English: Biography: Alice Dunnigan was a schoolteacher, political activist, and journalist. The daughter of sharecroppers, she showed an early desire for an education. Despite her parents' protest, she went to grade school and eventually to Kentucky State College. She received a teaching certificate and taught in the rural schools of Kentucky. In 1930 she returned to school at West Kentucky Industrial College and earned a certificate in home economics. In her small town, she worked to improve city services, such as mail delivery and installation of gas and water lines, for the Black area. World War II took her to Washington, D.C., where she worked as a clerk-typist, and later as an economist-writer. This led to her career as a journalist and to her becoming chief of the Washington Bureau of the Associated Negro Press. She was the first Black woman to be admitted to the White House and Congressional Press Galleries and was the first Black correspondent to travel with a President of the United States when she accompanied Harry Truman during his 1948 campaign. Following her retirement, she did research on the history of Black Kentuckians.

Description: The Black Women Oral History Project interviewed 72 African American women between 1976 and 1981. With support from the Schlesinger Library, the project recorded a cross section of women who had made significant contributions to American society during the first half of the 20th century. Photograph taken by Judith Sedwick
Repository: Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.
Collection: Black Women Oral History Project
Research Guide: http://guides.library.harvard.edu/schlesinger_bwohp

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