#nnpa

"Race and sex were twin strikes against me."

We set to work upon Black History Month 2026, with a continued focus on journalism. Born 1906 and brought up in heavily-segregated Kentucky, Alice Allison Dunnigan pushed back against the limited (and degrading) job opportunities of Jim Crow South and pursued her dream of being a reporter. As early as age thirteen, she was writing editorials for the Louisville Defender, the Louisville Leader, and the Derbytown Informer, and ultimately graduated from Tennessee A&I University with a degree in journalism. During World War II she worked in Washington, D.C. for the Department of Labor, and in the postwar years became the Washington Bureau Chief for the American Negro Press (ANP), which provided stories to newspapers around the world.

Predictably Dunnigan started out earning half the pay of the men she worked with, though over time she successfully argued for the same regular salary. Neither the ANP nor its competitor, the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) were at the time able to access the highly-coveted Capitol Press Galleries. To say the situation was difficult for a Black woman in Washington, D.C. in those years is a grievous understatement. She covered civil rights cases, segregation, and federal fair employment legislation --often paying out of her own pocket to be able to get exclusive stories. Then in 1947 fortunes changed and Dunnigan found herself the first Black woman to cover the White House, the Supreme Court and Congress (the first Black man to break that barrier was her colleague Harry McAlpin just three years earlier... more about him in the very next lesson).

She rose to the opportunity: in 1948, she was the only Black reporter assigned to Harry S. Truman's famous Whistle Stop campaign train: she conducted in-depth interviews with service workers aboard the "rolling White House" train for behind-the-scenes pieces, and even ran a special feature on the president's valet. President Eisenhower famously bristled at --and evaded-- her tough questions about racial discrimination in federal departments; this particular "offense" carried a professional consequence, as she found herself yanked (at the last minute) from the team that was to cover the funeral of Senator Robert Taft, that same week. As a civil rights journalist, Dunnigan's work for the ANP enriched the coverage of key issues at the dawn of the civil rights movement --issues of greater importance to Black Americans, like housing problems and employment issues, which might otherwise have gone unreported.

Dunnigan left journalism as a career in the early 1960's, and returned to a full-time role with the Department of Labor, and also as an advisor on the President's Council on Youth Opportunity, and then later taking a consultant role in President Johnson's then-new Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. She retired in 1970 and her memoir, A Black Woman's Experience - From Schoolhouse to White House, was published in 1974.

Black News Channel (BNC) TV Launches in America

NNPA NEWSWIRE — BNC, which officially launches at 6 a.m. on Friday, November 15, 2019 has agreements with Charter Communications, Comcast and DISH TV. The network already has commitments for carriage in major African American hubs like Atlanta, New York City, Chicago, New Orleans, Houston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington, DC, Baltimore and Los Angeles.

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"Harry, I'm glad you are here."      --Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt

On this very date in 1944, Harry McAlpin became the first Black journalist to be admitted to a White House press conference. Born in 1906 St. Louis, Mo., Alpin earned a degree in journalism at the University of Wisconsin and then worked as a reporter and editor (and eventually a manager) for the weekly Washington Tribune. He then bolstered his professional credentials by securing a law degree from the Robert U. Terrell (husband of Mary Church Terrell --see Lesson #29 in this series) Law School in Washington, D.C. He passed the bar in 1937 but continued to freelance as a Washington correspondent for the Chicago Defender, even while he also balanced a job at the Federal Security Agency and the U.S. Employment Service. For a time he worked under Mary McLeod Bethune (see Lesson #49 in this series) at the National Youth Administration (NYA).

The National Negro Publishers Association (NNPA, today known as now the National Newspaper Publishers Association, mentioned in the previous lesson) had at the time been petitioning the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) to obtain credentials --something that had not been previously afforded to Black journalists. With that hurdle cleared, the NNPA was able to open its own Washington bureau, and positioned McAlpin (now working for the Atlanta Daily World) to attend press briefings at the White House. On February 8, 1944, McAlpin had to run something of a gauntlet: his fellow journalists attempted to bargain with him, plead with him: that they would share their notes with him, anything to discourage him from actually enter the press room. But enter he did, and covered the briefing with President Roosevelt, who (pointedly) shook his hand and thanked him for being there.

In the 1950's McAlpin retired from journalism and took up a full-time legal career in Louisville, Kentucky --as the only Black assistant commonwealth attorney in the entire state. He also became the head of the local chapter of the NAACP. He did briefly return to Washington, D.C. in the late 1960's to work for the Social Security Administration hearing officer, but he eventually returned to Louisville to practice law, ultimately retiring in his seventies.

President Barack Obama's concluding remarks at the 2014 White House Correspondents' Dinner:

Dear Alma: I’m 48 and single. I’ve had a great life with good friends and loving parents who are both now deceased. I travel for work, which is why I haven’t settled down, married and had children.

Last year, I was home for a family funeral and my cousin asked if we could spend more time together. I said yes, and last month we agreed that I would spend a weekend at her house. She’s married, my age with three teen children. I thought it was a great idea.

We grew up together, and it was long overdue for us to catch up.

The night before I left her home, my cousin said she wanted to share something with me. She showed me some papers she had found among her own father’s things after he died. These papers prove that I was not my parents’ biological daughter. Her father and my father were brothers.

My father has been dead for four years, and my mother for six. I have been walking around in a daze. I was never told that I was adopted. I don’t know who I am. How could my parents hide this from me? I’m so confused I can barely function.—  Signed, Adopted and never knew

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Hey now friend, thanks for reaching out to my column. I can’t imagine what it feels like receiving this kind of information, especially after your parents are deceased.

Understandably, you want answers and would like to know what happened. I sympathize with you. I know you’re angry, insulted, heartbroken and confused, but please don’t gravitate toward the emptiness of feeling like an orphan.

The reality is that you had loving parents. I can’t say whether the decision not to tell you was right or wrong; we don’t know the whole story. But what I can say is your parents evidently thought it was best that you not know.

You and I are close in age. We were born in the years of “keep your business to yourself.” That mentality is long gone now. We live in a society where everybody’s business is on Facebook and Twitter all day, every day. I’m not defending your parents. I’m simply reminding you of a time when private family matters had their place.

If you feel a need to find your biological parents, you should reach out to the Adoptees’ Liberty Movement Association. If you decide not, that’s absolutely ok, too. We all have family secrets. Most are carried in deep pockets of guilt and shame. But not all of them were meant to hurt us, which I’m sure is the case in your situation.