by On her first day covering the White House, Alice Dunnigan had every reason to stand out.
She was the first black woman to be credentialed to join the White House press corps, and even arrived an hour early to cover her first press conference with President Harry S. Truman. But as she sat in the west wing lobby, she might as well have been invisible.
“I sat there alone and seemingly unnoticed, watching all the activity while occasionally glancing at my newspaper,” she wrote in her autobiography, “Alone Atop the Hill.” “If anyone asked who I was or why I was there, I made no effort to find out.”
More than 75 years later, Ms. Dunnigan’s memory is being honored in the same environment where she was once ignored by her colleagues.
Karine Jean-Pierre, White House press secretary, in November appointed a new lectern in the White House briefing room for Ms. Dunnigan of The Associated Negro Press and Ethel L. Payne, who joined her in the rounds a few years later for The Chicago Defender.
“The White House lectern is a powerful symbol of freedom and democracy that is regularly broadcast around the world,” said Jean-Pierre, the first Black woman to serve as White House press secretary. “I can’t think of two better people associated with that symbol than Alice and Ethel.”
Over the years, the meeting room lectern has become both a cultural and political artifact, anchoring a room accessible to a privileged few.
April Ryan, Washington bureau chief and The Grio’s chief White House correspondent, and the longest-serving Black woman in the White House press corps, said the decision to honor Ms. Dunnigan and made Mrs. Payne feel “seen.”
“There are still moments of crescendo in black America, and we are the only ones who ask those questions, or write those stories, and ask questions of black people that no one else dares, or wants, or thinks are important enough to ask,” said. saying.
Mrs. Ryan, who has been attacked by former President Donald Trump and to conservative media for asking questions related to African Americans, said the choice of these two women was particularly poignant.
Both women were berated by White House officials and then ignored by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was often flustered by their questions about civil rights.
Mrs. Dunnigan, who had to pawn your jewelry to survive between paychecks, He said white journalists took it for granted that they would be allowed to cover the White House.
“It was nothing unusual to them because white reporters with reputation and status had always been accredited to the White House,” Dunnigan wrote of her colleagues, who eventually extended what she called “casual congratulations” on earning their credentials.
“I cherished and cherished this honor even though I felt I had actually earned it the hard way,” he wrote, “through strenuous preparation, perseverance, hard work, acceptable grades, persistence, heroic struggle, and demonstrated ability.”
He recalled how he managed to pick up his colleagues during a cross-country train trip with Mr. Truman. When the train stopped in Missoula, Montana, in the middle of the night, many other journalists were asleep when Truman emerged in a bathrobe and spoke to a crowd of waiting students about civil rights.
She was still awake and journalists who missed the moment pressured her not to publish the resulting story for fear of making themselves look bad. She but she posted it anyway, with a headline that read: “President in Pajamas Defends Civil Rights at Midnight.”
It took three months for Ms. Payne to ask her first question at one of Mr. Eisenhower’s press conferences: according to an excerpt from his biography, “Eye in the fight.” The day came in February 1954 when she asked him about blocking the Howard University choir from performing at a celebration attended by the president, a detail that had been omitted from other coverage of the event.
“The white press was so busy asking questions about other issues that black people and their problems were completely ignored,” Payne said of his time in the White House.
It was a question about whether Eisenhower would take action to ban segregation in interstate travel after the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that got it rejected. Mr. Eisenhower not only stopped visiting her, according to his biographerbut the White House press secretary attempted to revoke his press credentials.
Mrs. Payne became known as the “first lady of the black press,” and his coverage of the civil rights movement was so instrumental that President Lyndon B. Johnson invited her to the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and gave her one of the pens she used to sign the landmark legislation.
Martha Joynt Kumar, a presidential scholar who has documented the relationship between the press and the White House for decades, said the Dunnigan-Payne lectern was a rare show of solidarity between the White House and the press.
“It looks fluffy,” Kumar said, “but it’s not.”
The lectern’s name was inspired by the White House Correspondents’ Association’s creation of a lifetime achievement award honoring the two women in 2022. Ms. Kumar said the Dunnigan-Payne lectern joins other notable ones, including Blue Goose, which is used for formal presidential addresses, and Toast, which is used for toasts at events such as state dinners.
Judy Smith, who was deputy press secretary to President George HW Bush and was the first black woman to address a press conference at the White HouseHe said the weight of the White House briefing room is felt by those sitting on either side of the lectern.
“Speaking from the podium, addressing critical issues that affect the country and having every word you say taken very seriously and cut and analyzed in many different ways; It’s a tremendous responsibility,” said Ms. Smith, who was the inspiration for her character Olivia Pope on the hit show “Scandal,” said in an interview.
“I also think it’s important to acknowledge and acknowledge these women,” she added, “and also the weight of responsibility they felt.”
Alicia Dunnigan, Ms Dunnigan’s granddaughter, said her grandmother would be “overwhelmed” by the news of the lectern, which was officially unveiled in November.
“She wanted to inspire future generations,” Ms. Dunnigan said of her grandmother, who died in 1983. “The importance of that podium… I’m sure I could never have conceived of something so prominent and permanent, standing as a beacon in that room, in his name.”
