Alice Dunnigan will never forget her first day covering the White House.
As the first Black woman ever to receive credentials to join the illustrious White House press corps, she was excited to get started and arrived an hour early to cover her first press conference with then-President Harry Truman. But instead of the warm welcome she thought she would receive, she sat in the lobby feeling invisible.
“I sat there alone and apparently unnoticed, taking in all the activity while glancing now and then 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.”
Over seven decades later, the journalist’s memory is being honored at the very same place where she once felt out of place.
In November, Karine Jean-Pierre, the first Black White House press secretary, named a lectern in the White House briefing room after Ms. Dunnigan, who worked at The Associated Negro Press. The lectern was named after her and another trailblazer, Ethel L. Payne, a former journalist who joined her from The Chicago Defender.
“The White House lectern is a powerful symbol of freedom and democracy beamed around the world on a regular basis,” Jean-Pierre said. “I can’t think of two better people to be associated with that symbol than Alice and Ethel.”
The briefing room has become one of the more historic artifacts in the White House in recent years, which has held some of the nation’s most prestigious journalists, including April Ryan, the Washington bureau chief and senior White House correspondent for The Grio. She currently serves as the longest-serving Black woman in the White House press corps, and said naming the lectern after Dunnigan and Payne made her feel “seen.”
“There are still crescendo moments in Black America, and we are the only ones who are asking those questions, or writing those stories, and asking Black questions that no one else dares, or wants, or thinks are important enough to ask,” Ryan told The New York Times.
Judy Smith, who held the position of deputy press secretary during President George H.W. Bush’s tenure, and the inspiration behind Olivia Pope, the main character of the hit TV show, Scandal, emphasized that the significance of the White House briefing room is palpable for both those behind the lectern and those in front of it.
“Speaking from the podium, addressing critical issues that affect the country, and every single word you say is taken very seriously, and sliced and parsed in so many different ways — it’s a tremendous responsibility,” Smith told the publication.
“I also think that it’s important to acknowledge and recognize these women,” adding that it is equally as important to understand “the weight of the responsibility they felt as well.”
