Alice Dunnigan

Washington Correspondent

      ​In 1942 a call for government workers went out and Dunnigan moved to Washington, D.C. During world war II seeking better pay and a government job. From 1942 to 1946 Dunnigan worked as a federal government employee, and took a night course at Howard University. in 1946 she was offered a job working for CHicago Defender as a Washington Correspondent. The defender was a Black-owned weekly that didn't use words like "Negro" or "Black" insteaD African Americans were reffered to as "the Race." Because the editor of the Defender was unsure of Dunnigan's abilities as a writer she was underpaid, until she could prove her worth.

   

The First African American Woman...

     Since Dunnigan was a writer for the Associated Negro Press she sought press credentials to cover Congress and the Senate. The government denied her request on the grounds that she was writing for weekly newspaper, and reporters covering U.S. Capitol were required to witte daily. Six months later she was granted press clerance, in doing so she became the first African-American woman to gain accreditation. In 1947 she was named bureau chief of the Associate Negro Press, she held this position for 14 years.

      In 1948 Alice Dunnigan was one of the 3 African American and one of the 2 women in the press corps that followed President Truman's Western campaign. also that year she became the the first African American female White House correspondent, and was the first black women to be elected to the Women's NAtional Press CLub. Because of  her association with this organization she was allowed to travel in the United Syayes and to Canada, Israel, South America, Africa, Mexico, and rhe Caribbean, she was even honored by haitian oresident Francois Duvalier for her articels on Haiti.

 

White House 

 In 1960 Dunnigan left her seat in the press galleries to take a position on Lyndon B. Johnson's campaign for the Democratic nomination. President Kennedy won the nomination, but chose Johnson as his running mate and named Dunnigan as education consultant, of the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity.

 

After the White House

Once Nixon took over the presidency in 1968, Dunnigan and the rest of the Democratic administration, found themselves moving out of the White House Dunnigan started writing, but this time about herself. Her Autobiography A Black Woman's Experience: From Schoolhouse to WHite House. It was published in 1974 the book is an exploration of Dunnigan's life from her childhood in rual Kentucky, to her pioneering work both covering the White House and inside it. She's received more than 50 journalism awards.