The first Black women to report from the White House are honored in the briefing room
On her first day as a reporter in the White House, Alice Dunnigan had every reason to stand out.
She was the first black woman admitted to the White House press corps, and she had even arrived an hour early to cover her first press conference with President Harry S. Truman. But as she sat in the lobby of the West Wing, she might as well have been invisible.
“I sat there alone and seemingly unnoticed, taking in all the activity while occasionally glancing at my newspaper,” she wrote in her autobiography, “Alone Atop the Hill.” “If anyone wondered who I was or why I was there, they made no effort to find out.”
More than 75 years later, Ms Dunnigan's memory is being honored in the same setting where her colleagues once ignored her.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, in November called a new desk in the White House briefing room for Ms. Dunnigan of The Associated Negro Press and Ethel L. Payne, who joined her on the beat for The Chicago Defender a few years later.
“The White House lectern is a powerful symbol of freedom and democracy that is regularly beamed around the world,” said Ms. Jean-Pierre, the first Black woman to serve as White House press secretary. “I can't think of better people to be associated with that symbol than Alice and Ethel.”
Over the years, the briefing room lectern has become both a cultural and political artifact, entrenching a space accessible to a privileged few.
April Ryan, the Washington bureau chief and senior White House correspondent for The Grio, and the longest-serving black woman in the White House press corps, said the decision to honor Ms. Dunnigan and Ms. Payne made her feel was 'seen'.
“There are still crescendo moments in Black America, and we are the only ones asking those questions, or writing those stories, and asking Black questions that no one else dares, wants, or thinks is important enough to ask,” she says. said.
Ms. Ryan, who did attacked by former President Donald Trump and conservative media for asking questions relating to Black Americans, said the choice of these two women was particularly poignant.
Both women were chastised by White House officials and later ignored by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was often unnerved by their questions about civil rights.
Mrs. Dunnigan, who had to pawning her jewelry to get through paychecks, said white reporters assumed they would be allowed to report from the White House.
“To them it was nothing unusual because white reporters of reputation and stature had always been accredited to the White House,” Ms. Dunnigan wrote of her colleagues, who eventually offered what she called “casual congratulations” for obtaining her credentials.
“I appreciated and cherished this honor, even though I felt that I had earned it the hard way,” she wrote, “through arduous preparation, perseverance, hard work, acceptable qualifications, perseverance, a heroic fight and proven ability .'
She recalled how she managed to catch her colleagues during a cross-country train trip with Mr. Truman. When the train stopped in Missoula, Mont., in the middle of the night, many other reporters were sleeping when Mr. Truman emerged in his bathrobe and spoke to a waiting crowd of students about civil rights.
She was still awake, and reporters who missed the moment pressured her not to publish the resulting story, fearing it would look bad. But she published anyway, with the headline: “Pajama-wearing President Defends Civil Rights at Midnight.”
It was three months before Ms. Payne asked her first question at one of Mr. Eisenhower's press conferences: according to an excerpt from her biography, 'An eye on the battle.' The day came in February 1954, when she asked if the Howard University choir could not perform at a celebration attended by the president – a detail left out in other coverage of the event.
“The white press was so busy asking questions about other issues that blacks and their problems were completely ignored,” Ms. Payne said of her time in the White House.
A question about whether Mr. Eisenhower would move to ban segregation in interstate travel after the 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education was the question that caused her to be shunned. Not only did Mr. Eisenhower stop visiting her, according to her biographerbut the White House press secretary tried to revoke her press credentials.
Mrs. Payne later became known as the “first lady of the black press,' and her coverage of the civil rights movement was like that 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 he used to sign the landmark legislation.
Martha Joynt Kumar, a presidential researcher 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 corps.
“It looks fluffy,” Ms. Kumar said, “but it's not.”
The naming of the lectern was inspired by the fact that the White House Correspondents' Association created a Lifetime Achievement Award in honor of the two women in 2022. Ms Kumar said the Dunnigan-Payne lectern joins other major lecterns including Blue Goose, which is used for formal presidential speeches, and Toast, which is used for toasts at events such as state dinners.
Judy Smith, who served as and was deputy press secretary to President George HW Bush the first black woman to lead a press conference at the White Housesaid the weight of the White House briefing room is felt by those sitting on both sides of the lectern.
“Speaking from the podium, addressing critical issues affecting the country, and having every word you say taken very seriously and cut up and dissected in so many different ways – it's a huge responsibility,” Ms Smith, who is the inspiration was for the character Olivia Pope from the hit series “Scandal,” said in an interview.
“I also think it's important to recognize and recognize these women,” she added, “and also the weight of responsibility that they felt.”
Alicia Dunnigan, Mrs Dunnigan's granddaughter, said her grandmother would be “overwhelmed” by news of the lectern, which was officially dedicated in November.
“She wanted to inspire future generations,” Ms. Dunnigan said of her grandmother, who died in 1983. “The significance of that stage – I'm sure she could never have imagined something so prominent and permanent, to be a beacon in that room, in her name.