revealed till 1982 beneath the title “The Fascinating Story of Black Kentuckians: Their Heritage and Custom.”
In 1936, on the onset of World Struggle II, Dunnigan juggled a contract author place for the Chicago, Illinois department of the American Negro Press (ANP) and night time programs at Howard College in statistics and economics. In 1946 she took a job writing for the Chicago Defender.
She began working full-time on the ANP and ultimately secured a Capitol press cross. With it, she was in a position to cowl information occasions of the Congress, which was typically stored off limits to most reporters, the general public, and particularly ladies and African Individuals. She turned the primary African American to realize a congressional press cross.
In 1948, Dunnigan was certainly one of three African Individuals and certainly one of two ladies within the press corps that lined the marketing campaign of President Harry S. Truman. Throughout her years of protecting the White Home, she continuously requested questions relating to the burgeoning civil rights motion and the plight of Black America. In 1953, Dunnigan was barred from protecting a speech given by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in a Whites-only theater and was pressured to take a seat with the servants to cowl Ohio Sen. Robert A. Taft’s funeral.
In 1960, Dunnigan formally left the American Negro Press galleries for a full-time place on Lyndon B. Johnson’s marketing campaign for the Democratic nomination. She labored for Johnson when he served as vp and later within the Johnson administration. Between 1966 and 1967, for instance, she was an data specialist for the Division of Labor. Dunnigan additionally served as an affiliate editor with the President’s Fee on Youth Alternative in 1967. She retired from authorities service in 1970.
After retirement, Dunnigan wrote her autobiography, “A Black Girl’s Expertise: From Schoolhouse to White Home,” which was revealed in 1974. She revealed “The Fascinating Story of Black Kentuckians” in 1982.
Alice Allison Dunnigan died on Could 6, 1983, in Washington, D.C. She was 77.
This story was reprinted with permission from Blackpast.org.
