Alice Allison Dunnigan (1906-1983) became the first Black woman accredited to report from the White House, Supreme Court, State Department, Senate, and House of Representatives. She was born in rural Kentucky and worked her way through school doing laundry, cleaning houses, and washing dishes—among the few jobs available to Black women in the Jim Crow South. But she aspired to a career as a reporter, and by age thirteen she began writing short news items for a local paper.
As a young woman, Dunnigan taught school while contributing to the Lousiville Defender, the Louisville Leader, and the Derbytown Informer. During World War II, Dunnigan moved to Washington DC to work as a typist for the Department of Labor, and by 1947 she became the Washington Bureau Chief for the American Negro Press which provided news service to one hundred papers in the US and Africa. For the next fourteen years, Dunnigan covered civil rights cases, the fight against segregation, and the progress of federal fair employment legislation—often paying out of her own pocket to get exclusive stories.
